returnoftheshadow72

by Miguel

  On a small isolated piece of paper are found the following verses. At the top of the page my father wrote: 'Date unknown - germ of Tom Bombadil so evidently in mid 1930s'; and this note was written at the same time as the text, which is certainly quite late. There is no trace of the text from which it was copied.

  (Said I)

  'Ho! Tom Bombadil

  Whither are you going

  With John Pompador

  Down the River rowing?'

  (Said he)

  'Through Long Congleby,

  Stoke Canonicorum,+

  Past King's Singleton

  To Bumby Cocalorum -

  To call Bill Willoughby

  Whatever he be doing,

  And ax Harry Larraby

  What beer he is a-brewing.'

  (And he sang)

  'Co, boat! Row! The willows are a-bending,

  reeds are leaning, wind is in the grasses.

  Flow, stream, flow! The ripples are unending;

  green they gleam, and shimmer as it passes.

  Run, fair Sun, through heaven all the morning,

  rolling golden. Merry is our singing.

  Cool the pools, though summer be a-burning;

  in shady glades let laughter run a-ringing!'

  + Mediaeval name of what is now Stoke Canon in Devonshire.

  The poem published in The Oxford Magazine in 1934 bore the title The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (in earlier forms it was The History of Tom Bombadil). Many years later (1962) my father made it the first poem in the collection to which it gave the title (and added also a new poem, Bombadil Goes Boating, in which he meets Farmer Maggot in the Marish). Various changes were made in this later version, and references to the Withywindle were introduced, but the old poem was very largely preserved. In it are to be found the origin of many things in this and the following chapters - the closing crack in the Great Willow (though in the poem it was Tom himself who was caught in it), the supper of 'yellow cream and honeycomb, and white bread, and butter', the 'nightly noises' that included the tapping of the branches of Old Man Willow on the window-pane, the words of the Barrow-wight (who in the poem was inside Tom's house) 'I am waiting for you', and much else.

  VI. TOM BOMBADIL.

  A very brief outline shows my father's first thoughts for the next stage of the hobbits' journey: their visit to the house of Tom Bombadil.

  Tom Bombadil rescues them from Willow Man. He says it was lucky he came that way - he had gone to the water-lily pool for some white water-lilies for Goldberry (my wife).

  He turns out to know Farmer Maggot. (Make Maggot not a hobbit, but some other kind of creature - not dwarf, but akin to Tom Bombadil). They rest at his house. He says only way out is along his path beside the Withywindle. Description of feast and [? willow] fire. Many noises at night.

  Tom Bombadil wakes them singing derry dol, and opening all the windows (he lives in a little house under the down-side facing the forest edge and the [?east corner] of the wood). He tells them to go north but avoid the high Downs and barrows. He manas them of barrow-wights; tells them a song to sing if the barrow- wights frighten them or

  A cold day. The mist thickens and they get lost.

  This scheme was written at great speed in pencil. As will be seen shortly, at this stage the hobbits only spent the one night with Tom Bombadil, and left the following morning. Another set of notes, also obviously preceding the first actual narrative text, is also very difficult to read:

  Water-lily motive - last lilies of summer for Goldberry.

  Relation of Tom Bombadil to Farmer Maggot ( Maggot not a hobbit?)

  Tom Bombadil is an 'aborigine' - he knew the land before men, before hobbits, before barrow-wights, yes before the necromancer - before the elves came to this quarter of the world.

  Goldberry says he is 'master of water, wood and hill'. Does all this land belong to him? No! The land and the things belong to themselves. He is not the possessor but the master, because he belongs to himself.

  Description of Goldberry, with her hair as yellow as the flag- lilies, her green gown and light feet.

  Barrow-wights related to Black-riders. Are Black-riders actually horsed Barrow-wights?

  The guests sleep - there is a noise as of wind surging in the edges of the forest and..... through the panes and gables and the doors. Galloping of [?horses] round the house.

  The first actual narrative (incomplete) of this chapter is a very rough and difficult manuscript in ink, becoming very rough indeed before it peters out on the first morning at Bombadil's house. It has no title, but is rather oddly numbered 'V or VI'. Here, even more than in the last chapter, the final form - until just at the end - is already present in all but detail of expression.

  Most interesting is the story of the hobbits' dreams during the night, which is told thus:

  In the dead night Bingo woke and heard noises: a sudden fear came over him [?so that] he did not speak but lay listening breathless. He heard a sound like a strong wind curling round the house and shaking it, and down the wind came a galloping, a galloping, a galloping: hooves seemed to come charging down the hillside from the east, up to the walls and round and round, hooves thudding and wind blowing, and then dying away back up the hill and into the darkness.

  'Black riders,' thought Bingo. 'Black riders, a black host of riders,' and he wondered if he would ever again have the courage even in the morning to leave the safety of these good stone walls. He lay and listened for a while, but all had become quiet again, and after a while he fell asleep. At his side Odo lay dreaming. He turned and groaned, and woke to the darkness, and yet the dream went on. Tap, tap, squeak: the noise was like branches fretting in the wind, twigs like fingers scraping wall and window... [etc. as in FR p. 138].

  It was the sound of water that Frodo heard falling into his sleep and slowly waking him. Water streaming gently down at first, and then spreading all round the house, gurgling under the walls... [etcc. as in FR p. 139].

  Meriadoc (1) slept on through the night in deep content.

  As told here, there seems no reason not to understand that Black Riders (or Barrow-wights) actually came and rode round Tom Bombadil's house during the night. It will be seen that it is said explicitly that Bingo moke, and after a while fell asleep. In the initial sketch given on p. 112 (where the hobbits only went to stay with Tom after their capture by a Barrow-wight up on the Downs) 'Two Barrow-wights come [?galloping] after them', cf. also the note on p. 118: 'Barrow-wights related to Black-riders. Are Black-riders actually horsed Barrow-wights?' - followed by 'Galloping of [? horses] round the house.' In any case, the end of the present text (unhappily so eccentrically scribbled as to make its interpretation extremely difficult) is explicit. Here, as in the later story, Bingo waking looks out of the east window of their room on to the kitchen-garden grey with dew.

  He had expected to see turf right up to the walls, turf all pocked with hoof-marks. Actually his view was screened by a tall line of green beans on poles, but above and far beyond them the grey top of the hill loomed up against the sunrise. It was a grey morning with soft clouds, behind which were deeps of yellow and pale red. The light was broadening quickly and the red flowers on the beans began to shine against the wet green leaves.

  Frodo looks from the western window, as does Pippin in FR, and sees the Withywindle disappearing into the mist below, and the flower- garden: 'there was no willow-tree to be seen.'

  'Good morning, merry friends! ' said Tom, opening the east window wide. A cool air flowed in. 'The sun will [?heat] you when the day is older. I have been walking far, leaping on the hill-tops, since the grey twilight [? came] and the night foundered, wet grass underfoot.......'

  When they were dressed [struck out as written: Tom took them up the hillside] the sun was already risen over the hill, and the clouds were melting away. In the forest valley trees were appearing like tall heads rising out of the curling sea of mist. They were glad of breakfast - indeed they were glad to be awake and safe and at
the merry end of a day again. The thought of going was heavy on them - and not only for fear of the road. Had it been a [? merry] road and the road home they would still have wished to tarry there.

  But they knew that could not be. Bingo too found in his heart that the noise of hoofs was not only dream. They must escape quickly or else... [? pursued] here. So he made up his mind to get such help and advice as [?old] Bombadil could or would give.

  'Master,' he said, 'we cannot thank you for your kindness for it has been beyond thanks. But we must go, against our wish and quickly. For I heard horsemen in the night and fear we are pursued.'

  Tom looked at him. 'Horsemen,' he said. 'Dead men [?riding the wind. 'Tis long since they came hence.] What ails the Barrow- wights to leave their old mounds? You are strange folk to come out of the Shire, [? even stranger than my news told me.] Now you had best tell me all - and I will give you counsel.'

  Here the text ends, but following it are these notes in pencil:

  Make it sudden rainy day. They spend it at Tom's house, and tell him the tale; and he of Willow-man and the.......(2) He is concerned about the riders; but says he will think of counsel. Next day is fine. He takes them to the hilltop. They.... the barrows.

  This is where the story of the wet second day spent in long talk with Bombadil entered; before this the weather was to have become fine, and the hobbits were to have left when they had told Tom their story and received his advice. In this earliest narrative Bingo was so convinced of the reality of what he had heard in the night that he raised the matter with Tom, and Tom seems to take him seriously; and in this context the word 'Actually' (retained in FR) in 'Actually his view was screened by a tall line of beans on poles' suggests that if it had not been for this he would indeed have seen the turf 'all pocked with hoof-prints.'

  A second narrative followed, obviously written immediately after the first, and this is complete. Here the chapter is numbered 'V', still without title. The first text was now refined and ordered in expression, the morning bodes rain, and the new version becomes, to the point where the first ended, scarcely distinguishable from that of FR, except in the matter of the 'dreams'. These are still told in the same unambiguous language as if they were real events in the night; but nothing more is said of them afterwards than is said in FR. In the final story Frodo's dream is a vision of Gandalf standing on the pinnacle of Orthanc and of the descent of Gwaihir to bear him away, but that vision is still accompanied by the sound of the Black Riders galloping out of the East; and it was that sound that woke him. It is still said that he thought in the morning to find the ground round the house marked by hoofs, but this is now no more than a way of emphasising the vividness of his experience in the night.

  The remainder of the second version of the chapter generally approaches extraordinarily closely to the final form,(3) but there are not a few interesting differences.

  In Tom Bombadil's long talk with the hobbits on the second day, his voice is described as 'always in a sing-song or actually singing' (cf. FR p. 140: 'Often his voice would turn to song'). The passage concerning Old Man Willow was first written thus:

  Amongst his talk there was here and there much said of Old Man Willow, and Merry learned enough to content him (4) (more than enough, for it was not comfortable lore), though not enough for him to understand how that grey thirsty earth-bound spirit had become imprisoned in the greatest Willow of the Forest. The tree did not die, though its heart went rotten, while the malice of the Old Man drew power out of earth and water, and spread like a net, like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had infected or subjugated nearly all the trees on both sides of the valley.(5)

  Bombadil's talk about the Barrow-wights of the Barrow-downs remained almost word for word into FR (pp. 141 - 2), with one difference: for FR 'A shadow came out of dark places far away' this text has 'A dark shadow came up out of the middle of the world'; in the underlying pencilled text (see note 3) can be read 'a dark shadow came up out of the South.' At the end of his talk, where FR has 'still on and back Tom went singing out into ancient starlight', the present version has 'and still further Tom went singing back before the Sun and before the Moon, out into the old starlight.'

  A detail worth remarking is the sentence in the old version: 'Whether the morning and evening of one day or of many days had passed Bingo could not tell (nor did he ever discover for certain).' The bracketed words were soon to be removed, when the dating of the journey to Bree became precise; the hobbits stayed with Bombadil on the 26th and 27th of September, and left on the morning of the 28th (see p. 160). Tom Bombadil's answer to Bingo's question 'Who are you, Master?' has some interesting differences from the final form (FR p. 142):

  'Eh, what?' said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinted in the gloom. 'I am an Aborigine, that's what I am, the Aborigine of this land. [Struck out at once: I have spoken a mort (6) of languages and called myself by many names.] Mark my words, my merry friends: Tom was here before the River or the Trees. Tom remembers the first acorn and the first rain-drop. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the Little People arriving. He was here before the kings and the graves and the [ghosts >] Barrow- wights. When the Elves passed westward Tom was here already - before the seas were bent. He saw the Sun rise in the West and the Moon following, before the new order of days was made. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside.'

  In FR Tom Bombadil calls himself 'Eldest', not 'Aborigine' (cf. the notes given on p. 117: 'Tom Bombadil is an "aborigine"'); and the reference here to his having seen 'the Sun rise in the West and the Moon following' was dropped (though 'Tom remembers the first acorn and the first rain-drop', which was retained, says the same). These words are extremely surprising; for in the Quenta Silmarillion which my father had only set aside at the end of the previous year it is told that 'Rana [the Moon] was first wrought and made ready, and first rose into the region of the stars, and was the elder of the lights, as was Silpion of the Trees' (V. 240); and the Moon first rose as Fingolfin set foot upon Middle-earth, but the Sun when he entered Mithrim (V.250).

  Tom Bombadil was 'there' during the Ages of the Stars, before Morgoth came back to Middle-earth after the destruction of the Trees; is it to this event that he referred in his words (retained in FR) 'He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside'? It must be said that it seems unlikely that Bombadil would refer to Valinor across the Great Sea as 'Outside', especially since this was long ages 'before the seas were bent', when Numenor was drowned; it would seem much more natural to interpret the word as meaning 'the Outer Dark', 'the Void' beyond the Walls of the World. But in the mythology as it was when my father began?he Lord of the Rings Melkor entered 'the World' with the other Valar, and never left it until his final defeat. It was only with his return to The Silmarillion after The Lord of the Rings was completed that there entered the account found in the published work (pp. 35 - 7) of the First War, in which Melkor was defeated by Tulkas and driven into the Outer Dark, from which he returned in secret while the Valar were resting from their labours on the Isle of Almaren, and overthrew the Lamps, ending the Spring of Arda. It seems then that either Bombadil must in fact refer to Morgoth's return from Valinor to Middle-earth, in company with Ungoliant and bearing the Silmarils, or else that my father had already at this date developed a new conception of the earliest history of Melkor.

  After the reference to Farmer Maggot, from whom Tom Bombadil got his knowledge of the Shire, and whom he 'seemed to regard as a person of more importance than they had fancied' (FR p. 143), this text adds: We are kinsfolk, he and I. In a way of speaking: distantly and far back, but near enough for friendship' (in the original draft: 'We are akin, he said, distantly, very distantly, but near enough to count'). Cf. the notes given on p. 117, concerning the possibility that Farmer Maggot was not a hobbit at all, but a being of a wholly different kind, and akin to Bombadil.(7) At the end of this passa
ge, the reference in FR to Tom's dealings with Elves, and to his having had news of the flight of Frodo (Bingo) from Gildor, is absent from the present text. (Tom indeed said earlier, FR p. 137, that he and Goldberry had heard of their wandering, and 'guessed you'd come ere long down to the water', and this is found in both the original texts).

  Of Tom's questioning of Bingo it is said here that Bingo 'found himself telling him more about Bilbo Baggins and his own history and about the business of his sudden flight than he told before even to his three friends', in FR (p. 144) this became 'telling him more about Bilbo and his own hopes and fears than he had told before even to Gandalf.' It may be noted that in the old narrative thus far there has been no suggestion that Bingo'sdeparture from Hobbiton was a 'sudden flight' - except perhaps in the 'foreword' given in Chapter III, where Gandalf said to him before the Party 'But you must go quickly' (p. 83).

  The episode of Tom and the Ring is told in virtually the same words as in FR, the only and very slight difference being that when Bingo put on the Ring Tom cried: 'Hey, come Bingo there, where be you a-going? What be you a-grinning at? Are you tired of talking? Take off that Ring of yours and sit down a moment. We must talk a while more...' Against this my father wrote later: 'Make the seeing clearer', and substituted (after 'where be you a-going? '): 'Did you think I should not see when you had the Ring on? Ha, Tom Bombadil's not as blind as that yet. Take off your golden Ring, and sit down a moment.'