whispering through the water:
‘I cannot come!’ they heard her cry.
‘I was born Earth’s daughter!’
No jewels bright her gown bore,
as she walked back from the meadow
under roof and dark door,
under the house-shadow.
She donned her smock of russet brown,
her long hair braided,
and to her work came stepping down.
Soon the sunlight faded.
Year still after year flows
down the Seven Rivers;
cloud passes, sunlight glows,
reed and willow quivers
as morn and eve, but never more
westward ships have waded
in mortal waters as before,
and their song has faded.
Commentary
J.R.R. Tolkien in the grounds of Merton College, Oxford, reading The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book, 1968. Photograph by John Wyatt.
PREFACE
Prior to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book, Tolkien had adopted the pose of an editor or translator of an old manuscript in his foreword to Farmer Giles of Ham (1949), in his prefatory note to the second edition of The Hobbit (1951), and in The Lord of the Rings (1954–5), in which he ‘explained’ that both that work and The Hobbit were drawn from the same source, the ‘Red Book of Westmarch’. The title of the Red Book echoes those of medieval collections such as the ‘Red Book of Hergest’ and the ‘Black Book of Carmarthen’; in the context of Tolkien’s stories, it refers to the volumes mentioned in narrative near the end of The Lord of the Rings (bk. VI, ch. 9), one of which was given the title The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King. In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, the Red Book is described as containing much besides the narrative of The Lord of the Rings proper.
Thus, in turn, the preface to the Adventures of Tom Bombadil collection mentions ‘attached stories and chronicles’, and poems ‘on loose leaves’ or ‘written carelessly in margins and blank spaces’; and through this enlargement of an editorial fiction, the poems Tolkien wrote or revised for the 1962 book were given a history within the matter of Middle-earth, while the matter itself was enlarged through comments on Hobbit culture and notes on names and characters. The preface also serves, as Randel Helms said in Tolkien’s World (1974), as a parody of textual scholarship, as self-parodying ‘protection’ against charges of bad poetry – because the verses are presented as the work of hobbits, not Tolkien’s own – and as a means of establishing, if less seriously than in The Lord of the Rings, what Tolkien called Secondary Belief, in which the reader is brought willingly into the frame of a story.
We mention some of Tolkien’s fictional points about specific poems in our discussions below, such as that the fifth selection, The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late, is said to have been composed by Bilbo Baggins, hero of The Hobbit. Others are said to be by Sam Gamgee, or ‘SG’, or by Frodo Baggins, from The Lord of the Rings. The only poem in the collection not cited in the preface, for whatever reason there may have been, is The Mewlips.
Tolkien touches briefly in the preface on the ‘strange words’ and ‘rhyming and metrical tricks’ of some of the poems (‘of hobbit origin’). In our discussions, we have glossed the more unusual or less common words, as they seem to us, while the reader, especially if the poems are read aloud, will easily detect many different rhyme patterns with occasional clever variations. Some, like the title poem, have straightforward rhyming couplets (AABB), while others are more elaborate; some (such as Errantry) have internal as well as external rhyme, and occasional alliteration; The Hoard makes use of caesura, a pause between each half-line, in the manner of Anglo-Saxon verse. The attributes of poetry of which Hobbits are said to be fond, and the act of verse-making, were entertaining to Tolkien himself. As he remarked to Margaret Carroux, translator of The Lord of the Rings into German, he was ‘pleased by metrical devices and verbal skill (now out of fashion), and … amused by representing my imaginary historical period [of Middle-earth, in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings] as one in which these arts were delightful to poets and singers, and their audiences’ (29 September 1968, Scull and Hammond, The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide (2006), p. 768).
In Bilbo’s ‘scribble’ near the beginning of the preface, a weathercock is the familiar wind-direction indicator in the shape of a bird (or weathervane, hence Tolkien’s pun ‘all is vane [vain]’). Throstlecock, or throstle for short, is an old-fashioned name for a song thrush.
The river-name Serni included in the first footnote of the preface was spelled Sernui in all earlier editions of this work; and in some printings, Kiril has been misspelled Kirl. Serni, however, is so spelled in all editions of The Lord of the Rings, and in later writings such as a 1969 letter by Tolkien to Pauline Baynes, advising her about names on her 1970 Map of Middle-earth; this spelling therefore is also used here. (And yet, as Carl F. Hostetter informs us, Sernui would be possible as an unattested adjectival formation *‘stony’ from sarn ‘stone’ in Tolkien’s invented language Sindarin, on the model of lithui ‘ashen’. In his late work The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor, Tolkien names Serni with the same derivation.). In the text of The Lord of the Rings, Kiril is spelled Ciril, following Tolkien’s late decision to spell Elvish names and words throughout with C rather than K (though still pronounced K), but it remained Kiril on the original Lord of the Rings maps, themselves produced late in the publishing process. In the Bombadil preface, Kiril perhaps should be Ciril, Tolkien’s final preferred spelling and that used in most later versions or printings of the Lord of the Rings maps; but whereas Sernui is very likely a typographic error for Serni, for the preface Tolkien seems to have chosen to follow the Lord of the Rings map, as it stood in 1962, and it seemed right (if maybe inconsistent) to retain Kiril in the footnote.
In other respects, the preface as printed in this volume, and in all editions of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book since the second George Allen & Unwin printing in 1962, contains two errors, strictly speaking. In the first printing, Cat and Fastitocalon appeared in that order, but with the second printing, this order was reversed. References in the preface to these poems, numbers 11 and 12, however, were not altered (see further below, notes for Fastitocalon). Tolkien approved the change of order, but nowhere in his correspondence with Allen & Unwin is there discussion of whether to emend the preface to suit. In the absence of such evidence, and since Tolkien’s prefatory comments on poems 11 and 12 apply (if not as aptly) even with the revised order, the original text has been allowed to stand.
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM BOMBADIL
The first version of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was published, under that title, in the Oxford Magazine for 15 February 1934:
Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow;
bright blue his jacket was, and his boots were yellow.
He lived down under Hill; and a peacock’s feather
nodded in his old hat, tossing in the weather.
Old Tom Bombadil walked about the meadows
gathering the buttercups, a-chasing of the shadows,
tickling the bumblebees a-buzzing in the flowers,
sitting by the waterside for hours upon hours.
There his beard dangled long down into the water:
up came Goldberry, the Riverwoman’s daughter;
pulled Tom’s hanging hair. In he went a-wallowing
under the waterlilies, bubbling and a-swallowing.
‘Hey! Tom Bombadil, whither are you going?’
said fair Goldberry. ‘Bubbles you are blowing,
frightening the finny fish and the brown water-rat,
startling the dabchicks, drowning your feather-hat!’
‘You bring it back again, there’s a pretty maiden!’
said Tom Bombadil; ‘I do not care for wading!
Go down! Sleep again, wher
e the pools are shady
far below willow-roots, little water-lady!’
Back to her mother’s house in the deepest hollow
swam young Goldberry; but Tom, he would not follow.
On knotted willow-roots he sat in sunny weather
drying his yellow boots and his draggled feather.
Up woke Willow-man, began upon his singing,
sang Tom fast asleep under branches swinging;
in a crack caught him tight: quiet it closed together,
trapped Tom Bombadil, coat and hat and feather.
‘Ha! Tom Bombadil, what be you a-thinking,
peeping inside my tree, watching me a-drinking
deep in my wooden house, tickling me with feather,
dripping wet down my face like a rainy weather?’
‘You let me out again, Old Man Willow!
I am stiff lying here; they’re no sort of pillow,
your hard crooked roots. Drink your river water!
Go back to sleep again, like the River-daughter!’
Willow-man let him loose, when he heard him speaking;
locked fast his wooden house, muttering and creaking,
whispering inside the tree. Tom, he sat a-listening.
On the boughs piping birds were chirruping and whistling.
Tom saw butterflies quivering and winking;
Tom called the conies out, till the sun was sinking.
Then Tom went away. Rain began to shiver,
round rings spattering in the running river.
Clouds passed, hurrying drops were falling helter-skelter;
old Tom Bombadil crept into a shelter.
Out came Badger-brock with his snowy forehead
and his dark blinking eyes. In the hill he quarried
with his wife and many sons. By the coat they caught him,
pulled him inside the hole, down their tunnels brought him.
Inside their secret house, there they sat a-mumbling:
‘Ho! Tom Bombadil, where have you come tumbling,
bursting in the front-door? Badgerfolk have caught you:
you’ll never find it out, the way that we have brought you!’
‘Now, old Badger-brock, do you hear me talking?
You show me out at once! I must be a-walking.
Show me to your backdoor under briar-roses;
then clean grimy paws, wipe your earthy noses!
Go back to sleep again on your straw pillow
like fair Goldberry and Old Man Willow!’
Then all the Badgerfolk said ‘We beg your pardon!’
showed Tom out again to their thorny garden,
went back and hid themselves a-shivering and a-shaking,
blocked up all their doors, earth together raking.
Old Tom Bombadil hurried home to supper,
unlocked his house again, opened up the shutter,
let in the setting sun in the kitchen shining,
watched stars peering out and the moon climbing.
Dark came under Hill. Tom, he lit a candle,
up-stairs creaking went, turned the door handle.
‘Hoo! Tom Bombadil, I am waiting for you
just here behind the door! I came up before you.
You’ve forgotten Barrow-wight dwelling in the old mound
up there a-top the hill with the ring of stones round.
He’s got loose to-night: under the earth he’ll take you!
Poor Tom Bombadil, pale and cold he’ll make you!’
‘Go out! Shut the door, and don’t slam it after!
Take away gleaming eyes, take your hollow laughter!
Go back to grassy mound, on your stony pillow
lay down your bony head, like Old Man Willow,
like young Goldberry, and Badgerfolk in burrow!
Go back to buried gold and forgotten sorrow!’
Out fled Barrow-wight, through the window flying,
through yard, over wall, up the hill a-crying,
past white drowsing sheep, over leaning stone-rings,
back under lonely mound, rattling his bone-rings.
Old Tom Bombadil lay upon his pillow
sweeter than Goldberry, quieter than the Willow,
snugger than Badgerfolk, or the barrow-dwellers;
slept like a humming-top, snored like a bellows.
He woke up in morning-light, whistled like a starling,
sang ‘come, derry-dol, merry-dol, my darling!’;
clapped on his battered hat, boots and coat and feather,
opened the window wide to the sunny weather.
Old Tom Bombadil was a clever fellow;
bright blue his jacket was, and his boots were yellow.
None ever caught old Tom, walking in the meadows
winter and summer-time, in the lights and shadows,
down dale, over hill, jumping over water —
but one day Tom he went and caught the River-daughter,
in green gown, flowing hair, sitting in the rushes,
an old song singing fair to birds upon the bushes.
He caught her, held her fast! Water-rats went scuttering,
reeds hissed, herons cried; and her heart was fluttering.
Said Tom Bombadil: ‘Here’s my pretty maiden!
You shall come home with me! The table is all laden:
yellow cream, honeycomb, white bread and butter;
roses at window-pane peeping through the shutter.
You shall come under Hill — never mind your mother
in her deep weedy pool: there you’ll find no lover!’
Old Tom Bombadil had a merry wedding
crowned all in buttercups, his old feather shedding;
his bride with forgetmenots and flaglilies for garland,
robed all in silver-green. He sang like a starling,
hummed like a honeybee, lilted to the fiddle,
clasping his river-maid round her slender middle.
Lamps gleamed within his house, and white was the bedding;
in the bright honey-moon Badgerfolk came treading,
danced down under Hill, and Old Man Willow
tapped, tapped at window-pane, as they slept on the pillow;
on the bank in the reeds Riverwoman sighing
heard old Barrow-wight in his mound crying.
Old Tom Bombadil heeded not the voices,
taps, knocks, dancing feet, all the nightly noises;
slept till the sun arose, then sang like a starling:
‘Hey! come, derry-dol, merry-dol, my darling!’
sitting on the doorstep chopping sticks of willow,
while fair Goldberry combed her tresses yellow.
In The Return of the Shadow (1988, p. 115-16), Christopher Tolkien printed a short poem, or part of a poem (in five stanzas), which his father labelled the ‘germ of Tom Bombadil so evidently [written] in mid 1930s’. This text begins:
(Said I)
‘Ho! Tom Bombadil
Whither are you going
With John Pompador
Down the River rowing?’
Both text and note, however, are said by Christopher Tolkien to have been written ‘certainly quite late’ – late enough that the author was looking back over enough distance of time to state ‘mid 1930s’, presumably based on the date of publication of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil in the Oxford Magazine. It is a puzzling piece: if the manuscript is late, but the text is the ‘germ of Tom Bombadil’ in the sense of the origin of the poem (or of the character, or both), it must be a copy of a still earlier manuscript, and how early that document may have been produced, no one can say. To complicate the history still further, Tolkien wrote out excerpts of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil at least five times in an ‘Elvish’ script which has been dated to c. 1931. The ‘germ’, then, had to be written earlier than these. But also, the content and form of the ‘germ’ are found in development not in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, but in its ‘sequel’, Bombadil Go
es Boating.
Although the 1934 version of the poem is very similar to that published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red book, there are numerous small differences. Most notably, in the earlier poem Tom wears a peacock’s feather, rather than one from a swan’s wing as in the 1962 revision or ‘a long blue feather’ as in The Lord of the Rings (bk. I, ch. 6; see further, our notes for Bombadil Goes Boating); in the tenth stanza, Tom calls conies (rabbits) out, presumably to play; and there are no references to the river Withywindle, since Tom in the original poem had no connection with Middle-earth, but rather was the ‘spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside’ (letter to Stanley Unwin, 16 December 1937, Letters, p. 26). In the final stanza in the Oxford Magazine, ‘derry-dol’ is printed ‘derry-rol’, which seems a likely error and is emended in the text given above.
The characters of Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, Old Man Willow, and the Barrow-wight therefore were at hand in the 1934 poem for Tolkien to reuse when he came to write The Lord of the Rings. There (as finally published) Tom again wears ‘an old battered hat’, ‘great yellow boots’, and ‘a blue coat’, and sings often in rhyming couplets. There also, again following description in the poem, Goldberry’s gown is green, with a belt ‘shaped like a chain of flag-lilies set with the pale-blue eyes of forget-me-nots’ (bk. I, ch. 6–7).
As Tolkien revised the Oxford Magazine poem for the 1962 collection, in a transitional version (Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Tolkien 19, ff. 1–5) Tom briefly wore a broad silver belt buckle, and the poem finished with an extra couplet: ‘Old Tom Bombadil lived in merry laughter / with his wife under Hill there for ever after!’ The 1962 version adds a green girdle (belt) and leather breeches to Tom’s wardrobe; and as mentioned above, it changes the source of his feather, Tolkien having decided that a peacock feather was ‘unsuitable to’ The Lord of the Rings but that one from a swan increased ‘the riverishness’ of the poem (letter to Pauline Baynes, 1 August 1962, Letters, p. 318). Tom and company were now, as in The Lord of the Rings, explicitly within lands known to Hobbits. Tolkien says in the Bombadil preface that the poem ‘evidently’ came from Buckland (on the east border of the Shire, as the boundaries stood at the start of The Lord of the Rings). The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is ‘made up of various hobbit-versions of legends concerning Bombadil’, who was regarded as benevolent, ‘mysterious maybe and unpredictable but nonetheless comic’. The Withywindle, as described by Tolkien in his Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, p. 779), is ‘a winding river bordered by willows (withies)’, its name ‘modelled on withywind, a name of the convolvulus or bindweed’. In the poem, the river runs from a ‘grassy well’, or spring, into a dingle or deep wooded valley.
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Page 6
