Tom
Bombadil

I’ve been in love with Goldberry since 1979.

Well, “love” might be too strong a word. To be certain, I’ve had a crush on her since then. Granted, I was only eleven at the time I first met her, but something about her captivated my imagination and has ever since.

Then another clear voice, as young and as ancient as Spring, like the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright morning in the hill, came falling like silver to meet them...

Her long yellow hair rippled down her shoulders; her gown was green, green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew; and her belt was of gold, shaped like a chain of flag-lilies set with the pale-blue eyes of forget-me- nots. About her feet in wide vessels of green and brown earthenware, white water-lilies were floating, so that she seemed to be enthroned in the midst of a pool.¹

What’s not to love? She is, in almost every way, the perfect embodiment of a water spirit, a holy Nimue, a non-native White Buffalo Woman, or a more organic Virgin Mary.

Equally important, as the Hobbits understood, Goldberry embodied grace itself. “Their eyes followed her, for the slender grace of her movement filled them with quiet delight.”²

I’m also fairly certain the painting of Goldberry by the Brothers Hildebrandt—which appeared in the 1977 Tolkien Calendar—didn’t hurt my image of her, either. To this day, aside from Tolkien’s own paintings, it’s my favorite visual depiction from Tolkien’s entire mythology. In some mysterious way, the two brothers captured her essence in that painting. She is at once the purity of youth and the ancient goddess of wisdom.

I also really liked (and continue to like) Tom Bombadil. I never minded his outlandish appearance. In fact, I thought his primary colors fit the majesty of his character. Plus, he helped my heroes, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, just when their need was greatest. What was there not to like? My only disappointment on my first read of The Lord of the Rings was that I didn’t get to see more of the man! That is, presuming he’s a man. Certainly, I found him as interesting as I found Gandalf, and I loved Gandalf.

I can also state with certainty that after teaching The Lord of the Rings for two decades that no topic elicits more discussion from students than exactly who Bombadil is. Is he God? Is he a man? Is he a Vala or Maia that went native? Is he an unfallen Adam? Just who is he?

Whatever else he is, Bombadil is an excellent steward. In his own description of the land over which he is master, he says:

There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords.

There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight.³

Despite all of this, Bombadil remains the master of his land, tempering its lingering evil. One might readily compare Bombadil’s lands with those on the outskirts of Mordor.

Frodo looked round in horror. Dreadful as the Dead Marshes had been, and the arid moors of the Noman- lands, more loathsome far was the country that the crawl- ing day now slowly unveiled to his shrinking eyes. Even to the Mere of Dead Faces some haggard phantom of green spring would come; but here neither spring nor summer would ever come again. Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.⁴

Both places were the sites of formal and deadly battles— each meaningful in the history of Middle-earth—and, yet, the results were radically different. Bombadil was able to reign over his land and have command of it through proper spells, taming it. No Bombadil existed for the outskirts of Mordor, however, and the land became so corrupt as to become nearly irredeemable, except through an act of God, perhaps by letting the ocean wipe it clean in a new flood.

Bombadil is so critical, he deserves his own book. . .

. . . And, Chris Wiley has done what is necessary.

Indeed, he has done what is good, true, and beautiful.

With In the House of Tom Bombadil, Wiley brilliantly offers us some of the best insights ever made about J.R.R. Tolkien’s invented world or, frankly, about 20th-century literature. Here is a book of intense wisdom and penetrat- ing thought.

While I don’t want to spoil the book—the reader should have the delight of reading Wiley directly—I would like to mention a few things about In the House of Bombadil.

First, it’s a work of deep Christian humanism. That is, it asks the fundamental questions that every Christian who loves the humanities must ask: what is God; what is man; and what is man’s relationship to God and man.

Second, while Wiley is always logical, he’s never predict- able. Just when you think he’s going one way with a topic, he darts another way, but always as a joy for the reader.

Third, while Wiley offers wisdom, wisdom, and then more wisdom, he often does so—stylistically—in a humor- ous and casual manner.

Fourth, do not expect to have definitive answers as to who Bombadil or Goldberry are. When you complete this book, you will have more questions (all good ones) than certainties.

In other words, dear reader, you have in your hands a work of art, a gift to all of us. Have at it.

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1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2nd edition (1954; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 119, 121.

2. Ibid., 122.

3. Ibid., 128.

4. The Two Towers, 2nd edition (1954; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 617.