Tom is master, and his mastery has something to do with what he knows; but what difference does it make in the way he lives? It’s when we’re at home that we are truly ourselves. So, what does Tom’s mastery look like when he is at home? In The Lord of the Rings we don’t have to wait long tofind out.
After their deliverance from Old Man Willow, the hobbits draw near to the house of Tom Bombadil.
They stumble out of the Forest and onto a lawn that swells before them. To one side, the headwaters of the Withywindle cascade over rocks, and run through a narrow channel as the water reflects the light of the stars just appearing in the evening sky. Then the reader is told:
The grass under their feet was smooth and short, as if it had been mown or shaven. The eaves of the Forest behind were clipped, and trim as a hedge. The path was now plain before them,...[and] on a further slope, they saw the twinkling lights of a house.¹
Then the door of the house opens and a bright beam flows out and soon they are welcomed into a haven of light and song.
Tom’s house is a welcome respite from the perilous land that the hobbits have just passed through. And another peril is awaiting them on the farther side—the Barrow- downs. But between these perils—the Forest and the Downs—there is the House of Tom Bombadil.
Let’s return to the root word we get the word dominion from: domus, Latin for “house.” The title of this chapter is Goldberry’s promise that under the roof of Tom Bombadil—under his dominion, in other words—there is no reason to fear.
We’re told elsewhere that Tom’s dominion includes the Old Forest as well as the Barrow-downs. But his house is different. There is a distinction between his domain and his domicile.
When the hobbits originally entered the Old Forest they left the Shire behind them. The Shire is a well-tended garden, like the garden of the Lord. And it is in the west of Middle Earth, and the only place that we know much about that is farther west is the Grey Havens and the abode of Cirdan the Shipwright, the place of departure from Middle Earth to the Uttermost West. The Shire is walled in and protected by the Rangers of the North who patrol its borders and keep it safe without the knowledge of its inhabitants. Aragorn’s kinsman Halbarad gives us a glimpse of their labors in this off-handed remark much later in the story: “A little people, but of great worth are the Shire-folk Little do they know of our long labour for the safekeeping of their borders, and yet I grudge it not.”² Those labors have left their mark on the Rangers. Tending borders is dangerous work. Gimli, speaking to Legolas about the Rangers, says, “They are a strange company, these newcomers... Stout men and lordly they are, and the Riders of Rohan look almost as boys beside them; for they are grim men of face, worn like weathered rocks for the most part...and they are silent.”³
The Old Forest is the first taste for the hobbits of what the world beyond the Shire has become. But that world wasn’t always a fearful place. Tom speaks of a time, in the long past, even long before the coming of the kings from whom the Rangers descend, when the Forest was fearless. But it is fearful now, and passing through it is a sharp lesson for the hobbits. It is an unsettled place, inhospitable, a land for traveling through, not for dwelling in. It reminds me of the Land of Nod—the land of wandering—east of Eden, a place where people wander in search of rest but cannot find it. It’s where Cain built his city—the prototype of every human city. And it is the land of Abraham’s sojourning, which, paradoxically, according to the book of Hebrews, is the reason for his restlessness, because he sought a different city, a city whose builder is God himself.⁴ But it is right on the border of the Old Forest that Tom Bombadil has built his house. And this is an encouraging thought, since we find ourselves in a similar place. We live in a world that is like a wilderness. So perhaps there are some things to learn from Bombadil about living joyfully in our wilderness.
As the hobbits approach Tom’s house, the first thing they notice is a contrast. They step out of a wild, unruly place into a carefully manicured space. The grass is closely trimmed, and even the Forest has been cut back like a hedge. Tom’s no hippie. His home is well ordered and tame—it’s domesticated.
Presumably even Tom needs a place to rest, and it is in his house that the hobbits find a home as comfortable and secure as any hobbit hole, actually more so, because Tom is there. He is their shelter. If he were not there, would his house be a haven from “tree-shadows” or “untame things” as Goldberry assures them is the case when they are under his roof? He’s indomitable; he’s the Master. What they enjoy at this point in the story is his domicile, a house that suits him and his wife. And it suits the hobbits, too. In his house they find basins and ewers filled with cold or steaming water, soft green slippers, and comfortable mattresses with pillows that are soft as down and blankets that are white as wool.
After their first night in Tom’s house, the hobbits awaken from dreams both portentous and disturbing to the happy fortune of a rainy day. Tom tells them that it’s Goldberry’s washing day, and travel is impossible. So candles are lit, the fire in the hearth is tended, and Tom regales the hobbits with stories—stories about everything from the fall of the trees from lordship into the darkness of resentment, to the queer ways of badgers; from the rise and fall of small kingdoms, to the coming of hobbits to the West; of the first raindrop and the first acorn when the dark was not fearsome; to the coming of the Dark Lord from Outside.
My friend Rachel Fulton Brown, a medievalist at the University of Chicago, believes that Goldberry’s washing day serves as the baptism of the hobbits into the grand story of Middle Earth. She notes that stories are told at turning points in The Lord of the Rings, and in the end, Sam and Frodo—and especially Sam—remind themselves when all seems lost, at least for them—that they have played a part in the great story of the world. Here’s that moving scene right after Sam recalls the story of Beren and his quest to retrieve a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth:
‘Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end?’
‘No, they never end as tales,’ said Frodo. ‘But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later—or sooner.’
‘And then we can have some rest and some sleep,’ said Sam. He laughed grimly. ‘And I mean just that, Mr. Frodo. I mean plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning’s work in the garden. I’m afraid that’s all I’m hoping for all the time. All the big important plans are not for my sort. Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: “Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring!”’⁵
But here, at the beginning of their story, Rachel thinks that the hobbits receive their catechesis. I find her insight compelling, especially in light of how in the journey to come, significant events correspond to dates in the Christian liturgical calendar.⁶ Here, in Tom’s house then, we hear the Grand Story of the world, the world where every story finds its place.
But great writers can do more than one thing at a time. And I think that Tolkien is doing that here—I think he’s also telling us something about the nature of good households and how they fit into the Grand Story.
A beautiful harmony can be sensed in Tom’s house. We see it in the mundane, the earthy routines of Tom and Goldberry. Even when Tom’s not singing, his words have a lyrical quality. And Goldberry’s movements as she lights candles or tends the table are as graceful as a dance. When they speak or move in concert, there seems to be music that only they can hear.
And even though Tom and Goldberry seem to embody different themes, . . .
Yet in some fashion they seemed to weave a single dance, neither hindering the other, in and out of the room, and round about the table; and with great speed food and vessels and lights were set in order.⁷
And once their preparations are complete, in a blink, without explanation or observation, they appear before the hobbits in formalwear, dressed for the evening meal. Then begins a jolly time, and before long the hobbits have apparently picked up the tune. After drinking what appears to be nothing more than water, the hobbits are “singing merrily”—as though singing was “more natural than talking.”⁸
“More natural than talking”—that’s a telling way of putting it. Here’s a little inside information: in Tolkien’s legendarium we learn that the music of the Ainur can most readily be heard in the waters of Middle Earth.⁹
Natures living in harmony is something that many of our ancestors would have recognized on sight but which requires a word of explanation today. Tom and Goldberry’s dance about the table, setting dishes and lighting candles, says something. Their movements are not unreflective and spontaneous—they’re artful, reflecting creative intent. And those actions are set within a world made with creative intent. They are participating in something grand, something larger than themselves.
If our world is also a work of art, then why can’t we hear music ringing in our ears the way that Tom and Goldberry seem to? Could it have something to do with how we perceive things? Are we even listening? Do we want to? We live in a tone-deaf time and we behave as though there’s no natural order to harmonize with; instead, we think that the world should just do what we tell it to do. Naturally, if that is all there is to it, then freedom is nothing more than doing what you want to do, and laws and customs can be boiled down to some people bossing other people around. The suspicion that this is all there is to it now runs so deep in our time that even marriage as the happy harmony of a man and wife has been lost. It has been “deconstructed” in the interest of “liberation” and what we see in Tom and Goldberry is more the exception than the rule today.
But if Tolkien is saying something true about our world with his imaginary world, then the music is still playing in our world, and what we need in our time is our hearing restored.
But even in Middle-Earth it is possible to get so lost in your own tune that you no longer hear anything else. That’s not true for Tom and Goldberry—each sings the praise of the other because it is not only singing but listening that makes for harmony. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the Ents and their wives.
One of the oddities of Fangorn—the forest where Treebeard lives—is its thoroughgoing masculinity. All the Ents who live there are male, and even the forest itself seems to have a male cast of mind. (I’ll say why in a moment.) It isn’t as though female Ents don’t exist—or didn’t exist. It’s just that they’re not to be found in the wild. Where do they live? No one can say. But we learn from Treebeard what sort of place they would be found in if the Ents could ever find their wives. It would be a place very much like the Shire where the hobbits are from—a small and cultivated land, full of things that are planned and tended, a place that has been thoroughly domesticated and made to serve, a place remarkably like a large house. Here’s a snatch of monologue from Treebeard as he ruminates on the differences between the Ents and the Entwives:
‘It is a rather strange and sad story,’ he went on after a pause. ‘When the world was young, and the woods were wide and wild, the Ents and the Entwives—and there were Entmaidens then: ah! the loveliness of Fimbrethil, of Wandlimb the lightfooted, in the days of our youth!—they walked together and they housed together. But our hearts did not go on growing in the same way: the Ents gave their love to things that they met in the world, and the Entwives gave their thought to other things, for the Ents loved the great trees, and the wild woods, and the slopes of the high hills; and they drank of the mountain-streams, and only ate such fruit as the trees let fall in their path; and they learned of the Elves and spoke with the Trees. But the Entwives gave their minds to the lesser trees, and to the meads in the sunshine beyond the feet of the forests; and they saw the sloe in the thicket, and the wild apple and the cherry blossoming in spring, and the green herbs in the waterlands in summer, and the seeding grasses in the autumn fields. They did not desire to speak with these things; but they wished them to hear and obey what was said to them. The Entwives ordered them to grow according to their wishes, and bear leaf and fruit to their liking; for the Entwives desired order, and plenty, and peace (by which they meant that things should remain where they had set them). So the Entwives made gardens to live in. But we Ents went on wandering, and we only came to the gardens now and again.’¹⁰
I think it is a mistake to think of dominion entirely in terms of good and bad. Instead I believe it is better to think of it as coming in two keys: rule and cultivation. The Ents care for the world as they find it in itself. They love large and wild things, things that they rule only in the interest of the things as they are found in themselves. I suppose this could be called “wildlife management,” although I prefer “rule” to management. (Managers never give up control; rulers intervene only when some rule has been violated—as we see with Tom and Old Man Willow.) I think that this is the space within a dominion in which freedom is given room—it is the open space in which wolves hunt, boys play with pocket-knives, and businesses get started. (As you may know, all these things are endangered in our world because of an over-emphasis on safety and equality.) But where would we be without gardens? Tom has one.
When the hobbits enter Tom’s house, they come in from the wild outside to an ordered and peaceful place filled with good things. It’s the sort of place that Entwives would have felt at home in (if they could be made to fit!). Tom’s house is dominion in another key, a place of things ordered to serve.
It is impossible to move on without at least acknowledging the question you’ve probably asked yourself. Here it is: Is dominion good for the environment? There, the elephant in the room has been named. So, what about it?
Many influential people believe that the biblical doctrine of dominion is behind climate change and the extinction of species, and a myriad of other regrettable things.¹¹ But the problem with this view is that dominion is a fact—human beings simply have it. It’s God’s doing. We can’t abdicate. Human beings possess power over all the creatures of the world. I suppose you could say we have a Ring of Power—whether we want it or not.
But dominion isn’t arbitrary power, at least not originally. In the Christian faith human dominion is subject to God’s dominion. And it is informed by God’s Law—his moral standard, his holiness. We can’t just do as we please.
So how should we go about exercising the dominion that we have been given? Well, I think that Tom is more helpful than Treebeard here. Tom can sing the tune of dominion in two keys (rule and cultivation). We must make a place for ourselves in the world, a place where we have ordered things to our liking. But that isn’t everything. And that doesn’t mean we’ve abdicated office when we leave things alone. It can just mean that we rule those things in the interest of those things—to the glory of their Maker.
C. S. Lewis described an image of the cosmos that has been discarded by modern people in his last book, aptly titled The Discarded Image. In the old image we were surrounded by translucent spheres that rotated musically around us. Our home in this image is at the bottom— which is also the center. Even though it is the scene of a great drama, it’s a small thing, a speck of dense material enveloped by vast regions of light. But even though the scale of the image is vast, it was still small enough for people to contemplate. You could discern its working in the sky right overhead. And you could see its limit when you looked up at the fixed stars of the outermost sphere.
We see something like this old image in Tolkien’s legendarium. The stars of Middle Earth are not merely named for people—some of them are people.¹² In the old image the cosmos was large enough to encourage humility, but not so large as to make you feel meaningless. We see this when Frodo and Sam are in Mordor; Sam looks up and sees the stars, and he finds comfort in the thought that even the Dark Lord is a small thing when compared to the vast expanse above.
Sam struggled with his own weariness...and there he sat silent till deep night fell. Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out... Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.¹³
Today, with the help of telescopes and other instruments, we know that the cosmos is far larger than our ancestors could have imagined. The logical inference seems clear enough: it can’t all be just for us.
So, what’s it all for if it isn’t for us? It isn’t as though the Bible fails to address this. In the Bible we see God riding upon the storm and speaking from the whirlwind. And when the psalmist asks, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4) we can hear the question if we read between the lines. According to the Bible, creation is a very capacious place—and most of it is beyond our reach, at least for the moment. That’s worth keeping in mind, not only because it puts the evils of our world in proper perspective, but also because it tempers our ambitions.
But with the way we think of the cosmos today, we can taste a bitter irony. The limits of the universe have so receded from view; there seems to be no place for human beings anymore. Man’s subcreative powers are now believed to be an anomaly, even a blight, a kind of virus spreading through the system. The moral imperative is now to become even smaller than we already are, perhaps even to disappear entirely for the good of the environment. Perhaps Tom can help us here. Maybe the ridiculous fellow in the bright blue jacket and yellow boots can teach us to sing the song of dominion in two keys—the keys of rule and cultivation. Perhaps dominion should be understood to mean ordering some things for our good, and other things for the good of those things in themselves. If that’s so—and I think that it is—we will not only let elephants run wild, we will commune with them at the same time.
1. The Fellowship of the Ring, 119.
2. The Return of the King, 762.
3. The Return of the King, 759.
4. Hebrews 11:8-10. (The classic study of these cities is Augustine’s The City of God.)
5. The Two Towers, 697.
6. For example, Sauron is defeated on March 25th—which in the Christian liturgical calendar is the Feast of the Annunciation, also known as the Feast of the Incarnation, which commemorates the visit of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary.
7. The Fellowship of the Ring, 129.
8. The Fellowship of the Ring, 123.
9. J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth’s Ring (London: HarperCollins, 2015), 12–13. In the same book we’re told: “But Ulmo was alone, and he abode not in Valinor, but dwelt from the beginning of Arda in the Outer Ocean, as he still does; and thence he governed the flowing of all waters, and the courses of all rivers, the replenishment of springs and the distilling of rain and dew throughout the world. In the deep places he gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo thereof runs through all the veins of the earth” (20).
10. The Two Towers, 464–65.
11. Notably, Lynn White, Jr. in “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 (March 1967): 1203–7.
12. Earendil the Mariner, for instance. We see something similar in C. S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
13. The Return of the King, 901.