Hey Dol! Merry Dol! Tom and Children’s Stories

           I absolutely loved reading Tolkien’s letter 215, in response to his invitation to participate in a symposium issue of The New Statesman about children’s literature (I’m sure I don’t need to point out what a delight it is, reaching the end of the drafted letter and seeing the short missive actually sent in its place).  It was invigorating to read such a defense of looking at children’s literature as just literature (and it reminded me of The Monster and the Critics in its defense of looking beyond form and historical context for a piece of art). While The Hobbit is a children’s book, and its writing style is distinct from The Lord of the Rings and much of the Middle-Earth legendarium, we can see its style reappear in the Hobbits’ encounter with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry in Book One, chapters six and seven. I think, also, our discussion of Tom Bombadil’s many possible selves (as divine, as Christ, as Tolkien) in class is worth revisiting in the context of children’s literature. This is especially true, because in said letter, Tolkien openly regrets the “whimsy mood” of The Hobbit, and this tone seems to permeate chapters six and seven of The Lord of The Rings throughout, from the “Hey Dol! Merry Dol!” to the green stockings. It is true that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings needed some connection, but it seems strange that the voice of this section is so close to the former, and differs so strongly from the rest of the text.

            This situation is partly explained when Tom is considered an aspect of Tolkien. Just as Tom “told [the Hobbits] many remarkable stories” and “as they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at home,” so does the reader become a stranger in a full and complete land, Middle-Earth. In order to create the mystical character of the story-teller, in a world that is already totally fantastic and apart from that of the reader, it is necessary for Tolkien’s stand-in to be magical to a degree further than the Rings of Power and the Hobbits that readers have, by that point, already encountered. Bombadil is set further apart by his agelessness. As he says, “I am old. Eldest, that’s what I am.” It is worth noting that the Hobbits experience the “strange regions of memory” and “strange language” of Bombadil the same way readers experience the invented historiography and conlangs of the text.

Moreover, paralleling Tom to Tolkien, and the Hobbits to us, the readers, being swept into a magical world of things far older and deeper than us, both on the side of light and of dark, fits the whole Tom Bombadil episode squarely in the category of allegory. The “whimsy mood” in this section also helps delineate the allegory from the main story of the text, and, additionally, to set aside the further allegory of Tom’s discussion of Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wights, the reality of Middle-Earth, with Sauron’s rise in the Third Age.

One aspect of the childlike nature of the description, at this point also, may be to set Tom Bombadil aside from Christ, to whom he is often compared. This parallel may seem natural, as he is immune to the effects of The Ring of Power, he is ageless and seems all-powerful, and he is a story-teller, as Christ was fundamentally. However, the whimsical nature of this chapter, as opposed to Tolkien’s writing in the rest of the text, which can sometimes approach scripture in tone, pushes against that, and against Tom Bombadil as divine. Rather, it helps solidify that while Tom Bombadil is powerful, he is not a higher-power of Middle Earth, or rather, he is not Eru Iluvatar, nor is he one of the Valar. The contrast between this section’s tone, and the tone of The Silmarillion or of characters discussion of The One Ring bears this out clearly.

There is, perhaps, one more, playful reason for this section’s tone: Tolkien, by exposing the world to The Hobbit first, was forced to somehow open up the much more child-oriented, episodic, world of The Hobbit (designed for children) into the totality of Middle-Earth, and a writing style for everyone (or, in the terms of 215, perhaps aspirationally available to young readers but not specifically written with them in mind). Having a character as (frankly) goofy as Tom introduced to help safeguard the hobbits through the Old Forest is a natural vehicle for this opening. Moreover, while Tom remains goofy, by indicating himself as endlessly old and being immune to The One Ring, he also hints at the deeper world, beyond even that which we’ve been exposed to so far (Sauron, Gandalf, Smaug, etc.), that Tolkien clearly has now conceptualized showing to the reader as well. Additionally, Tom Bombadil’s speech consists of things that more closely resemble folkloric fantasy than the rest of Middle-Earth: the spirits of trees, ghosts haunting their burial places, etc. This connection with common fantasy elements, especially of English pastoral life (Tolkien, before the publication of The Lord of the Rings, referred to Tom as the spirit of the Oxford countryside) helps ferry the reader from their reference of fantasy into the totally new world Tolkien created.

It’s also interesting to me, that, having read Leaf by Niggle, which is clearly an allegorical story as well, also dealing with the nature of sub-creation, it is meaningful to ask whether our knowledge of Tom can be enhanced by Leaf. Additionally, there are sharp parallels between the literary styles of Leaf and Tokien’s portrayal of The Old Forest: both of them using language that seems straight out of a children’s tale, although neither story’s audience is childlike. However, this seems to be explained in both of their evoking folklore. While The Lord of the Rings, at times, involves folk-lore, Tom Bombadil seems to be folk-lore in the flesh, sprung to life, while Leaf uses the conventions of the evocative, moralistic folk-tale for Tolkien to convey his own feelings on sub-creation. I think this stems mainly from the difference between the worlds of Leaf by Niggle and Middle-Earth proper: in Leaf,  the world exists to support the allegory, while for Tom, the world exists, vast and full and formed, and the allegory is merely a small element of it.

- MHK