'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil' & ‘Bombadil Goes Boating’ or, 'Bloody Tom Bombadil...'

A quick post for today as I’ve got so much to do for work…

Two things leave me absolutely cold when I'm reading; well... two things as far as this post goes anyway. Poetry and bloody Tom Bombadil...

Poetry and I have never got on, possibly because it was something that I had to study at school, rather than discover for myself, and so maybe I haven't discovered the poetry for me? I don't know... Whatever the reason, I generally find poetry to be self indulgent wall paper that delights in showing off, how clever it is, instead of painting a scene or telling a story. I don't have time for that these days, give me something a bit more straightforward instead.

And Tom Bombadil... I've never seen the point of Tom Bombadil, an unnecessary interlude in our Hobbit's journey. He is so disconnected from Middle Earth, and it's struggles, that I always end up wondering why he's there, I just want to get on with the good stuff. I'm not going to lie, it's been a while since I last read 'The Fellowship of the Ring' but when I did, I skimmed the stuff with Bombadil in it and I'll do it again the next time round.

I'm open to having my mind changed on both of these points but in the meantime, and for reasons not fully understood by even myself, I thought it could be interesting to actually take a look at 'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil' and see what they had to say for themselves (having only read bits of the poem in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’. See how they stood up to a little more than a skim read. I was hoping for a little more than 'Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow', what I got...

Well, what I got was evidence that Tolkien knew what he was about when writing poetry, well... the mechanics of it anyway. And this is where you need to excuse me, a little, as it has been literally years since I studied poetry so my terminology is very likely to be way off…

Read ‘The Adventures of Tom Bombadil’ out loud and it just works. There’s a clear rhythm to these poems that makes reading them really easy, you get caught up in that rhythm and you’re away. The rhymes aren’t too contrived and it all flows really smoothly. It brings to mind a wandering bard telling stories round the fire and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the affect that Tolkien was going for the whole time. I wouldn’t say that Tolkien was a skilled poet but it’s clear here that he’s really good at what he’s writing here, a beguiling rhythm that hooks you.

The content though… Still not convinced.

‘The Adventures of Tom Bombadil’ paints a picture of a happy go-lucky soul who doesn’t take any nonsense from the other inhabitants of the river bank and then literally grabs himself a wife without checking with her first. I mean, that may be a metaphor for courtship but it’s an awful one, even given the time when this was written. And that to one side, there’s only so much backchat that a poem can reasonably be expected to handle before you stop reading and ask yourself, what is the point of this? The riverside encounters and eventual wedding aren’t connected at all and it feels like this piece is a prelude to something that we never get. I haven’t got the patience for that kind of poem, the fairest thing to say is that the content is not for me.

‘Bombadil Goes Boating’ has a little more to it in that there’s an actual point to Bombadil’s wanderings and you can almost make a case for them being around about the time that Frodo and his friends had just left the Shire. Farmer Maggot is able to bring Bombadil up to date, with the gossip, and maybe that focussed Tom enough that he had an eye open for the travellers. It would be interesting to go back to the book and see if that is mentioned anywhere…

It’s an awful lot of poetry though for not a lot happening and Tolkien can’t seem to help himself, the leadup is full of more ‘back and forth’ between Tom and the river bank dwellers as he shows off on his boat. It’s all very sweet but you can’t help but place it in context which leads back to the question of how well moments like these fit into the wider world of Middle Earth. And I don’t think that they fit particularly well, there’s certainly nothing here that has changed my mind.

So… The question of Tom Bombadil doesn’t feel like it’s any closer to an answer but I guess that at least I can say I’ve ticked another couple of ‘bits of Tolkien’ off the ‘haven’t read yet’ list and that’s never a bad thing. What do you think about Tom Bombadil? Am I missing out or are you with me?