Okay, so here is the numerical analysis:
The name Bombadil (and variations like “Bombadillo”) appears 44 times in
The Lord of the Rings — excluding the Index (which bumps the number up to 52) but including the appendices. Of these, all but a handful are instances of the full name. Here are the exceptions:
- Tom Bombadil himself, when talking to Old Man Willow, says, “Bombadil is talking!”
- Sam refers to him as “Master Bombadil”, regretting that they had to part with him following the incident in the Barrow Downs.
- Aragorn, as Strider, refers to him as “Old Bombadil” when indicating that he had seen Frodo and company come out of the Barrow Downs.
- The Narrator, at the Ford, says that Frodo doesn’t have the power of Bombadil.
- Elrond refers to him as Bombadil at the Council and lists several of his other names, as he is known to Elves and Dwarves.
- Glorfindel refers to him as Bombadil. Interestingly the other Elves present refer to him by his Elvish name (Oldest and Fatherless — or Oldest, for short.)
- Gandalf refers to him as Bombadil on the way back, telling the four hobbits that he intends to visit him and have a long talk — one that implies Gandalf and he are going to compare notes on what has happened over the course of their lives.
- The narrator, immediately after this, says: “In a little while they came to the point on the East Road where they had taken leave of Bombadil; and they hoped and half expected to see him standing there to greet them as they went by”
- The narrator, again, uses the name when he describes Frodo after his departure from Middle Earth: “And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
- Finally, a Chronicler refers to him as Bombadil twice in the Appendix when listing the two nights Frodo spends with him.
The pattern here seems divided into four groups:
- The very High (Elrond, Glorfindel, Gandalf), who appear to be using it with an almost Victorian/Edwardian informality — the way you would drop the title of a friend in conversation if you were on sufficiently intimate terms. Gandalf’s intent to drop by and have a long talk seems to lean in this direction.
- Those using a titular substitution (Sam, Aragorn), who are not signaling the familiarity of the above but are trying to signal something in their choice to use something other than “Tom” before “Bombadil” — something that even Goldberry does.
- The narrator, who is offering commentary that is outside the ability of those present to offer the reader.
- The Chronicler of “The Tale of Years”, who is establishing an annotated chronology akin to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
It is possible to argue that the latter two are separate hands. Tolkien imagined the “Take of Years” was bound into the codex by whoever gathered manuscripts together to form the novel we have and, in the Tale, everything presented there is in its most abbreviated form.
The Narrator, I submit, is the one who is somehow outside of the text who makes occasional appearance and commentary. It is this Narrator who provides for us the observations of the famous fox and who reports the near-healing of Sméagol late in the story:
“Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee – but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.
But at that touch Frodo stirred and cried out softly in his sleep, and immediately Sam was wide awake.” (The Two Towers IV, 8)
I suspect we will discover this Narrator in other places as well. I don’t think he is Findegil, King’s Writer. It could be Barahir but he does not fit the profile of one who would use this kind of familiarity — unless he is far enough from the events to have approached Tom Bombadil with the awe and respect most others appear to have for him.
There is an additional suspect that we should consider — Celeborn or Celeborn and Merry:
“It was probably at Great Smials that The Tale of Years* was put together, with the assistance of material collected by Meriadoc. Though the dates given are often conjectural, especially for the Second Age, they deserve attention. It is probable that Meriadoc obtained assistance and information from Rivendell, which he visited more than once. There, though Elrond had departed, his sons long remained, together with some of the High-elven folk. It is said that Celeborn went to dwell there after the departure of Galadriel; but there is no record of the day when at last he sought the Grey Havens, and with him went the last living memory of the Elder Days in Middle-earth.”
If it is Celeborn whose hand (directly or indirectly) we see in the abbreviated Bombadil of “The Tale of Years”, his far seeing may be what allows for the interpretive flourishes we see from the unnamed Narrator.
Of course, the simplest answer is that this is additional commentary from the imagined translator, who has reviewed all of this material and combined it into the work we read — a figure whose imagined profile — a scholar of the past and master of languages — would, I suspect, be suspiciously similar to that of Tolkien.
