The House that Tom Bombadil Built

[Smaug_the_Mighty]

Hello Professor!

Over the past year or so I have been catching up on Exploring the Lord of the Rings, and I caught up a few weeks ago but unfortunately can’t often attend live as the recording is at about noon on a Wednesday here in Australia, and my work day tends to get in the way.

So I’d like to drag us all the way back to the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil, where our pace started to slow down from Showing The Meaning Of Haste to something closer to A Hobbit Walking Party, a much more comfortable pace for all of us hobbits who like to fill up the corners with all the wonderful details.

My question is: Does Tom Bombadil live in the Old Forest, or on the Barrow Downs?

I always imagined from the text that the hobbits leave the Old Forest behind and climb up and down one of the first of the Downs before reaching Tom’s house. I was quite surprised when you described Tom living in a clearing of the Forest in Session 28 of the podcast, and even more so when I found Tom’s house in LOTRO, also still very much within the Old Forest. (I was introduced to LOTRO by your stream, and I have been happily exploring Middle Earth ever since!)

It seems to me that when “suddenly the trees came to an end” and the hobbits “stepped out from the Forest”, they are not in a clearing but at the edge of the Forest, leaving it completely behind as they continue up, down, underhill to Tom’s house.

Then when they leave Tom’s house in Chapter 8, the text never mentions them continuing through more trees to reach the edge of the Forest, only describing hills and valleys. In fact, the text specifically states that “There was no tree nor any visible water: it was a country of grass and short springy turf”.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on my reading of these passages.

Thanks for the wonderful podcast, and all of the other amazing broadcasts that you and the team at Signum and Mythgard do. I’ve only been participating for around a year but I look forward to contributing, and enjoying the community you’ve all built, for many years to come!

Cheers,
Jenni Aldred / Smaug_the_Mighty

 

[Smaug_the_Mighty]

Here is a chunk of text from Chapter 6 in case you don’t have the book handy.

Then suddenly the trees came to an end and the mists were left behind. They stepped out from the Forest, and found a wide sweep of grass welling up before them. The river, now small and swift, was leaping merrily down to meet them, glinting here and there in the light of the stars, which were already shining in the sky.

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, well-tended and bordered with stone. It wound up on to the top of a grassy knoll, now grey under the pale starry night; and there, still high above them on a further slope, they saw the twinkling lights of a house. Down again the path went, and then up again, up a long smooth hillside of turf, towards the light. Suddenly a wide yellow beam flowed out brightly from a door that was opened. There was Tom Bombadil’s house before them, up, down, under hill. Behind it a steep shoulder of the land lay grey and bare, and beyond that the dark shapes of the Barrow-downs stalked away into the eastern night.

And here is the passage from Chapter 8 when the hobbits depart. They have just said farewell to Goldberry on the grassy hilltop above Tom’s house.

But Frodo found no words to answer. He bowed low, and mounted his pony, and followed by his friends jogged slowly down the gentle slope behind the hill. Tom Bombadil’s house and the valley, and the Forest were lost to view. The air grew warmer between the green walls of hillside and hillside, and the scent of turf rose strong and sweet as they breathed. Turning back, when they reached the bottom of the green hollow, they saw Goldberry, now small and slender like a sunlit flower against the sky: she was standing still watching them, and her hands were stretched out towards them. As they looked she gave a clear call, and lifting up her hand she turned and vanished behind the hill.

Their way wound along the floor of the hollow, and round the green feet of a steep hill into another deeper and broader valley, and then over the shoulders of further hills, and down their long limbs, and up their smooth sides again, up on to new hill-tops and down into new valleys. There was no tree nor any visible water: it was a country of grass and short springy turf, silent except for the whisper of the air over the edges of the land, and high lonely cries of strange birds.

 

[No One in Particular]

I have always imagined the property to be on the edge of the Forest and the Downs both, kind of a borderland. It belongs to neither, but still yet belonging to both.

 

[Anthony Lawther]

I have always imagined the property to be on the edge of the Forest and the Downs both, kind of a borderland. It belongs to neither, but still yet belonging to both.

Yes, the textual description suggests the house is on a Down, but probably not a Barrow Down. If we imagine, as the text seems to invite, that Tom was there before the establishment of the North Kingdom then the burial grounds might have been set on the boundary of the territory close to Tom's house without encroaching on his realm. The description also suggests that the hills continue into the Old Forest, with the land falling down to the Withywindle.

So, it's possible that there is a strip of Downs that exist between the edge of the Forest and the Barrow Downs proper, with Tom's house built on one closest to the edge of the Old Forest..

 

[Smaug_the_Mighty]

Thanks No One and Anthony,

I really like the idea of his house being in a transitional place between the Forest and the Downs proper, I never thought of it quite like that before. A blurring of the boundaries, belonging to neither and yet both... it seems to fit for Tom, as he is Master and the land is his territory, and yet he does not own the land and everything belongs to itself.

Cheers!