Yes, I know that this next part is unnecessary to the plot. The commentary is still going to be longer than for most other Chapters.
Before I launch in, I unfortunately have to explain something to American (and, often, other non-English) readers that prevents them from connecting to Tom Bombadil from the very start. Let me be blunt: Tom is talking in English folk song. You don’t connect with Tom and with the whole chapter in Tom’s house because you’re not hearing English folk song in your mind’s ear.
Carrion crow, sitting on an oak,
With a ling dong dilly dol, kye roe me …
Hey, come, merry dol, Derry dol, my darling,
… and the feathered starling …
There was a tailor had a mouse,
Hi diddle unkum feedle,
He kept it with him in his house,
Hi diddle unkum feedle …
And that proved well for you,
For now I shall no longer
Go down the Withywindle,
Before the year is over …
Jackie boy – Master --
Fare you well? Very well,
Hey down, hoe down, derry derry down,
Among the leaves so green, oh …
None can catch Tom, for Tom, he is the Master;
His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster …
Three paired examples (all right, the very first one is a Scottish folk song transferred to Appalachia). English folk songs are not “Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” And their nonsense words are not just nonsense words, but are words with a lilt and that border on words with feeling behind them – “derry, down”. And they are specifically not Elvish songs. Tolkien gave you those in The Hobbit: “Tralalalalally, here down in the valley”. Elvish songs are madrigals. They can be performed by multiple artists, like strolling minstrels, with harmony. “Deck the Halls” is more like a madrigal than a folk song. English folk songs are meant to be sung alone, without harmony. They’re bloody folk songs, folks!
Now we can get on to the fact that here is where Tolkien introduces his first important and valuable word of older speech: Master. And to do so, he has to peel away all the other meanings of that word that have not only obscured but erased Master’s valuable meaning.
So, like him, let us look at what Master is not. Master is not about control. Master is not about social or hierarchical superiority. Master is not about complete knowledge – I “master the subject.” So what is it to be “the Master”?
Here is Goldberry’s definition: None can [coerce] Tom, for Tom, he is the Master/His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster. No one has power over Tom. He has absolutely no interest in power over them. If you crowd him, it will be because you are being greedy for more than you should have, and disrupting him, among others that you are disrupting. Then he will spank you – not hurt you, unless you don’t belong in his area in the first place, like the Barrow-wights – and make you pull back to where you should be. It’s not his “burden”; he does it out of friendship for everyone. And he won’t go out of his way to do it; he’s living in a particular area, and you’re messing up the area, and his friends in the area, and the moment what you do touches him, he deals with you and then moves on.
Tolkien’s point here is that as part of a personality or system of government, that is a good thing to have. Tom is absolutely un-addictable. He has no wants that he cannot immediately satisfy himself. He has no shame or guilt over the past; he gets annoyed at himself for forgetting, makes up for it, and stops worrying about it. Sure enough, you hand him the Ring, he doesn’t vanish, he can see you even when you have it on, he hands it right back. Juvenal once asked: “Who will guard the guards themselves?” A Master is the answer: he gives you complete freedom until your fist tries to connect with his or his friend’s nose, and then he makes it so your fist can’t connect with anyone’s nose for a while, and goes back to whatever he is doing.
Obviously, as Tolkien points out later, this cannot be the whole answer to what is a good personality or a good government. For that, we will need to comprehend his word “high” as explained more clearly in Book II. But your takeaway from this Chapter should be to think about including The Master as part of your personality – someone who is always one step ahead of any attempt at domination of him or her, but who has no interest in using competition to dominate others, because what you have is and will be just fine.
OK, second key thing about this Chapter. “Master, who are you?” “Eh, what? Who are you, alone, yourself, and nameless? But [First] is what I am …”
What has happened, before this? Tom has been telling stories, and going backwards in Time, all the way back to the beginning of his area of the world. And now Frodo is trying to fit Tom into the context of all he knows, and says, “please sum yourself up for me, so I can understand you.” And Tom’s reply is first to spank Frodo: “Wrong question! Don’t typecast me! How would you feel if I typecast you?” And then he seemingly contradicts himself and says who he is – except he doesn’t. What Tom is saying is, “This is how you can use me, if you are smart enough. Use me as ‘First.’” And what does he mean by that?
Think back to the meeting with the Elves. Remember that I said then that Frodo came face to face with the history of all the world, in one person – and that made the breadth and historical depth of the world real to him, not a matter of book learning. Tom here is offering him the next step (which, as we will see later, he takes). It is, in fact, the next step toward being “high” – but, again, we will discuss that word much later.
This next step is as follows: take a particular creature or creatures in a particular area, and trace them back to their beginnings, seeing how they came to be what they are now, in order to fully understand them. Tom is giving Frodo an example: he traces Old Man Willow and the barrows back through the passing Numenorean kingdoms and then the Elves to their first awakenings. He knows the First of everything in his area. Now, by yourself, reverse the flow of time in your story, and understand how these creatures of the present came to be what they are; and now you really understand them. And once you’re good at that, you’re ready for the next step: pity.
Now, before we move on, two lesser but still important points. In the beginning of the next Chapter, Frodo realizes he misses Goldberry, and wants to go back to her. You haven’t gotten to this yet, but this is the only woman about whom Frodo feels this way. Arwen? Galadriel? He does not feel the need to go back. Goldberry? Yes. What the hey?
First off, understand that Goldberry is a Naiad. She is a River spirit. Of all the women in LOTR, she does not need a man (or a woman) for anything. She is entirely self-sufficient. She is just as smart and insightful as Tom. She is with Tom because he complements her. Remember the setting of the table? She is graceful, like the River. Tom is capering comically, like the animals that drink from the river, and the beavers that build the dams to give added water to the trees along the river and carry the seeds of the willows lining the river, and … -- a River with bare banks is a much lonelier and less satisfying place – for the River, and for us animals.
OK, so what does Frodo say about Goldberry? My fair lady, dressed in green. There are a couple of minor new/old words there. Fair. This doesn’t mean even-handed. It doesn’t mean blond or light-skinned. It means blond and light-skinned outside (or with a light shining from inside that gives the same effect), and beautiful inside, in the spirit (cf. “look fair but are foul” when Frodo meets Aragorn). Lady. This does not mean a woman who knows how to behave in a civilized manner, according to local social customs. It does not mean a member of the nobility. It means a woman who is never hurtful to you when interacting with you, and whose graceful empathy therefore deserves respect. And so, I would suggest that Frodo wants to see Goldberry again because she has been a good hostess. She has given shelter on the journey, she has treated you as an equal part of her circle while you are there, and in the process she has given you valuable gifts. And so, before you leave, you should thank her, shouldn’t you, Frodo? Not as a representative of women, or beauty, or the green of nature, or the spirit, but as a real person who is your hostess.
And the last more minor point. In this Chapter, we see the first example of a “waking dream”, and the only example of a “prophetic dream.” The hobbits see the line of ancestors of Aragorn, and their culmination in Aragorn. In effect, they see an abstraction of Aragorn that is the key meaning of Aragorn at that point. And this will happen again, and again, to Frodo and Sam. This is purely a literary device, and just says: pay especial attention to the meaning of this character at this point in the story. The prophetic dream is Frodo’s, and brings him both news of Gandalf and a hint of his possible final end on the Great Sea. The point of the “prophetic dream” is not actually prophetic – it is connecting prophecy with Frodo’s psychology. Merry and Pippin have horror-story dreams; their trauma is short-lived. Frodo has a dream full of what he will be wrestling with for a long time psychologically. We are too long away from Frodo’s psychology with Tom unless we bring the focus back to it with the dream. The importance of dreams as a window to the (collective?) unconscious. How Freudian (Jungian?) can you get?
And one final note, before we move on: this Chapter is absolutely unnecessary to the story, like Faramir’s courtship of Eowyn, and, as in that case, it is easy to write it off therefore as Tolkien wanting to write what he wanted to write, and hang the reader. However, in this case, I am very grateful that Tolkien did so, whatever his motive. Without it, it would have been much harder for me to stay within Frodo’s evolving mind and understand how he was able to pity Gollum. And those silver, wonderful flights of words.
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