Chapter 6: The Old Forest

In the last chapter I wrote that the crossing of the Brandywine seemed to be a symbolic point of no return for our four heroes, in particular Sam. The chapter very much starts with a similar motif: the Hobbits, riding through the thick fog of an autumn morning cross, via underground tunnel the thick Hedge that separates the Shire from the World Outside, especially the Old Forest, whose sinister-ness was foreshadowed in the last chapter with Fatty Bolger’s dire prediction that “come this time tomorrow, you’ll wish you were back in Crickhollow."

The lock in the gate snicks, and the party of hobbits and ponies are squarely now in Fairy Tale land, or Faery, as Tolkien terms it. And no fairy tale is complete without a deep dark forest, of course.

This Old Forest is different than the fairy tale forest of Mirkwood as seen in the Hobbit: Mirkwood was an enchanted forest, evil due to the dark influence of Sauron’s stronghold in Dol Guldur and filled with his creatures: evil spiders, orcs and the like. It was a land of perpetual gloom and magic water that sent the sleeper into an enchanted sleep. Even the Elves of the Forest were dark, subterrannean and relative primitives compared to the High Elves of Rivendell or Lórien.

The Old Forest by contrast is somehow more natural. While it is also a Land of Enchantment, it is a natural magic that comes from the trees themselves, whose malign nature is really just a hyped up self-defense mechanism against two-legged creatures.

Even Hobbits, close to the Earth as they are, need wood and have burned and chopped down trees in the Old Forest. But it is a malicious Forest, with trees that move, that drop branches onto travelers and with foliage that literally grows in such a way that travelers are herded towards the destination of the magical Withywindle River, whether they will it or not. And there seems to be a spell cast that depresses all the hobbits and grants them a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that allows them to be herded.

Once at the clearing of the Withwindle, the HObbits swiftly fall under the spell of the malicious Old Man Willow, a huge willow who seems to hold much of the Forest under his dark sway. The spell itself, magic woven out of the hot day, the long walk, the whispering of the leaves and the stillness of the afternoon, is quite subtly presented but unmistakeable: there is a magical urge for the four hobbits to sleep and Frodo, looking up at the vast tree, literally falls over onto the ground…he manages to push himself up and makes it to the river where he sits on a tree root and promptly falls asleep, while Pippin and Merry, falling asleep against the huge bole of the tree are literally enveloped in it.

It is curious that Sam, alone of the four hobbits, is able to fight off the spell and go about business, herding together the ponies and saving Frodo as the tree tips him into the river. Beyond the plot expedience, one wonders why Sam out of all of them? Is it that his sense of service and practicality is so deep that the magic has less hold over him than it does the other more upper-class Hobbits? But Sam’s relative unsusceptibility to spells may come up again later in the story: especially in the brief time he wields the One Ring.

Sam and Frodo of course are saved by luck: by screaming “HELP!” (and Fatty’s prediction is rendered foreshadowing when Frodo does indeed wish he was back in Crickhollow) they manage to attract the attention of probably the strangest character in all of Tolkien’s works: Tom Bombadil. Helpfully, Tom Bombadil introduces himself descriptively with a song, describing his clothing and temperament:

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow

Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow!

Many people have written about how Tom Bombadil does not fit in the Lord of the Rings…there is something off about him. He feels like he belongs more in the rather more fanciful Hobbit than in the darker, epic fantasy of the Lord of the Rings. And there is something vaguely Wizard of Oz about him, too; and something ultimately so RANDOM.

Of course Tolkien himself is aware of this as the discussion of him later in the Council of Elrond subtly reveals. Bombadil defies explanation and fan theories attempting to place him logically in the legendariumalways fail.

I mean, symbolically he is rather more clear: he is simply the sentient Master of Nature: Adam governing benevolent over the Garden of Eden…but how does that square with the Valar of the Tolkien’s world: would he serve Yavanna, the sort of goddess of wild nature? No, I say. He is more a living symbol of human mastery over nature, living in harmony with it, yet putting into sublime order.

He is weird. But you know, if Tom Bombadil is a flaw in the story, a dream-like interlude…I wouldn’t have it any other way. I would have cut him out of the movie too but, in the book, I quite like him.

And as a child, I wholeheartedly accepted him: after all I was reading a sequel to the Hobbit, so he seemed to fit in.

It is only later that I realized that he doesn’t: but perhaps Tom Bombadil, and the hobbits’ next adventures on the Barrow-downs represent a sort of bridge for the first time reader (particularly a young first time reader) between the merry children’s tale of the Hobbitand the decidedly more complex Lord of the Rings…and maybe that was intentional.

He saves the Hobbits with a song…a song that is a spell in and of itself an example of real magic. (And I think that songs are a way of conveying magic in Middle Earth, as we will see in several places.)

And the path he goes down seems magically safe from the Forest too. It does seem that right at the edge, the Hobbits are slowed to a stop and one wonders if the Forest is making one last-ditch magic chance to stop them with Forest magic — but then they are free and wandering up to the golden light that flows over the threshold of the House of Tom Bombadil.

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Merry’s character is a revealed a bit here: if Frodo is the Chairman of the Board of this group of Hobbits, Merry is very much the Director. Frodo’s will leads the group, but in practical matters Merry is very much take-charge and cool: and I note that the depression that falls on the Hobbits seems to affect him less. His spirit is irrepressible, as you would expect from someone named Merry.

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Back in the day, when I was ten-eleven I used to make up tunes to go with the songs that Tolkien includes. I also made up background music that I could “play” in my head at various parts of the story. (Later, sitting at a piano I realized that all my tunes were able to be played on the black keys of the piano, i.e., they were in pentatonic scale.)
Frustrated by my melody of Tom Bombadil’s songs, I found this youtube video playing versions of Tolkien’s songs…some of them are quite beautiful. And anyway, they are better than the tunes I wrote at 10, if not necessarily as catchy.

If you are into that kind of thing…here ya go.