The Why of Tom Bombadil? | What's his Purpose in The Lord of the Rings?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Lots of people have lots of ideas  about who and what Tom Bombadil is.

[00:00:06]But who and what aren’t the  questions I want to tackle today.

[00:00:10]Instead, I want to engage with the why of Tom  Bomabdail. Why did Tolkien put him into his story? What’s his purpose in the narrative? How is  the Lord of the Rings improved by him being in it?

[00:00:35]# Mae g’ovannen melyn nin and welcome to  another episode of Tolkien Untangled.

[00:00:42]Now, I guess there are a few short  and simple answers to this question: one could claim Tom Bombadil exists  in the story to give the Hobbits their barrow blades (so Merry can use his to  stab the Witch-king at Pelennor Fields), or, he exists in the story to expand the depth of  the world-building, or he exists in the story to demonstrate the strangeness of Middle-earth’s  enigmas; and all of these are totally true and valid explanations, but I do want to dive a  little deeper than just his plot relevance.

[00:01:11]Before I begin though, I will mention,  from an out of universe perspective, as a boy, Tolkien’s second son, Michael  Tolkien, once owned a brightly dressed Dutch doll—with a feather in its hat—called Tom  Bombadil. Michael’s older brother, John Tolkien, apparently, didn’t like the doll very much,  and one day, he stuffed it down the toilet.

[00:01:35]Fortunately, for Michael, the doll was  saved, and the boys’ father (jrr) seemed to develop quite a fondness for the toy.  He made up stories for his children about a jolly Tom Bombadil who lived in a mythical  version of prehistoric Britain, and in 1934, the first of these Tom Bombadil poems was  published in the Oxford Magazine. Interestingly, the plot of that first poem involves Tom Bombadil  falling into water and getting his feathered hat soaking wet—not unlike the doll John stuffed  into the lavatory. Also, in that first poem, we meet Goldberry, the river-woman’s  daughter, Old Man Willow, and the river Withywindle running through an Old Forest. This isn’t the point I’m trying to make here, but one could argue the why of Tom Bombadil  (from a real-world perspective) is because Tolkien wanted to include this fun reference  for his children. Tom Bombadil is, in fact, a lot older than the Lord of the Rings.  People were reading about him, and Goldberry, and Old Man Willow, years before the world  even knew who Gandalf or Bilbo Baggins were.

[00:02:52]Anyway, getting back into Middle-earth: I know  some people don’t really like the Bombadil chapters in LOTR and might even argue they add  nothing to the story—I’ve even seen it suggested, the narrative would be improved without them;  but let me explain why I so strongly disagree: why in my opinion, Tom really does enhance  the beauty of the story being told.

[00:03:20]And in order to do that, we’re going  to have to start with my favourite character ever to exist anywhere  in all of fiction, Frodo Baggins.

[00:03:30]So, on the 22nd of September, in  the year 3018 of the Third Age, Frodo celebrates his 50th birthday in Bag End.  He also celebrates Bilbo’s 128th birthday, though he has no idea where Bilbo is. The next  day, when it becomes clear he can wait no longer for Gandalf to join them, he leaves Bag End  with his friend, Pippin and his gardener, Sam, and he takes his very first steps on the quest  that’ll ultimately lead him to the Crack of Doom.

[00:04:10]The next day, less than 24 hours in, the three  Hobbits have their first encounter with a Black Rider. They hide. The ringwraith stops and sniffs.  Frodo feels an overwhelming urge to put on the ring, but, luckily, the Rider departs before  he does so. A few hours later, in the night, they encounter the Black rider again. This time,  it’s even more frightening. It dismounts. Frodo feels an even stronger desire to put on the  ring. The wraith sways from side to side, snuffling. Then it bends down and starts to crawl  towards them. Frodo’s hand goes into his pocket, groping for the ring, but, before disaster can  strike, the Hobbits (and the rider) hear the sound of Elvish singing. The rider returns to  his horse and flees. The quest only makes it to day 2 because of Frodo’s intuition to get off  the road, and the arrival of friendly elves.

[00:05:23]The rest of the night, the Hobbits spend  with Gildor Inglorion and his Wandering Company—it’s a great scene—but in  the morning, the Elves are gone, and the three Hobbits must continue on their own. That day, they arrive at Bamfurlong and enjoy a hearty meal with the unbelievably badass,  Farmer Maggot. He tells them that only a few hours earlier, he too encountered a Black  Rider, asking for a Hobbit called Baggins.

[00:05:56]Farmer Maggot showed his epic quality by telling  the ringwraith to go back where he belongs, but once again, this really shakes the  Hobbits. They haven’t even left the Shire yet (this only the second full  day of their quest), but once again, they’ve barely escaped catastrophe by  the skin of their teeth. If they’d been a few hours earlier (or the wraith a few  hours later), all might have been lost.

[00:06:29]That night is quiet, misty, and cold. Farmer  Maggot drives the Hobbits to the Bucklebury Ferry, but he doesn’t dare light any lanterns. The  fog grows thicker. Suddenly, they once again hear the clip-clop of an approaching rider. The  Hobbits hide, fearing the worst, and as the rider emerges from the mist, he tells Farmer Maggot  in a muffled voice, he’s looking for Mr Baggins.

[00:06:58]But, when the stranger on the road  draws near enough to be seen clearly, he’s revealed not to be a Nazgul,  but Meriadoc Brandybuck instead, come looking for his friend who he fears  may have gotten lost in the fog.

[00:07:14]Eventually, the Hobbits bid farewell to Farmer  Maggot, they cross the River Brandywine and enter Buckland—the small sliver of land  (effectively, a tiny independent country) between the Shire and the untamed wild. On the second night after leaving Bag End, Frodo is back in a comfortable bed in his new home  of Crickhollow. But he knows he cannot stay. And he knows that as spooky as the past two days  have been, the journey is only going to get a lot more dangerous as they leave Hobbit country  behind and face the perils of the Old Forest.

[00:07:50]During their night in Crickhollow, Frodo reveals  to his friends the true nature of his quest, and they reveal to him, they already  know. They’ve been paying a lot more attention than he realises, and they insist  on going with him. Except for one of them.

[00:08:09]Just before Frodo, Sam, and Pippin departed bag  End, Merry and another friend, Fredegar Bolger, drove to Crickhollow on a wagon with Frodo’s  belongings. But when Frodo announces, in the morning, he’ll be venturing into the wilds of the  Old Forest, Fredegar looks terrified. He says, “You can’t be thinking of doing that. It is  quite as dangerous as Black Riders…You’ll get lost. People don’t go in there…I am more afraid  of the Old Forest than anything I know about: the stories about it are a nightmare”. He  opts to stay behind and remain in Crickhollow, pretending to Mr Baggins and  maintaining Frodo’s ruse that he’s moved to Buckland rather than  gone off on an all important quest.

[00:08:56]That night, Frodo has uneasy dreams. First, he  sees tangled trees, then dark creatures crawling and snuffling towards him, and he feels certain  dread that they’ll smell him out and find him.

[00:09:15]But then he hears a sound he’s never heard before,  at least, never in waking life. He hears the sound of the sea. Far off. He smells salt in the  air. He feels a great desire to look upon it, but then suddenly there comes a flash in the sky,  and a roar of thunder, and he wakes suddenly.

[00:09:42]An hour and a half later, Frodo, Sam,  Merry, and Pippin, bid farewell to Fredegar, they walk through a tunnel, they open a  gate, and they step inside the Old Forest.

[00:09:55]As the iron gate ominously clangs shut, Merry  tells Frodo, “There, you have left the Shire.”

[00:10:05]You might be thinking, ‘why on earth are you  talking about this, this is supposed to be a video about Tom Bombadil?’ And it is, bear with me, I’ll  get to him in a couple of minutes, I just want to make sure I’ve laid the groundwork of what exactly  the four Hobbits are feeling when that happens.

[00:10:21]As they leave the gate behind them, Frodo  begins the third full day of his quest: his first day in the wild. And Merry explains  to them why Fredegar was so afraid of this ancient forest. He tells them about the  anger of the trees and the ill will they feel towards the Hobbits who cut them down and  burned hundreds of their kind many years ago.

[00:10:46]Before long, their day turns from uneasy to  straight up unpleasant. They feel they’re being watched. The air is stuffy, the forest hot, and  the path ever-shifting. The trees are dictating their route. Soon, all four Hobbits are depressed.  They head downhill into the Withywindle valley, which isn’t the direction they want to  be going, but it’s the only path that’s available. The undergrowth gets thicker, the  afternoon gets hotter, and the Hobbits find themselves unusually weary. Almost supernaturally. After a couple more hours, they’ve lost all sense of direction, save that the trees seem to be  leading them into the very heart of the forest.

[00:11:37]Until eventually, they stumble across a river: the Withywindle—the same water Tom Bombadil  fell into before meeting Goldberry and Old Man Willow in that much older poem from before  the Hobbit was published. (Although back then, Tolkien had no idea this river would  one day become part of Middle-earth.)

[00:11:57]As they approach it, the Hobbits feel hotter and  hotter. Flies buzz about them. The afternoon sun burns their backs, and each step becomes more  reluctant than the last. Sleepiness seems to creep out of the ground and fall from the air  around them. Eventually Pippin falls forward.

[00:12:21]Merry says they must take a nap. Frodo resists  the urge, but Sam yawns and blinks beside him.

[00:12:30]Merry and Pippin find a huge old willow tree and  under its sprawling branches, they lie down and shut their eyes. A spell of sleep overpowers them. Frodo tries to resists it. He feels a compulsion to drink from the cool river water, but as  he wets his feet in it, he too falls asleep.

[00:12:54]Sam pulls himself together and sleepily  goes to check on the ponies. Then he hears a splash. Frodo’s been thrown  into the water by…the willow tree.

[00:13:08]He hastily pulls Frodo out, Frodo splutters  and thanks him, and then they both realise, Pippin has vanished, and all that can  be seen of Merry are his legs. The roots of the willow have trapped them. Frodo instantly regrets entering the dreadful forest. He and Sam use a  hatchet to try and save their friends, and when that doesn’t work, they light a fire.  All this achieves is angering the Old Willow.

[00:13:34]The situation seems hopeless. Merry is  almost ripped in half by the furious tree, and Frodo, without any idea what he’s  actually hoping for, cries out for help.

[00:13:49]A moment later, there comes an answer.  Careless and happy. From among the trees, he hears a deep voice, singing a nonsense song.

[00:14:03]“Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!

[00:14:06]… Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!”

[00:14:10]Frodo and Sam stand enchanted as this bizarre  figure comes bounding towards them. Bombadil asks what’s wrong, and when they explain  their desperate situation, he sets down the white water-lilies he’s carrying, approaches the  willow, and sings it a song. He says to the tree: “What be you a-thinking of?  You should not be waking.

[00:14:35]Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep!”

[00:14:40]Immediately, Old Man Willow relents, and Merry and  Pippin are set free. The Hobbits thank Jolly Tom, and he bursts out laughing. Then, he  invites them for supper. He tells them, the table is laid and Goldberry is waiting. Tom picks up his water-lilies, sings another song, and leads them through the soporific forest.  As twilight descends, the trees become menacing again, until suddenly they come to an end. The  mist disappears, and as if they’re entering a dream, the Hobbits find themselves under  starlight nearing the house of Tom Bombadil.

[00:15:22]This whole episode is about as weird  for them as it is for the reader.

[00:15:27]That evening, they share a meal with Tom and  Goldberry, though they get very little in the way of answers from them—when Frodo asks Goldberry:  “Fair lady…who is Tom Bombadil?” she responds, simply, “He is.” They have a few interesting  but unilluminating chats with their hosts, and then, they’re sent to sleep on soft  mattresses under blankets of white wool.

[00:15:52]For the second night in a row, Frodo has  a frightening dream. He sees an old man trapped atop a tower. He hears the crying  of fell voices and the howling of many wolves. He sees an eagle bearing the old man  away. And then he hears the sound of hooves, galloping towards him from the East. He  thinks of black riders and wakes suddenly, the sound of hooves still echoing in his mind.

[00:16:22]Meanwhile, Pippin dreams of creaking willows  and their twig-fingers scraping on walls. Merry dreams of gurgling water and of drowning in  a dark shoreless pool. Sam sleeps like a log.

[00:16:39]Anyway, the next day, (day four of the  quest), is, in my opinion, perhaps, the most important day until March  25th (when the One Ring is destroy and the Dark Lord overthrown). But it’s  also the day that I think quite a few readers skip over. The day that’s spent  entirely in the house of Tom Bombadil.

[00:17:06]That morning, all four Hobbits awake together,  and when they look out of the window, they find the forest is hidden by fog, and the sky speaks  of rain. The sun won’t show her face all day, and so day four of the quest is rained  off. Instead of braving the dangers of the Barrow Downs, they’re free to eat,  and drink, and be merry among friends.

[00:17:31]Before they’ve even finished  breakfast, the rain begins.

[00:17:34]Goldberry sings a rain-song “as  sweet as showers on dry hills”, and she tells the tale of the river flowing down  to the sea. The Hobbits listen with delight, and Frodo (glad of heart) blesses the kindly  weather that’s delayed their departure.

[00:17:53]During their day off, the Hobbits learn much  from Old Tom about the surrounding forest, and the bubbling waterfalls, and  the great Barrow Downs beyond.

[00:18:03]And all day they listen to him talk;  they’re filled with wonder. As night falls, the rain ends, and the sky is filled with light  of white stars. As the silence of the heavens surrounds them, Frodo asks Tom Bombadil who he is. Tom replies in riddles. He says he is Eldest. He says he was here before the rivers and the trees  and he remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. (Which hits slightly differently when we  remember Tolkien was writing about Tom Bombadil before he wrote the Hobbit or LOTR). He says lots  of other things that are all very interesting to the question what is Tom Bombadil, but aren’t  too relevant to the point of this video.

[00:18:51]What, I think, matters much more right  now though is what happens after dinner.

[00:18:56]After they’ve eaten, and Goldberry’s sung  many more songs, the Hobbits sit with Tom by the fireside, and, now, it’s his turn to ask  questions of Frodo. His questions are so cunning, Frodo soon finds himself revealing more  about Bilbo and his own hopes and fears than he’s ever even shared with Gandalf. In the midst of one of his stories, Bombadil suddenly interrupts. He  says: “Show me the precious Ring!”

[00:19:29]To Frodo’s astonishment, he actually does  so. He pulls the chain from his pocket, unfastens the ring, and hands  it, at once, over to Tom.

[00:19:42]Tom holds it. It seems to grow bigger  in his hand, and then, astoundingly, Tom puts it on. The Hobbits gasp. Nothing  happens. He doesn’t disappear. He just laughs, takes it off, tosses it into the air,  and then the Ring itself vanishes in a flash. Frodo gives out a cry, and Tom leans  forward, handing it back to him with a smile.

[00:20:12]For a moment, Frodo suspects there must  be trick: this isn’t the same Ring he was entrusted to protect. He waits for Tom to  begin telling an absurd story about badgers, and then he slips the Ring onto his own finger  to test it. Instantly, Merry is startled. He stares blankly at Frodo’s seemingly empty  chair, and Frodo is relieved; he’s invisible, this is indeed the One Ring, but as he stands  up and creeps quietly towards the fireplace, Tom Bombadil glances towards him with a seeing  look in his shining eyes, and says: “Hey! Come Frodo, there! Where be you a-going?…Take off your  golden ring! Your hand’s more fair without it.”

[00:20:58]For reasons that really seem to defy explanation, the Ruling Ring has no effect  whatsoever on Tom Bombadil.

[00:21:11]When Frodo does as he’s told, Tom says the  sun will shine tomorrow, and there will be a glad morning. There’ll be no more reason to  remain in his house. No more cause for delay.

[00:21:24]Now, Tolkien doesn’t state this explicitly,  but I would imagine, surely, in this moment, Frodo must have felt an overwhelming temptation. On the first day, his quest was almost scuppered by a Black Rider— he only made it to day  two because of Gildor’s Wandering Company.

[00:21:48]On the second day, all would have been lost again  if he’d arrived at Farmer Maggot’s farm a few hours earlier, or if Farmer Maggot hadn’t been so  uncooperative with the Nazgul. On the third day, his friends were very nearly killed by a tree. How could he not feel like he’s out of his depth? How could he not feel his quest  is hopeless? At least, Bilbo had thirteen dwarves and a wizard to help him out; Frodo has  nothing but three friends and an evil burden.

[00:22:22]And yet that burden doesn’t work on Tom. This  evil thing that Gandalf fears so greatly, that the Nazgul seek so maliciously,  that even Gildor Inglorion could not be trusted with knowledge of, is completely  harmless on Bombadil’s finger. Right here, on day four of his quest, Frodo finds a  ‘get out of jail free card’. He could just give up. He could leave the Ring with  Tom, he could go back to Crickhollow, and he could sleep in a feather bed again night  after night after night. It’s much more appealing than the prospect of the Barrow Downs in the  morning. And all that’s doomed to come after.

[00:23:15]Especially, as he still has no idea where  Gandalf is or if he’ll ever even show up again.

[00:23:23]Giving the ring to Tom and calling it a  day might not be the “right” choice (and in later chapters it’s confirmed this would  not have been the right choice—Tom doesn’t care enough about the Ring to protect it, if  it remained with him, Sauron would’ve won) but, in this moment, that must have seemed the  safest, easiest, and best option available.

[00:23:50]But that night, for the third night  in a row, Frodo has a memorable dream.

[00:24:00]A vision, really. He hears a song that  seems to come like a pale light behind a grey-rain curtain. But then the veil  turns all to silver glass and is rolled back. And Frodo sees it. White shores of a  far green country. Under a swift sunrise.

[00:24:28]Next morning, he wakes, and finds the day is green  and golden. He enjoys breakfast with his friends, and he makes the decision to go on. To brave  the Barrow Downs. To face the dangers ahead, and to resist the temptations of going back.

[00:24:46]Within two short paragraphs of  waking from his dream, on day five, Frodo departs the house of Tom Bombadil and sets  off on the road that will take him to Mordor.

[00:25:00]Later that day, he does find  himself in another sticky situation, all three of his friends are captured by  Barrow-wights and put under their spell, and Frodo is left all alone. He’s forced  to harden his resolve, take up a sword, and overcome the evil in the barrow. He does call upon Tom Bombadil for the very last time, and Tom does show up to get the  Hobbits out of the tomb they’ve been trapped in, but not until Frodo’s already shown his  quality and his loyalty and his bravery.

[00:25:30]Old Tom then reunites the Hobbits with  their lost ponies, and he gives each of them a Barrow Blade (forged long ago by the  Dunedain of Arnor who fought long wars against the Witch-king—this is the blade Merry is  going to use to cripple the Witch-king at Pelennor Fields), but then, Tom bids them  farewell, and they never see him again.

[00:25:51]On day six, they arrive in Bree, and on day  seven they depart with Aragorn as their guide.

[00:25:58]On day twelve, Frodo is stabbed by the  Witch-king in the dell below Weathertop, on day twenty-six, he arrives in Rivendell. On  day 91, the Fellowship of the Ring sets out.

[00:26:11]On day 111 (eleventy-one) Gandalf falls  from the Bridge of Khazad-dum. On day 152, the Fellowship breaks and Frodo sets off with  Sam as his only companion. On day 155, they meet Gollum. On day 161, they arrive at the Black  Gate, and on day 163, they encounter Faramir.

[00:26:31]On day 167, Frodo and Sam climb  the stair towards Shelob’s Lair, and they reminisce together about their happy day  in the House of Tom Bombadil, lamenting that on the border of Mordor, he cannot help them now. On day 170, Sam rescues Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol, on day 178, they leave the  road and head south towards Mount Doom, beginning the final stretch of their quest, and on day 181, the ring falls into the Crack  of Doom, and the Quest is finally achieved.

[00:27:05]None of which would’ve happened, if Frodo  chose differently on day four. If he’d let his rainy day in the House of Tom Bombadil  turn him aside from what he had to do.

[00:27:22]403 days after leaving Bag End, Frodo, Sam,  Merry, and Pippin finally find themselves once again on the borders of the Shire. Gandalf leaves  them to go visit (of all people) Tom Bombadil, and three days later, our Hobbit heroes scour  the Shire of Saruman’s spiteful influence, and with his death, the War of  the Ring finally comes to an end.

[00:27:49]177 days after that (on the one year anniversary  of Aragorn’s coronation in Gondor), Sam and Rose Cotton are married in the Shire. Our Hobbits  enjoy many happy days. But after 154 of them (on the two year anniversary of Weathertop),  Frodo falls ill. 157 days after that (on the two year anniversary of Shelob’s sting) he  falls ill again. And 189 days after that, two days shy of the three year anniversary  of leaving Bag End to begin his quest, Frodo departs for the final time. He rides to the  Grey Havens, and eight days later, he boards the white ship that will carry him west. The Third Age  ends. Sam, Merry, and Pippin ride home together, but on a night of rain, far out at sea, Frodo  smells a sweet fragrance on the air. He hears the sound of singing coming over the water. And  then, it seems to him as in his dream in the house of Tom Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain  turns all to silver glass, it is rolled back, and he beholds white shores and beyond them  a far green country under a swift sunrise.

[00:29:20]In my mind, the purpose of Tom Bombadil—the  reason why he exists in this story (the reason why that day in his house matters so  much—isn’t because of how it affects the plot, but because of how it affects Frodo.  And his decision. And his quest.

[00:29:45]On day four, Frodo could have given up; he had the  perfect opportunity to, but he didn’t take it. He had a dream. A dream that could only come true  if went forward instead of back. If he suffered, and struggled, and gave everything he  had, to save everyone in Middle-earth.

[00:30:16]That is why, I think, Tom Bombadil  matters. That is why, I think, the chapter in his house is  so important—why, I think, it shouldn’t be skipped despite being weird,  and whimsical, and a little distracting.

[00:30:33]The questions of who and what is Tom  Bombadil are destined to be forever, I think, unanswerable. But the question of  why is not. In my opinion, he represents one of the most beautiful parts of Frodo’s  journey. The story is made so much richer, and the ending so much more powerful,  because 1102 days before Frodo sailed west and departed Middle-earth forever, he  spent 1 day in the House of Tom Bombadil.

[00:31:11]Anyway, that’s all for this video, I hope you  enjoyed it; if you did, be sure to hit like, and leave a comment, and click subscribe  to make sure you don’t miss future videos, coming soon. You can also now support the  channel on Patreon (or Ko-fi) if you’d like to, so follow the links in the description to  those pages, if you’re at all interested.

[00:31:27]However, until next time,  as always my dear friends, much love, stay groovy, and navaer melyn nin.