Entwives: I believe it is a mystery that will never be solved.
'I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance (Second Age 3429 - 3441)...' (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien No 144, dated 1954).
Tolkien says "think", so it is not a concrete answer. Its possibly for almost anything to have happened to the entwives. Maybe they were all destroyed, some may have fled, some may have started another home, somewhere far away.
Tom Bombadil=Aborigine [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, Old Man Willow, and the Barrow-wight had already existed for some time, appearing in print in the pages of The Oxford Magazine(Vol, LII,no.13,15 February 1934). In a letter of 1954 my father said:
I don't think Tom needs philosophizing about, and is not improved by it. But many have found him an odd or indeed discordant ingredient. In historical fact I put him in because I had already "invented" him independently (he first appeared in the Oxford Magazine) and wanted an 'adventure' on the way.-Written by Christopher Tolkien in The Return of the Shadow/The old forest and the Witywindle.
Well said, Tolkien. "I don't think Tom needs philosophizing about, and is not improved by it."!
I believe that latter the story with Tom Bombadil in the Oxford Magazine was released as "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", and latter gave it the title "Bombadil goes boating", and now I believe you can purchase it in the book "The Tolkien Reader", which has many peoms and short storys.
[ February 28, 2002: Message edited by: zifnab ]
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