<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Unquiet Dead
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/bluepal.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: appropriation
I have often wondered if Tom operates in ME rather like the Vanir gods did in late-Nordic mythology or the Eumenides did in classical Hellenic? I understand that both were remnant elements of indigenous mythic cultures who were in the process of being subordinated to the myths of the next dominant culture in a historical time/place. (Of course this gets really interesting in the Eddas where Christianity is in the process of co-opting/overwriting Aesir-myths while one can still see the unfinished process of the Aesir-myths similarly digesting Vanir-myths.) Or think of the (Pagan-Christian) medieval culture clashes in Gawain or in Beowulf, etc.
Whatever else LotR is, it is a record of JRRT's fascination with the epic process. So I always thought that Bombadil was a remnant of the prior indigenous ethos, still extant in ME despite the colonization of that place by the Eldar and the Edain and their dominant mythos.
We know (for instance) that the Barrow Downs were holy places before the coming of Arnor and that the Dunedain of Arthedain and Cardolan interred their own royalty there appropriating their power and mystery in much the way that Aristophanes transformed the Eumenides into the Erinyes or the Eddist appropriated Frey, Freya, et al. "into" the Aesir-mythos. Or the Temple mount as a Canaanite holy place, then an Israelite, then a Christian, then a Muslim, etc.
In this sense, Tom Bombadil may have really had an independent existence. He might really have been there as a god of the guys who were in ME before it was colonized by people who believed in Iluvatar and his creation myth. And they weren't all gone yet and (so) neither was he. Nor do I think that this would be alien to JRRT. Although he was a committed Catholic, he was also a committed student of epic and I think that this explanation sits well with the patterns of western epic. (It is also what seems to me to be going on with the whole Stone of Erech thing.)
g.
(Mind you, I still say the real impetus for Tom was young Priscilla's doll and her demand that Tom go in the story. This is just how I grapple with why we got the particular Tom that we did.)
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