LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 06 – The Old Forest

[davem]

Tolkien does seem to have an ambiguous attitude to trees - he likes individual ones, he likes tame woodland - from the woods of the Shire to Lorien, but actual wildwood is always threatening - The Old Forest, Mirkwood, Taur nu Fuin. Come to think of it, all wild nature presents a threat to his created, sentient races.

I wonder if this is historical - wild forest was the habitation of real threats - not moving trees, but bears, wolves, wild boar. It was also the ideal place for all our ancestors fears to be projected upon. I think this comes across particularly in the dreamlike air of the Old Forest, which seems to exist in a state between dreaming & waking. How can a whole environment be 'alive' in that way? The earth itself seems conscious & malevolent. And then, as Flieger has pointed out, Tom appears, the most dreamlike being of all - possibly the most dreamlike being Tolkien created.

Truly wild nature is always awe inspiring, potentially threatening - like the trees that 'attacked' the hedge - it is always trying to reassert its old dominance. But that's also 'natural' - the trees are not behaving maliciously, they are simply doing what it is in their nature to do. On another level we seem to have the old world of the 'dreamtime' attempting to overwhelm the 'awakened' world of civilisation & sweep it away. In a way, the hobbits are passing into an older world, of dreams, myth, legends - of wizards, goblins, Magic, of fairy story. The 'sensible' hobbits like Ted Sandyman are the ones who have awakened from the dream & are fighting like mad to stay awake & not be overwhelmed by 'Old Man Willow's 'song' & be swallowed up by the dreamworld. Yet, they're the least admirable characters, the ones we'd least like to be.

And Frodo is the great dreamer, the one who is always half dreaming throughout his early life in the Shire, & who is most at home in the dreamworld of Middle Earth beyond the Shire's borders, who only seems to wake up once he leaves, & feels he is 'falling asleep again' when he returns home. Frodo is the one who, ultimately cannot go back home & must depart finally for the dreamworld in the West at the end. Frodo, it seems, never truly belongs in 'our' waking world - perhaps, like Galahad, he has been born solely to perform his task of taking the Ring to the Fire, & then departing back to the world of dreams. It increases the sense of isolation about him, perhaps also explaining why he is such an enigma, & why we are always drawn back to him & his story.

Just a thought.

[The Saucepan Man]

I assure you all, that the point in question was made by Saucy himself in all of his clamourous glory. It was made in post #10 to be entirely precise

Ah, confusion solved! We are talking at cross-posts. Tuor's original post that started all this quoted the following:

"I think that this interlude is an important and necessary reminder to the reader that while the story to come is going to be all about the War of the Ring, that this is not the whole story of Middle-Earth."

A pertinent point made by none other than yourself, Mr Hedgethistle. I was just rattling on about trees.

And I will continue to do so ...

Tolkien does seem to have an ambiguous attitude to trees - he likes individual ones, he likes tame woodland - from the woods of the Shire to Lorien, but actual wildwood is always threatening - The Old Forest, Mirkwood, Taur nu Fuin. Come to think of it, all wild nature presents a threat to his created, sentient races ... Truly wild nature is always awe inspiring, potentially threatening - like the trees that 'attacked' the hedge - it is always trying to reassert its old dominance. But that's also 'natural' - the trees are not behaving maliciously, they are simply doing what it is in their nature to do.

A very good point, davem. There is an inherent tension between the wild force of nature and the needs and lifestyles of sentient beings. Yet Treebeard seems to overcome this and see the need for harmony with the other (good) races of Middle-earth. Old Man Willow, on the other hand, carries on the "fight" against them. Perhaps Old Man Willow and Treebeard (plus Bombadil) represent the two sides of nature. On the one hand wild, threatening and unpredictable. On the other helpful and beneficial when treated with respect. So, depending on how it is approached, the natural world can be both hostile to and symbiotic with human existence (as represented by the non-treeish "good" races of Middle-earth).

Hold up! Have I just reached a conclusion. Goodness gracious, put t'kettle on mother!

[Evisse the Blue]

Here I pop in right in the middle of your discussion of trees, having absolutely nothing to say on the matter.

I want to take you back to one of my favourite bits in the book: the beginning of the quest.
And that is when, Frodo, brutally awakened from a precognitive dream of the Sea, by an unecessarily noisy Merry- is being told the memorable phrase (well, at least to me): "It is time to get up. It is half past four and very foggy." Imagine the sleepy hobbit, uprooted from his warm comfortable bed, the likes of which he doesn't hope to encounter in the future, preparing himself to face unknown dangers and sufferings. The first of which: stepping out on a foggy, chilly autumn morning at 5:a.m. *shudder* Or maybe I'm making too much out of it. But the fact remains, Merry's matter-of-fact words are a well known joke among me and my friends, when we want to point out the many disadvantages of a situation. (I am still unclear as to why they chose such an early hour to start. )

Second point I want to make is about Tom Bombadil. I for one really like him. He is a very cheerful character, always seeming to make fun of himself and the others, (including the Ring, but I'm saving this for later). Now, his appearance in the story is really mysterious. It would have been very easy for Tolkien to introduce him as if he just happened to be passing by, singing, and so he stumbled upon the hobbits. But instead, it's Frodo who finds him, after getting the unexplainable urge to run through the dangerous forest, crying for help. What made him do that? What do you suppose? Not reason, surely. Because he knew hobbits did not adventure so far inside the forest, and as for other things that did, they could have been just as dangerous as Old Man Willow.

But Frodo, without any clear idea of why he did so, or what he hoped for, ran along the path crying help! help! help!.

And help does come, unexpectedly.
The fact that Tom Bombadil invites the hobbits to his house, singles him as someone special, as it has already been suggested. It's apparent that he already knows or guesses what the hobbits are setting out to do, but he is not worried, nor does he treat the matter with the seriousness one would expect him to. Now, the water-lillies - that's something to be serious and worried about. He is in his element, and the hobbits already feel safe with him. The feeling of safety is further illustrated by the 'wonderfully evokative', (as Estelyn put it):

the hobbits stood upon the threshold and a golden light was about them.

That makes me think of safety, welcoming, and something else, that I cannot quite express.

PS: There's a really nice thread that talks about the different sort of 'feel' these beginning chapters have here

[Lalwendë]

More about trees...

Saucepan Man, you've got a good point about the possibility of Treebeard and Old Man Willow being in some way related or linked. I had a quick look forward to see what Treebeard says, and he does indeed say that the forests were once linked. What was interesting was that he said just as there are old Ents who have become more 'tree-ish', there are also trees which have become more 'ent-ish'. That may provide some reasoning for why Old Man Willow is driven to attack; his heart has gone "bad right through" as Treebeard puts it. He also hints at the evil side to many trees, including those of the Old Forest, as being a remnant of darker days, perhaps memories of Morgoth.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

I have found that this chapters always seems to lead to discussions about Old Man Willow being an Ent who has become Tree-ish. Is he not a Huorn (If that’s how you spell it)? But then we get into the whole issue of Sam's cousin seeing an Ent (or maybe Ent-wife) on the northern borders of the shire and making all the connections that perhaps he is "Old Woman Willow" which is absurd, Tolkien would have mentioned this otherwise, don’t you think?

I think that Old Man Willow may be some kind of central point in the forest's proverbial 'Nervous system' If you take my meaning. To me He seemed to fling the anger of the forest upon the Hobbits, It is my belief that this is because He remembers the Bonfire when many trees were killed and so is attempting some kind of revenge. Not just for himself, but also for the whole forest, I have had this belief for some time now but have never really spoken of it as it was too odd and hard to put into words what I actually mean.
I think that some how the whole forest must be interconnected, we know that the trees can speak to one another with their own tongs, but is there some kind of supernatural way that they all feel one another’s pain? As Old man Willow is the only one who went further than sticking a root out to trip them up I suspect he is a major Power in the Tree community.

I do not know about you but how Tom says "Is that All?" when Frodo and Sam tell him of what had happened it sort of suggests that it has happened before, maybe with a badger or something.

This, granted, may all be a complete pile of twaddle, if so, ignore it and I'll go sit in a corner and chew on some tree roots.

[Bombadil]

Previously posted by Estelyn:

The hobbits have only just left the Shire and already encounter danger not from the Ring or the Riders, but from a hostile environment that has nothing to do with Sauron’s influence,

this is an odd chapter to me because of the absence of such evils. It almost felt like Tolkien placed this scene in afterwards, or that he used this point in time to introduce the enigma Tom Bombadil. Does anyone know if anything of the sort occurred? I know he re-wrote riddles in the dark in the Hobbit at one point, was this chapter always in his plans?

[davem]

Of Course this is not the first time Tom has encountered Old Man Willow. In the Adventures of Tom Bombadil we have the following verses:

Up woke Willow-man, began upon his singing,
sang Tom fast asleep under branches swinging;
in a crack caught him tight: snick! it closed together,
trapped Tom Bombadil, coat and hat and feather.

'Ha, Tom Bombadil! What be you a-thinking,
peeping inside my tree, watching me a-drinking
deep in my wooden house, tickling me with feather,
dripping wet down my face like a rainy weather?'

'You let me out again, Old Man Willow!
I am stiff lying here; they're no sort of pillow,
your hard crooked roots. Drink your river-water!
Go back to sleep again like the River-daughter!'

Willow-man let him loose when he heard him speaking;
locked fast his wooden house, muttering and creaking,
whispering inside the tree. Out from willow-dingle
Tom went walking on up the Withywindle.
Under the forest-eaves he sat a while a-listening:
on the boughs piping birds were chirruping and whistling.
Butterflies about his head went quivering and winking,
until grey clouds came up, as the sun was sinking.

What we have here is OMW attacking Tom in the way he attacked the Hobbits. He sings Tom to sleep & swallows him. Which raises the question of whether OMW is out for revenge simply against hobbits for their 'attack' on the forest, or whether he really is out for revenge against 'all that go on two legs, & also of Tom's relationship to the forest. Tom himself, it seems is percieved as a foe to the trees. This episode follows straight on from Tom's first encounter with Goldberry, who is also malicious:

Old Tom in summertime walked about the meadows
gathering the buttercups, running after shadows,
tickling the bumblebees that buzzed among the flowers,
sitting by the waterside for hours upon hours.

There his beard dangled long down into the water:
up came Goldberry, the River-woman's daughter;
pulled Tom's hanging hair. In he went a-wallowing
under the water-lilies, bubbling and a-swallowing.

'Hey, Tom Bombadil! Whither are you going?'
said fair Goldberry. 'Bubbles you are blowing,
frightening the finny fish and the brown water-rat,
startling the dabchicks, and drowning your feather-hat!'

'You bring it back again, there's a pretty maiden!'
said Tom Bombadil. 'I do not care for wading.
Go down! Sleep again where the pools are shady
far below willow-roots, little water-lady!'

Back to her mother's house in the deepest hollow
swam young Goldberry. But Tom, he would not follow;
on knotted willow-roots he sat in sunny weather,
drying his yellow boots and his draggled feather.

So we have the 'spirit' of the Withywindle river & the spirit of the trees of the forest out to get Tom, almost as if he is percieved by them as an intruder - does Tom really belong in the forest, or is he an 'outsider'? If so, where does his power come from, & how can he be called the spirit of the countryside, & 'master'? His 'power' seems absolute, in that he can 'tame' both the elements of the forest with his song:

He woke in morning-light, whistled like a starling,
sang, 'Come, derry-dol, merry-dol, my darling!'
He clapped on his battered hat, boots, and coat and feather;
opened the window wide to the sunny weather.

Wise old Bombadil, he was a wary fellow;
bright blue his jacket was, and his boots were yellow.
None ever caught old Tom in upland or in dingle,
walking the forest-paths, or by the Withywindle,
or out on the lily-pools in boat upon the water.
But one day Tom, he went and caught the River-daughter,
in green gown, flowing hair, sitting in the rushes,
singing old water-songs to birds upon the bushes.

He caught her, held her fast! Water-rats went scuttering
reeds hissed, herons cried, and her heart was fluttering.
Said Tom Bombadil: 'Here's my pretty maiden!
You shall come home with me! The table is all laden:
yellow cream, honeycomb, white bread and butter;
roses at the window-sill and peeping round the shutter.
You shall come under Hill! Never mind your mother
in her deep weedy pool: there you'll find no lover!'

Old Tom Bombadil had a merry wedding,
crowned all with buttercups, hat and feather shedding;
his bride with forgetmenots and flag-lilies for garland
was robed all in silver-green. He sang like a starling,
hummed like a honey-bee, lilted to the fiddle,
clasping his river-maid round her slender middle.

He seems 'master' here - OMW realeases him on command, Goldberry not only releases him at his word, but leaves her river & marries him.

So, who, or what, is Tom? He seems at once both an outsider, attacked by the forest spirits, yet able to control them absolutely.