The Trickster's Consort

[Bêthberry]

Possibly Tolkien felt that the reproductive imperative was adequately--or perhaps we might even say supremely--represented by Sam and Rosie.

The tone used for Tom and Goldberry is, to my mind, markedly different in the poem collection [i]The Adventures of Tom Bombadil[/b] than in LotR. In the poems, perhaps because of the faint echo of ancient ballads and lyrics, there is a slighly suggested menace. This could well represent Tolkien's very prevalent habit of progressively rewriting and or over writing, the palimpsest, as I have called it elsewhere. After all, look at how many versions of Galadriel we have!

'Go out! Shut the door, and never come back after!
Take away the gleaming eyes, take your hollow laughter!
Go back to grassy mound, on your stony pillow
lay down your bony head, like Old Man Willow,
like young Goldberry, and Badger-Folk in burrow!
Go back to buried gold and forgotten sorrow!

This is spoken to the Barrow-Wight, so clearly Goldberry here is linked with the dangerous if not hostile elements in Tom's world. I have always found, as well, that Tom's 'catching' of Goldberry carries something of the abduction of Persephone as well.

He [Tom] 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 peeing round the shutter.
You shall come under Hill! Never mind your mother
in her deep weedy pool: there you'll find no lover!'

Nil, good call on the Withywindle! I would think that the malevolence of this river is part of the general dangerous ground of the Old Forest, but I think it certainly is a way to carry over the slightly menacing tone from the poems into the LotR while 'sanitising' the characterisation of Tom and Goldberry.

And, while I know how much davem enjoys free-from associations, I myself would hesitate to ascribe a 'consort' to Gollem. I grant that there are trickster elements in his depiction, but there is no literal pairing of him with a partner. After all, he seems quite wrapped up in his own Smeagol/Gollem relationship!