The Lord of the Rings: Fog on the Barrow-Downs

 

There are no disturbances that night. “But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.”

Bombadil wakes the hobbits up to a clear cold autumn day and sees them off. They ride just a little when Frodo realizes they have not said good-bye to Goldberry. As if summoned by the thought she is there at the top of the hill before them. They go up to her and she blesses them on their journey, giving them some final encouragement and instructions, and then the four are on their way.

They go up and down the hills of the Downs as the day grows ever hotter. About noon they pause on a hill whose top is flattened out like a bowl. From there they can already see the line of trees that mark the distant road which will take them further on their journey. It looks an easy ride to reach by sunset. They decide to take lunch and rest a while. At the bottom of the ‘bowl’ is a tall stone like a broken, warning finger of stone. They stop there on the cooler east side of the stone and eat, and with the food and the heat of the day, they fall fast asleep.

They awake to find the sun already setting, and that the hill has become an island in a sea of fog. It is getting cold. They quickly pack up the ponies and lead them off the hill, heading in the direction of the Road. In the deep fog, their way is not clear before them. The going is slow, and they travel in single file to avoid wandering apart, with Frodo in the lead. At last he sees what he takes to be the gap out of the hills, but hurrying forward, he finds it is two huge standing stones like a topless door. Before he knows it, he passes through them.

In a sudden panic his pony tosses Frodo and plunges away into the mist. He turns to call his companions but hears only distant cries that sound as if they are calling him. He tries to struggle towards the sound, climbing higher as he goes, but night has now fallen, and it grows ever colder. He follows a muffled cry and reaches a hilltop only to find himself in front of a great barrow, an ancient burial mound.

He calls out “Where are you?” to his friends but is answered by a deep cold voice that seems to come out of the ground. “Here! I am waiting for you!” Frodo’s knees give way, and he falls to the ground. He looks up to see a tall dark figure with pale eyes leaning over him and feels a grip cold as ice seize him. He faints and knows no more.

He awakens to find himself inside the barrow, laid out on a stone slab with his hands crossed across his chest like a corpse. He realizes that one of the dread Barrow-wights has taken him and that he is probably already under one of their deathly spells. But instead of despairing, he thinks of Bilbo and his stories, and his spirit begins to stiffen. “There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.” And Frodo is neither very fat nor very timid.

Suddenly he notices a pale greenish light growing around him. He turns and sees Merry, Pippin, and Sam laid nearby, looking cold and pale, dressed in white and decorated with gold and weapons as if for a barbaric burial. Across their three necks is laid one long, naked sword.

Suddenly a song begins: a cold, dreary, horrible chant that turns into a grim incantation. Frodo is chilled to the marrow. The harsh voice bids the hobbits lay there “till the dark lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land.” To Frodo’s horror a long arm comes groping around the corner, walking on its fingers and reaching for Sam and the hilt of the sword on his neck.

Frodo is tempted with a wild thought, to put on the Ring and escape. His friends would be lost, but he’d be alive and free. Surely Gandalf would understand. For a moment he gropes in his pocket.

But his courage is stirred, and with sudden resolve he picks up a short sword lying beside him and hacks the hand off at the wrist. The sword splinters with the blow; there is a wail, and the light goes out. The Wight snarls in anger, injured but not destroyed.

In the darkness Frodo suddenly remembers the rhyme Tom taught them the night before. He begins the verse in a small desperate voice, but his voice grows in confidence until the chamber rings with the words. There is a deep silence, then after a long moment Frodo hears Bombadil answering as if from far away. There is a rumble of stones as the barrow wall collapse, and there is Tom, standing at the opening, with plain sunlight streaming in behind him.

Tom banishes the Wight with one of his ‘stronger songs’. There is a wailing shriek that fades away into the distance. Tom has Frodo help him carry the others out onto the clean grass. As they do so Frodo thinks he sees the severed hand still wriggling. Tom goes back in and there is the sound of stamping boots. Tom returns carrying a heap of treasure from the barrow. Then stretching out his hand he bids the sleeping hobbits wake.

They do so, and for a moment Merry seems to be reliving the last moments of the long-gone human inhabitant of gravemound before his mind clears. Tom bids them cast aside their cold rags and ‘run naked on the grass’, as they will never find their clothes again. The hobbits recover quickly from the horror of the adventure and rest basking in the sun while Bombadil goes off in search of their bolted ponies.

He returns with their five beasts and his own pony, Fatty Lumpkin. They put on spare clothes from their packs. He announces that since the hobbits are so good at getting into trouble, he will go with them to the borders of his land. The hobbits sit down to breakfast, while Tom sorts through the treasure. Most he leaves in a pile, free to anyone who finds it, and so the spell of the mound will be broken, and no Wight ever come back to it. He keeps only one blue brooch for Goldberry, in memory of the ancient lady who once wore it, and whom Bombadil remembers even though ages have passed.

He also gives the hobbits four long daggers to use as swords. He explains they were made long ago by the Men of Westernesse, to counter the evil spells of the Dark Lord. The hobbits take the knives and wear them under their jackets, feeling awkward. They had not considered having to fight on their adventure.

Tom guides them to the Road and rides along with them for a way. The Road reminds them of the Black Riders who are hunting them, and they are dismayed when Bombadil at last says he must leave them. He tells them that Bree lies ahead in about four miles, and he directs them to seek out the Prancing Pony inn and its keeper Barliman Butterbur. He rides off singing into the dusk.

They are sorry to part with him, for he is, as Sam puts it, ‘a caution and no mistake.’ Sam asks what sort of folk live in Bree, and Merry answers that both Hobbits and Men live together there. Frodo warns them that they must be cautious while there, not to speak the name of Baggins, and to call him ‘Mr. Underhill’. They approach Bree at nightfall and hurry towards it, hoping to put a door between them and the night.

Bits and Bobs

So we come to last appearance of Tom Bombadil in the story, though he is mentioned in passing a few times. No other subject has caused so much speculation or so many opinions in LOTR as to what he is and how he fits into Middle-earth. It is on par with whether Balrogs have wings or why don’t they just fly eagles to Mt. Doom. His episode is literally a dividing line in the story, which some readers just ‘skip over’ as irrelevant to the larger tale and some even quit reading here altogether. Although Tolkien might have re-used Bombadil from earlier work at first as ‘thickening’, he works to naturalize him and came to justify it as an example of the enigmas and anomalies that happen in real life. The Tom Bombadil of the original ‘Oxford’ poem could well be the same Tom anyway, as Middle-earth is just our own world in a distant age, and Tom seems to be immortal.

The Barrow-wight is only vaguely described, but from various details it appears that the Wights are spirits animating the corpses of the dead. We learn in other sources that they have been stirred up by their old master the Witch-King of Angmar, the leader of the Black Riders who are searching the area for Frodo. In the drafts Tolkien toyed briefly with the idea that the Black Riders were mounted Barrow-wights.

The names that Tom gives to the hobbits’ ponies when he brings them back stick for the rest of their lives, and they answer to no other, another proof of the strange power of his voice.

Bombadil remembers the original (human) occupants of the mound with some fondness. The knives are of Numenorean (Westernesse) make, wound with spells inimical to the works of Mordor. From his recounting their history, the hobbits get a vision of the wandering descendants of those Men, guarding the lands in secret, with a last figure appearing wearing a star on his brow. That vision and those knives will be significant later in the story.