The Bee Reads LOTR Episode 6: A Conspiracy and an Old Forest
Kyle, Dan, and Jonathan Watson, of TheOneRing.Com, guide you to Crickhollow, where Samwise Gamgee's conspiracy is unmasked, and then on to a spooky ancient forest that tries to kill the hobbits. Then, as Kyle puts it, a "cracked out hobo" comes to rescue them. It's two chapters this week on The Babylon Bee Reads The Lord of the Rings! Chapter summaries: Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry make it to the tucked away house in Crickhollow and also meet Fatty who with Merry has been getting the house ready. The three travellers all bathe together and sing (in separate tubs), eat food, and Frodo finds out that his friends have known all along about the conspiracy to get the ring out of the Shire. Their plan is to sneak out through a small gate in the hedge that separates Buckland from the Old Forest. We learn that the Forest is very much alive and at enmity with the "colonizers" of Buckland. The four hobbits going through the Old Forest quickly find the forest against them! Old Man Willow causes the hobbits to fall asleep, traps Merry and Pippin within its cracks, and almost drowns Frodo. A cracked out hobo in the woods comes to their rescue! Some questions or themes: The fellowship seems to be borne in Chapter 5. Merry and Pippin refuse to let Frodo rush off into danger without them coming too. The stouthearted loyalty of the hobbits in their friendship The Forest being alive and at enmity and able to react to the trespassers Intro to Tom Bombadil MAILBAG
From the heart of the Shire, through the depths of Moria, to the ends of Middle-earth.
It's the Babylon B reads the Lord of the Rings with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Dan Coates.
Yes, everybody, welcome to the Babylon Bee Reads Lord of the Rings, a podcast where the Babylon B reads Lord of the Rings.
I'm Kyle Mann, editor-in-chief of the Babylon B.
This is Dan Coates, who's the producer at the Babylon B, and Jonathan Watson, who's the editor in the Dark Lord of theOneRing.com.
Yeah.
I'm trying to think of a good rhetoric, but maybe the bright light of the One Ring, the shining trees, the One Ring.
See, the problem is it's already called The One Ring, so I'm already down the dark path.
Yeah.
You named your site The One Ring.
Can you defend that?
So in this podcast, we read through about a chapter a week.
Now, this week, we're going to go through two chapters.
If you haven't been following along, go back to the beginning.
You can watch all the episodes.
You can follow along with The Lord of the Rings.
So right now we are in A Conspiracy Unmasked, which is chapter five-ish, chapter five.
And we're also going to be going through the old forest, which is chapter six, which will lead us to a very exciting special episode next week.
Tom.
The Tom Bombadil.
Yep.
We're going to get Jonathan to dress up in the Tom Bombadil outfit.
I've got my yellow boots.
Get the yellow boots.
Blue feather.
And the long brown beard.
And come dancing in.
And goldberry.
And we need to hire a goldberry, maybe.
And some yellow cream and white bread.
And you need to carry flowers and to get really mad at it.
And that's the best on a bleeding.
And be like, don't touch my flowers.
As long as I don't have to sing the entire time.
Just whisper to your trees.
Yeah.
We've got some fake plants that you could say too.
So every week on the Babylon B Reads, we kind of summarize where we are, and then we're going to go through and pick out some choice quotes from Tolkien that we can discuss.
And we'll have a couple of key points, key themes that we're going to discuss.
Then we're going to go into our subscriber portion where we get to answer some fan mail and do some more in-depth discussion.
That's where things get insane.
That's where we spill all of our dirty secrets.
That's where we spill the tea.
In the subscriber portion.
As the kids say.
The tea.
The tea.
By the time I know what a phrase means, it's already out.
Like if I know tea, and then they're not saying it anymore.
All right, so this is a conspiracy unmasked.
And at this point, they cross the ferry.
They make it to Buckland.
Am I getting this right so far?
Yep.
And they get to Frodo's new house that he's kind of fake moving to in Crickhall.
And this is where the fellowship has kind of started a little bit.
We have Mary, Pippin, Sam, and Frodo that all kind of bunk in this house for a night.
And let's see what happens here.
Yeah, I think it's kind of interesting how Tolkien titles the chapter A Conspiracy Unmasked.
And you think that it's a conspiracy of Gandalf, Frodo, and Sam.
That, oh no, there are secrets out.
Really, when you read through the chapter, it's the conspiracy of Sam, Mary, and Pippin and Fredegar, Fatty, that they've known the whole time that something is going on with Frodo.
They know about the ring.
They know he's trying to get out of the Shire, but they've been maintaining this pretense of like, oh, yeah, we'll go get your house ready.
Oh, yeah, we'll go ahead of you and set up your stuff.
And they know he's not going to live there.
So you really see a glimpse of their friendship that they know that Frodo has to keep a secret, but they know they have to help Frodo.
I love the setting of Buckland and how it's this interesting kind of sliver of the Shire that's sort of part of the Shire.
And the official edge of the Shire is kind of that hedge that they build along the old forest in Buckland.
And they're kind of a unique people in that they're sometimes they swim and sometimes they go in the water.
They go on boats.
They go on boats.
I think Tolkien says they're half foreigners, that they're kind of like an independent state within the shire.
You were calling it the Texas of the Shire.
It's the Texas of the Shire.
I like that.
And I like how Tolkien, he can't help himself but to like give the entire history of the brandy bucks in Buckland and talks about old Gorhandad Old Buck, head of the old buck family, and how everything just kind of we've got like a thousand years of Hobbit history in two paragraphs here.
And it's great to see him just like throw that in there and he's like, okay, now that you know who the brandy bucks are, let's go on to the story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It really does kind of set this mood.
I love this kind of frontier land that's still shire-like.
And yet they've got this, they kind of have this war with the old forest that was going on where they had to go in there and burn all these trees.
And they're at this uneasy kind of cold war in the demilitarized zone between the Buckland and the Old Forest.
Yeah, there's like a hundred-yard strip where it's like no man's land.
Yeah, it's interesting.
So let's, I mean, I love this when they're crossing the ferry.
Sam was the only member of the party who had not been over the river before.
He had a strange feeling as the slow gurgling stream slipped by.
His old life lay behind in the mists.
Dark adventure lay in front.
What a great line.
And then on the far stage under the distant lamps, they could just make out a figure.
It looked like a dark black bundle left behind.
But as they looked, it seemed to move and sway this way and that as if searching the ground.
It then crawled or went crouching back into the gloom beyond the lamps.
So you could see this dock with these lights and this like bundle.
Is that a bundle of clothes?
And it starts like moving and they're like, holy marshmallow.
You know, and then it just kind of fades back into the mists.
And you go right back to that snuffling thing slide.
Wow.
It's a missed opportunity in the films, man.
I tell you, being able to see that would have been through the mists and the swirling mists.
And it feels a lot more suspenseful in the book than in the movie where they like, I think the guy just charges at him.
They know exactly what it is.
They're like, oh, there's that rider.
They do that.
In the book, he's like, what is that?
The suspense is so intense.
I love that feel.
I mean, Tolkien would have written some killer horror novels if he had ever tried.
Frodo says we had our supper early with Farmer Maggot, but we could do with another.
And then Mary says, You shall have it.
Give me that basket.
Second, it takes the mushrooms.
So this is the chapter where they all have a bath together.
Yeah, they didn't get that in the movie.
They didn't do that in the movie.
Not even in the next one.
Now, to be clear, there's three separate tubs.
There are.
They're not all in the same tub.
It's not like my kids bathing at the same at one point.
I do love the line that when they're talking about it and Tolkien injects just that humor again, lightens it up even a little more.
I mean, they're taking a bath.
How much lighter do you need to get?
But he says, Shroda says to Mary, which order shall we go in? said Frodo.
Eldest first or quickest first?
You'll be last either way, Master Peregrine.
Sorry, man.
They're just like school buddies just ribbing each other and screaming.
Yeah, and then doesn't Pippin just get like bath water like all over the place?
They're singing songs in the bath and he just starts splashing water everywhere.
Yeah, and this is where like you can start really seeing the relationship.
It's you know, it's deep, but it's also fun.
It's like a good buddy, right?
But you can talk about the deep things in life, but then you can go and shoot some hoops or you can take a bath.
Just like you and your buddies might shoot some hoops or take a bath together.
But yeah, it is the beginning of the fellowship.
Like these four guys are, they have a relationship that's that's that's deep but narrow, you know?
Yeah, the frat boys of the shire.
You know, I love this.
This is great.
Yeah, there really is a deepening in the relationship and kind of the unique personalities of each of the hobbits coming out.
I love that.
Yeah, so then they reveal that they knew about this all along.
And Pippin says, Dear old Frodo, did you really think you had thrown dust in all our eyes?
You have not been nearly careful or clever enough for that.
You've obviously been planning to go and say farewell to all your haunts all this year since April.
We've heard you muttering, shall I ever go look down into that valley again, I wonder, and things like that.
So Frodo thinks you're being all secretive.
And then every time he sees something, he's like, this could be the last time I look into this channel.
And they're like, we were on to you, bro.
And of course, Mary and Pippin display this adventure, this adventure that lies deep within the heart of some hobbits.
You know, just you must go and therefore we must too.
Sam is an excellent fellow and would jump down a dragon's throat to save you if he did not trip over his own feet.
But you'll need more than one companion in your dangerous adventure.
Yeah, and they say we've been terrified that you might give us the slip and go off suddenly all on your own like he did.
So, you know, they've been watching him.
Yeah.
It's like they're almost, they're keeping track of him, making sure, all right, is he going?
Guys, I got him under control because we're not letting him go.
We're not letting him out of our sight.
Yeah.
And then, of course, we go a little further and we find out who the major conspirator was through all this.
And it wasn't like Gandalf, it was Sam.
Sam Wise himself.
Trimming the hedges.
Yeah.
I like how Mary says he knew about the ring.
And he says, because the Sackville Bagginses were Bilbo's downfall.
Again, the whole little story.
So he was walking along the road and he sees Bilbo and he sees the Sackville Bagginses coming along the road and suddenly vanishes.
So Bilbo's been using the super weapon to disappear from the Sackville Baggins.
The SBs.
Get away from the SBs.
And he's also, I don't know here, the one thing that's really interesting is he read the book that, you know, the Book of Westmarch.
I'm like, did he actually go in the house and read it?
Like, what was the right there to do it?
But he had a very clear understanding of what had happened and how the ring can affect Bilbo's, not his life, but like it is a big part of Bilbo's life.
And so he knows that.
And so I guess he feels like he has to go in and start researching.
Did he go in and sneak in?
Did he sneak in and find the book and start reading it?
Or was it just when he was there?
So it's a bit of one of those things I would have liked to have found out, but we don't ever find out.
Mary and Pippin sing a song modeled on the dwarf song that started Bilbo on his adventure long ago.
Farewell we call to Hearth and Hall, though wind may blow and rain may fall.
We must away ere break of day far over wood and mountain tall.
It goes on.
But I love that we must away our break of day.
That's the old dwarves song back from The Hobbit.
That's right.
Fantastic.
Again, we have the singing and kind of what that represents and the safety and comfort of this place that they can hang out in for a day or two.
So Fatty is kind of upset when he finds that they're not going to take the East Road.
They're going to be going through the old forest.
We have to mention this old forest.
You had mentioned something about the old forest and maybe wanting to see.
Yeah, what is this old forest?
You know, the old forest, it's a question of what is the old forest?
And so later in, I guess it's the two towers, we talk about Treebeard mentions the elves taught the trees to communicate, to speak.
But then there's also in the Silmarillion, there's a forest, I think it's called, okay, Tower Newfuen is what I want to say.
And it happened after one of the big battles.
And the orcs are pushing in and Morgoth is coming and the humans are fighting back and not giving every foot as much as they can, but eventually it starts taking over this old forest.
And it becomes this twisted place where the trees are like, their roots are like claws digging deep and the orcs don't even want to go in there.
And it makes me wonder, is this old forest kind of like a little hint of that?
Or at the very least, it informed Tolkien how he would write The Lord of the Rings, this history he'd already written of Middle-earth with this crazy forest that's dark and dreadful, and no one wants to go in it.
And there's just a little bit of that left here in the third age of Middle-earth and the old forest.
But nobody really knows exactly what it is, but clearly it's not safe, but it's not the ultimate evil that a more goth forest would have been back in the Silmarillion.
What I think is weird about the whole existence of this forest is that it's like right on the border of the shire.
Like they haven't gone anywhere.
Like they just, they just crossed the wall and there's this crazy, weird, wicked place.
Like that is, that Fatty has no desire to go to at all.
You know, he clearly has had some experience with it, or at least has heard all the stories is what they say.
But he would rather meet with black riders and the rest of them are like, oh, yeah, sure.
No, I don't think you're going to want to meet with the black riders once they come here.
Yeah, so Fatty's supposed to hold down the fort and hold off the black rocketers or whatever.
And Pippin's like, I would rather have our job than Fatty's waiting for the black riders.
And Fatty's like, well, wait till you're in the forest.
You'll wish you were back here with me before this time tomorrow, which turns out to be a bit of a prophecy.
All right, well, we're moving into the old forest chapter.
The one thing I do, I think maybe before we move into that is the dream that Frodo has.
That's what I was going to say.
Oh.
So just let me finish my sentence.
I don't know what the dream means.
So you talk.
Yeah.
Chewy Road.
So he has this dream.
He's looking out of a high window over a dark sea of tangled trees and he hears the crawling and snuffling.
And then he hears a noise in the distance and he hears the sea, something he's never actually heard in real life.
And it says he's often been troubled in his dreams by the sound of the sea, even though he's never heard it.
Yeah.
And then it says a great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the sea.
Yeah.
So he finds he's out in the open.
He's on a dark heath and there was a strange salt smell and he sees a tall white tower standing alone on a high ridge.
He wants to climb and he wants to see the sea.
And suddenly a light came in the sky and there was a noise of thunder.
Yeah, so there are a couple of theories about this.
One that the first popped in my head and then after I did a little research too, but one that came up was there's a tower that holds what held one of the Palantirs, the seeing stars.
And it was always turned westward toward the sea.
I think Elosterian or something like that.
And it might be to that, but I think even more, or it might be, there's other things.
It's a lot of the sea, right?
But the longing of the sea is something that the elves had, the ones that crossed over from Valenor back into Middle-earth and now they have a sea longing.
And so I think for Frodo, it's sort of, it's a little bit of foreshadowing of what ends up happening to him at the end is that there is for him, he's one of the few that gets to cross over the sea.
And so he has that desire already, either because of the ring or because of fate, but something to cross over and be part of the undying lands.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's no, I mean, it's like one of those things.
There's no real answer.
We can interpret and we can like look at it.
It sounds to me like he had one too many mushrooms.
And beers.
Yeah.
Yeah, I definitely get that.
And then the snuffling, maybe the creatures of the old forest.
I think one thing is interesting, it says he started to struggle up the ridge towards the tower, but suddenly a light came in the sky and there was a noise of thunder.
So I spent all this time trying to figure out what this means.
And then if you flip to the next chapter, it goes, Frodo woke suddenly.
It was still dark in the room.
Mary was staying there with a candle in one hand, banging on the door.
I think that's what it is.
So I think the thunder and the lightning is just Mary coming in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sometimes you can read a little too much into things.
So basically Frodo is anxious and stressed out.
Yeah.
When you're anxious and stressed out, that's when you have all these weird, vivid dreams.
They don't really, you don't even know what they mean usually.
What a great bit of foreshadowing, too, that he's got this sea desire, you know, and he smells salt.
He doesn't even know what the sea smells like.
He hears the sea and he's never heard it before.
That's very interesting to me.
All right, well, let's move on to chapter six: The Old Forest.
So Mary wakes him up, and it's time to get up.
It's half past four and very foggy.
Sam's getting breakfast ready, and they're going to saddle up the ponies and get going.
So now we're at the trip into the old forest.
And this is where they part with Fatty, right?
So that they move on, they get into the forest, and immediately there's an oppression.
It's almost like the one feeling I felt like throughout this whole chapter is when they're in the forest, they're like, it's almost like they're underwater.
The sounds thud in their ears, and they feel like it's hard to move.
Yeah, the air is hot.
The air is hot.
There's a couple of times where they just completely break and just start, you know, freaking out a little bit.
I think Frodo.
And the sleepiness that comes over them, there's just this kind of spell over this place.
Yeah.
He says the forest is queer.
Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on, so to speak, than things are in the Shire.
And the trees do not like strangers.
They watch you.
I mean, how creepy is this?
Yeah.
And I, you know, you were talking about how we go from the safety of the shire immediately into this insanely wild place.
And I do think it's interesting how Tilkin is kind of progressively introducing us to greater and greater dangers, higher risks, higher stakes as we go on.
And this is one example where we're going to have this adventure to rest cycle.
And these cycles get larger as the book goes on.
You have these short little trips, and then there's a safe house, and then a little bit longer trip in a safe house, and then a long trip in a safe house.
So he's kind of introduced.
This is where you get into that rhythm.
It's where you can start.
I mean, as a reader, just subconsciously, you can start to expect they're going to get through this crazy time.
And then there's something beautiful waiting for us at the end of that.
So the trees are whispering to each other.
They're talking to each other.
They're moving around.
And Pippin can't stand it.
And that one line where he said, where they say, where Tolkien writes, Pippen suddenly felt that he could not bear it any longer and without warning let out a shout, Oi, oi, he cried, I'm not going to do anything.
Just let me pass through, will you?
And I think we identify with that, that when you're when the darkness is closing in on you, you just want to like somehow, you know, break out of the claustrophobia, and that's what he's trying to do.
But then the cry fell as if muffled by a heavy curtain.
Like you can't do anything.
I love the detail in this chapter where there's a point where they realize, okay, well, we need to break left and go towards that way.
Yeah, they get to that hill and they see we need to go over there to get to the east side.
That's the way we need to go.
We don't want to go that way because that's where the forest gets really weird.
Yeah.
And then where the Withywindle River is running.
That's the oldest part of the forest.
Don't go there.
And so they're trying to go left.
They're trying to go left.
And every path they take, it's like the trees get closer and closer.
They bunch in and then they keep going right.
The path always goes right.
And no matter how hard they want to go left, it keeps directing them a certain way.
That's the creepiest part about the forest to me is that it's just like the whole time they're in it, it's just, it's in control.
I mean, from a literary standpoint, if the author goes, don't go to that dark place.
No, the characters are going to end in the dark.
That's the shadowy place, Simba.
Oh, look, here's a path.
Who made the path?
I don't know.
Let's follow it.
Yeah.
They end up all turned around.
Yeah, so they end up kind of in this dark, thick part of the forest when they were trying to get to the part that thinned out and led up towards the east road.
So they lose all sense of direction.
The sun is kind of starting to go down.
The afternoon is starting to fade.
And it's looking grim.
They're not going to make it out of this place.
They're worried.
And they start to get tired.
And they start to stumble.
And stumble and get sleepy.
And there's a point at which, you know, I think it's Pippin who falls first.
Pippin, Mary and Pippin Dragons lay down with the backs of the willow trunk.
And so it's sort of like they it's like they've they've come to the center point of the heavy curtain falling on them.
There's nothing they can do anymore at all in order to move forward.
But interestingly, the only one who doesn't really fall under its spell is Sam, which lends itself again to the hero that isn't the grand hero.
Yeah, there is that part where Sam says there's more behind this than sun and warm air, he muttered to himself.
So he's starting to feel the effects.
Like, I'm tired.
Why?
I don't like this great big tree.
I don't trust it.
Hark at it singing about sleep now.
This won't do at all.
So it's like this tree is like.
So they lean up against this old willow tree to go to sleep.
Yeah.
And it's like a nightmare, man.
I think this is creeping out more than anything else in the Lord of the Rings.
So it's being what happens to Mary and Pippin.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So they lean against the tree and then behind them, the great cracks gaped wide to receive them as the tree swayed and creaked.
They looked up at the gray and yellow leaves moving softly against the light and singing.
So they shut their eyes and then it seemed that they could almost hear words, cool words, saying something about water and sleep.
They gave themselves up to the spell and fell fast asleep at the foot of the great gray willow.
And then Sam, when Sam comes back from grabbing the ponies, he finds out that they're like trapped inside.
So Frodo is down trying to take a drink from the creek or whatever.
Yeah.
And he comes back and he notices that this root is like in the water and where's Frodo?
It's like pushing him down.
He's under the root.
So this tree is literally, and then it opens up and swallows Mary and Pippin in the trunk, kind of crack these little nooks that they're in kind of close around them.
And this big limb just goes like, boom, curb stomp you right near the river.
And so Sam saves Frodo.
Right.
And then they go back and they're trying to figure out how to get these other two out of the tree.
And they have the brilliant idea.
Let's set it on fire.
What about fire?
I don't remember who makes the observation, like, well, what about Mary and Pippin?
They're in the tree.
They would get burned.
One of them says something like that.
Yeah, he says, we might try to hurt and frighten this tree to begin with.
If it don't let them go, I'll have it down.
I'll have it to gnaw if I have to gnaw it.
So that's when Sam goes and gets his tinderboxes and a hatchet and they start gathering it all up.
But Mary cries out from inside the tree, put it out, put it out.
He'll squeeze me in two if you don't.
He says so, which is creepy because the tree's talking to him while he's in the tree.
And that's when Frodo has no idea what to do.
And he just starts yelling out, help, help.
It seemed to him that he could hardly hear the sound of his own shrill voice.
It was blown away from him by the willow wind and drowned in the clamor of leaves as soon as the words left his mouth.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, this is kind of our low moment in the old forest.
He felt desperate, lost and witness.
Sorry, lost and witless.
And then he stops and he hears an answer.
So they're at the very end of their rope and rescue comes.
And it's not like some Lord of Elves singing a majestic song.
So now, yeah, we've got someone singing, Hey Dole, Mary Dole, Ring-a-Dong Dillow.
Ring-a-dong, hop along, follow the willow, Tom-Bomb, Jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo.
And they're like, ah, great, you know.
Yeah.
We needed a hero.
And we get Tom Bombadil.
We got a nonsense song.
I love how Tolkien points out two or three times in this chapter, he's singing nonsense.
I think he uses the word nonsensical nonsense words.
And I like that it says Frodo and Sam are half hopeful and half afraid of some new danger.
Like, oh, crap, there's a crazy homeless guy in the forest.
Murder us and steal our spleens.
Yeah.
What's going to happen here?
But it's song again, right?
It's the song that comes.
It's the restoring songs.
Even if it's a nonsense word, it brings hope.
And as readers, we're kind of like, I remember the first time reading this going, what?
Yeah.
That's different.
But there's a little bit of relief in reading it and seeing that this guy, he's just like happy.
It's the old forest.
It doesn't care.
And so, well, maybe there is some hope.
And right away, the wind puffs.
So Frodon Stamp stood as if enchanted after his longer, which I won't read, his longer song part there where he's talking about Old Man Willow, tuck your roots away.
Where it's a Tolkien writes, the wind puffed out, the leaves hung silently again on stiff branches.
And you can tell, like, Old Man Willow's afraid.
Like, he respects Bombadil.
Bombadil is going to be a, I don't know, Bombadil, I don't want to say control him, but Bombadil has power over him.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like the detail where he like he breaks off a branch and just starts smashing a tree.
Bad tree.
Bad tree.
He's definitely a crackdown hobo.
Screaming at the trees.
More mushrooms.
This is a mushroom skin.
My friends are caught in the willow tree.
Master Mary's being squeezed in a crack.
And he's like, oh, that, he's like, oh, old man Willow, not worse than that, eh?
That can soon be amended.
I know the tune for him.
I'll sing his roots off.
I'll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away.
Old man Willow.
You were talking about how you read this and you go, this is different.
You know, this is something interesting.
What I like about Tolkien is that his world is so fantastical.
So many people have used Tolkien as a template for fantasy novels for their fantasy worlds.
But all they usually get out of it is just kind of like, oh, we've got generic elves, generic dwarves, generic men.
Like he has these rich histories for all these people.
And then he just has these bizarre, fantastic elements that are in him.
And I just love that.
I love that it doesn't have to be some strong elf warrior that comes swinging in on a vine and slashing at the tree or something.
It's like, Tom Bombadil lives here, so they're running into him and he's a weirdo.
And what does Tom do?
He's like, I can beat this guy up with a song.
Yeah, I can sing.
Yeah, I'll sing at him and that'll do it.
He's like, ah, God.
Like, what a great scene.
And again, you know, I know why they cut Bombadil a lot of the movies.
It makes sense.
And you're trying to do this thing.
But I mean, how hilarious would that be to see this little guy going like, ah!
It's like if you look at paintings of Tom Bombadil, like he's got yellow boots and the bright blue feather and the blue jacket.
And you're like, it's not how you'd imagine a grand hero or even much of a character in here.
But maybe because it's so out of place, it's such a relief to have somebody like that.
And I think it goes back to the, to, or goes forward to where they talk about Tom Bombadil in Rivendell, where they're at the Council of Elrond, and they're like, well, let's give it to Bombadil.
And he's like, no, he just doesn't care.
Like, he's not going to do anything.
He'll forget about the ring and throw it aside and be like, ah, the ring, it's a little thing.
And that goes to the point, like, he holds the ring at one point.
Yeah.
He's just like, what?
He's like, oh, look at this little trinket.
And he makes it disappear with his hand and it appears again.
And he's like, oh, but it doesn't do anything to him.
He's so powerful.
He's so a part of it.
And this goes to like, nobody knows who Tom Bombadil.
And there there are like entire paragraphs of, or entire essays.
It feels like books about who is Tom Bombadil and what did Tolkien mean?
And I don't think it's as deep as people really want it to be with Tom Bombadil.
He's a character that was appropriate there, inspired by a toy that his son Michael had.
But he's powerful and he's just a great injection into this of like joy and fun and a character that for me, I can't help but like him the entire time.
Yeah, my favorite part about Tom Bombadil is that nobody knows.
Yeah.
Like there's whole essays like, oh, he's the incarnation of God, or he's an embodiment of nature, and he's this and he's that.
And it's like, no, he's just Tom.
Yeah.
He sings.
That's all.
I'm old man Bombadil.
Come on, kids.
Come to my house.
He's just, yeah, he's just cracked out hobo that lives in the old forest, which is, I'm banking on this interpretation.
I'm not running.
I'm cracked out.
I'm waiting for the article about the cracked hobby.
I'm the cracked out hobo.
It's going to happen.
Oh, man.
Yeah, so I love this.
Again, I don't think Bombadil would fit in Jackson's Middle-earth because Jackson's Middle-earth is serious.
And I mean, he gets some of the mirth and the shire sometimes, but it's trying to be this action movie that's cool.
And what I like about Tom Bombadil is that he's not cool.
We don't need our heroes to be cool.
And it's like he doesn't have a reason.
He's just there enjoying life.
He's getting water lilies for his girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
The river daughter.
I love when they first run into him.
He's like, hey, don't crush my lilies.
That's what's important to him is the lilies.
They're all being choked by the willow tree.
And he's like, hey, hold on there.
Get away from my flowers.
Get away from the flower.
That's so great.
Banging on the tree.
And I love the detail.
So he saves him from the willow tree.
And then he's like, hey, come to my house.
And then he just bolts off.
Yeah.
It's like he just takes off and then he sings, oh, catch up with me.
I'll be at the house.
And, you know, whatever.
You can't catch me.
Yeah.
Like, he just bolts.
It's like he's like on another, kind of like with the elves.
He's like on another level where he's like, he's so above what your concerns are.
And he just runs off.
Like he doesn't even like think about what they're thinking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And as soon as he gone, he's gone.
The hobbits again are like, the forest starts encroaching in on them.
Like they start feeling it.
And if they, Tolkien writes, they caught sight of queer, gnarled and knobby faces that gloom dark against the twilight and leered down at them from the high bank on the edges of the wood.
And so now everything's crawling in.
They're like, we got to get out of here as fast as we can.
And they do.
They end up making it out.
So they make it to Bombadil's house, and that's where the chapter ends.
We hear, you love this prose that when they talk about Goldberry singing.
Yeah, when they hear Goldberry first, he writes, then another clear voice, as young and as ancient as spring, like the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright morning in the hills, came falling like silver to meet them.
And it's funny because in that entire description about her voice, not one adjective that has anything to do with sound is really written, right?
Glad water, bright morning, falling like silver, but the one line, as young and as ancient as spring, like the amount of description in that, where you can feel like, yeah, I get who she is now because she's young.
She's new every year, right?
But spring happens every year.
You can't stop it.
And it's always there.
But spring is always good.
I just love the prose in that line where you get the sense more than you get a description or a prosaic description.
It's a sense of who she is by just the description of her voice.
I love it.
That's fantastic.
All right.
Well, let's conclude with the song that she sings.
Now let the song begin.
Let us sing together of sun, stars, moon, and mist, rain and cloudy weather.
Light on the budding leaf, dew on the feather, wind on the open hill, bells on the heather.
Reeds by the shady pool, lilies on the water, old Tom Bombadil and the river daughter.
And with that song, the hobbits stood upon the threshold and a golden light was all about them.
Fantastic.
Great.
All right.
Well, next week we're going to read In the House of Tom Bombadil, the Tom Bombadil special.
Yep.
Extravaganza.
The Tom Bombadil bonanza.
So read chapter seven in the house of Tom Bombadil and we're going to have a discussion.
One of the most controversial and debated parts and characters in The Lord of the Rings.
Worse than the Balrog.
Worse than the Balrog.
Worse than Barbara.
Whether it has wings or not, is what I was going for.
That's not what people aren't doing.
Oh, I didn't even know that was a thing.
No, he didn't?
Yeah.
Does the Powhog have wings?
I guess I just assumed because that was a big argument when they were making the films, man.
Really?
Are they going to give it wings or not?
Kind of, but not really.
So he didn't really answer the question.
Well, like fire wings or something.
All right.
Thanks for joining us.
If you want to come into the subscriber portion, please subscribe, babylonbee.com slash plans.
We're going to do another half hour here of 20, 30 minutes, whatever, of answering fan mail.
We're going to discuss the chapters more.
I want to talk a little bit about Tolkien and maps because that interests me.
His fascination with maps.
Also, I'm going to take my shirt off and show you guys my new Lord of the Rings tattoo.
Aw, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You got to pay for that, though.
You got to pay for the subscriber section for the whole meeting.
See you, everybody.
All right.
Thank you, guys.
Bye.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
I like your story about getting the tattoo when you were talking about the tattoo artists who are debating about Lord of the Rings.
Oh, yeah.
Basically, any fantasy novel you open nowadays has a map.
And I want to credit Tolkien with that.
I haven't written, read a lot of fantasy before Tolkien, but I can't remember coming across anything that had the detail of his world creation.
Since a lot of it's been cut when I read the books, I do get this joy of like, I get to picture Farmer Maggot and his scene however I want.
Not everything's been taken from us.
Yeah.
Kyle and Dan would like to thank Seth and Dan Dylan for buying us cool swords and paying the bills.
Adam Ford for creating our jobs.
Ethan Nicole for creative direction.
And all the writers at the Babylon Bee.
Matthew McDavid for guiding studio operations.
Patrick Green for show production.
Catlin Patty for Laugh Tracks.
The Babylon Bee subscribers who make what we do possible.
And you, the listener.
Until next time, this is Austin Robertson.
The voice of the Babylon Bee reads The Lord of the Rings.
Reminding you that a time will soon come when hobbits will shape the fortunes of all.