The Bee Reads LOTR Episode 8: Fog on the Barrow-Downs
Kyle and Dan from The Babylon Bee are joined by Jonathan Watson of TheOneRing.Com as they catch up with Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin as they make it to the barrow-downs and immediately run into trouble. There's some ghosties, ancient evil stirring, and newfound courage found in a dark place. The subscriber portion is where all the best content is, so head over to BabylonBee.Com/Plans and sign up to enjoy full-length podcasts! Chapter summary: The hobbits leave Tom Bombadil's house, Frodo almost turns around sad he didn't get to say goodbye, but Goldberry beckons to them from up ahead and sees them off properly. They lunch and accidentally fall asleep in a wide hollow circular area near a shapeless stone- that seemed to be a landmark or warning in its midst. Sinister fog rolls over them, feeling like a trap, and when the hobbits try to make their way out and into the fog they somehow get separated and captured by barrow-wights. Frodo stabs a hand and calls Tom Bombadil with a song. Tom rescues the hobbits and gives them all daggers which are swords for their size, and has his pony fetch their ponies, and then escorts them to the great east road where they just about make it to Bree. Some questions or themes: A line that gets adapted into the movie and put into Gandalf's mouth in Return of the King: "either in dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard 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. The vision melted into waking; and there was Tom whistling like a tree-full of birds; and the sun was already slanting down the hill and through the open window. Outside everything was green and pale gold." Tolkien continues to sprinkle the history of the area throughout this chapter. "Tom said that it (the dike they thought was the road from a distance) had once been the boundary of a kingdom, but a very long time ago. He seemed to remember something sad about it, and would not say much." The Men of Westernesse made their knives.. The brooch Tom finds for Goldberry has a history. The Dark Lord.. "overcome by evil king of Carn Dum in Land of Angmar." 'Few now remember them,' Tom murmured, 'yet still some go wandering, sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folk that are heedless.' The hobbits did not understand his words, but as he spoke they had a vision as it were of a great expanse of years behind them, like a vast shadowy plain over which there strode shapes of Men, tall and grim with bright swords, and last came one with a star on his brow. But even as he spoke he turned his glance eastwards, and he saw that on that side the hills were higher and looked down upon them; and all those hills were crowned with green mounds, and on some were standing stones, pointing upwards like jagged teeth out of green gums. Tom is Master of his domain. He sings the barrow wights away. He removes any curse from the items in the barrow to make them free to all finders. He calls the ponies back. Frodo finds an awakened courage to not leave his friends so easily in the barrow and takes action. "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. Frodo was neither very fat nor very timid; indeed, though he did not know it, Bilbo (and Gandalf) had thought him the best hobbit in the Shire. He thought he had come to the end of his adventure, and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him." The hobbits run around naked on Tom's orders. The power in naming and the evil of namelessness. MAILBAG Laura Hollingsworth caught our attention on Not The Bee Social by making incredible LOTR artwork. Buy her stuff here. Fog On Barrow-Downs specific Comments/Questions General 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
Welcome to the Babylon B reads the Lord of the Rings.
This is Dan Coates, producer of the show.
My co-host Kyle Mann, who's the editor-in-chief.
And then we have Jonathan Watson of theOneRing.com.net.
Thank you all for being here.
We're having a lot of fun on this podcast, I think.
We're getting lots of feedback from you all.
And now we've reached chapter eight, Fog on the Barrow Downs.
And let's dive in.
I must say, you know, I track the news a lot for my job.
And I have to wade through a lot of news in the day.
And my peaceful moment of the week is sitting down and reading the Lord of the Rings chapter, I think.
There is a little better.
And this week, I got goosebumps like four times while reading the chapter.
Just Tolkien's prose.
So great.
I mean, let's start right in the beginning when Frodo has the dream in the house of Bombadil.
Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind, a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a gray 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.
No spoilers.
Well, maybe we can spoil it.
I think we're past the statute of limitations on spoilers, but it's a foreshadowing of what happens at the end of the book.
And Frodo has had a few dreams like this where he kind of sees maybe what's coming.
Just fantastic.
There I go.
I got the chills again.
It was such a wonderful line that they actually put it in the movie.
Yeah.
Wrong wrong context, different character, but they still tried to put that phrase back in there.
And I missed that in this part, there's actually a song intertwined.
And we've talked about the significance of song in Middle-earth and to Tolkien.
And he hears a sweet singing running in his mind.
And the song seems to come like a pale light behind this curtain.
So he's like hearing this song through this gray curtain, you know, as in the end of the book, as they're sailing into Valencia.
They just weave that, or Tolkien weaves that into everything.
And we can see that as we move into the chapter, how it's used so often, too.
And the point at which this is used at the end of the book is right, I think it's right at the Greyhaven when they leave.
And it's a direct reference.
So there's no questions about anymore about what this actually means.
Yeah.
The way he writes it, the far green country under Swift Sunrise, it's like it leaves a little bit to your imagination, but not enough where you don't get sort of the goosebumps.
There they are again.
Look at that.
You can see.
Have a gun.
Right above your always tattoos.
I notice it.
All right.
So from a plot perspective, this is their farewell to Bombadil.
And they're walking and he kind of directs them and they're trying to avoid the Barrow Downs and they're going up, I think, northwest or northeast is where they're trying to get up to the East Road.
But stay away from the Barrow Downs.
Don't go into the Barrow Downs.
But they can't, like, I find it interesting that Frodo can't turn away without looking back at Goldberry.
And he's like, oh no, I didn't say I didn't say goodbye.
But then when he says I didn't say goodbye, I can't say anything anymore.
He's silent.
She says something to him.
I can't remember.
Yeah, she actually meets him on the way.
She says, farewell, a friend.
It was a merry meeting, but Frodo had found no words to answer.
He just bowed low and mounted his ponies and followed his friend.
So he's like, it's like getting tongue-tied trying to ask a girl out.
Like, what do you do?
He's like, you just turn around and go.
So, yeah.
Goldberry holds a special place, obviously, in Frodo's art and in Tom Bombadil's heart because he always has to get back to her.
But I like that last little callback to Goldberry and the effect that she has on him.
Well, we were talking before about how well Tolkien writes horror, you know, and it wouldn't be in the genre of horror, but he definitely flirts with that in terms of how well he writes this foreboding atmosphere.
We've got the mist rolling in that comes during the chapter.
They see these stones, and I forget the exact language he uses, but he kind of describes them like teeth coming out of green gums.
Yeah, pointing upwards like jagged teeth out of green gums, like it's going to eat them.
Isn't that fantastic?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they're just walking and they see these stones and they've been warned.
And there's almost something mystical about it where they can feel like there's something dark and evil here.
We, as the reader, have been warned, so we know there's something going on.
Yeah.
And he hints at that when he says it was cool, the stone that they were sitting next to to eat.
It was cool as if the sun had no power to warm it.
But at the time, this seemed pleasant.
So they said, it's okay, it's cool.
But somehow the sun couldn't even affect it.
It was so the evil had ingested evil in that area.
So how many times now has the fellowship gotten in trouble for sitting down after eating?
It's almost like this is just a morality tale.
Like, don't sit down and rest.
Yeah.
It's like a fairy tale for us.
Yeah, Tolkien even says, like, it looks like it's a landmark or a warning, but they still go to it anyway.
Like, oh, this looks like a good place to sit down and have a snack.
And so then they accidentally fall asleep.
And then when they wake up, the fog's rolling in.
Yeah.
And they realize, uh-oh, we made a mistake here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's obviously something going on there.
Like, it's not a natural fog and not a natural, that's not just that they waited.
Yeah, it's like water rising and you're standing on an island and eventually it's going to overcome you, which reminds me of like, I think it was Mary's dream where he feels like the water's coming in on him and he's going to drown.
And I was, I thought, maybe that's a little bit of a foreshadowing to this here and that.
Yeah.
They're drowning in the mist at some point, right?
It just comes all over them.
And then they just kind of pick a direction and say, it's got to be that way.
Yeah.
I think in the pros, it says like it feels like a trap.
Yeah.
And then they're like, okay, well, we got to get out of here.
This is not good.
And they start going off in a direction and they start realizing they have to follow each other like single file because otherwise they get lost.
And so the narrative kind of just starts to follow Frodo because they get separated in this fog.
And so we just see it from his perspective.
And yeah, he's calling out, where are you guys?
Sam, Mary, come along.
Why don't you keep up?
And then no answer.
And man, if this feel like this could have been the scariest part of the movies if they had taken the time to actually like the thin voices coming out of the air and the fog rolling in and then the oh man.
And you think about the parts that they did well cinematically that were so filled with that kind of sense of horror, like the Halls of the Dead or the swamps, the marshes.
The dead marshes.
That kind of stuff.
They did pretty well at in terms of the tone and like the darkness and how scary that is.
And this could have been, I mean, geez.
I think it'd be a total love of hire because you're in there with Frodo completely alone and hearing thin voices coming out of the air and you're not sure if it's your friends or if it's something else calling you back.
It's almost like he goes into the upside down because like they're following single file and all of a sudden he's all alone and then he's walking through these two pillars that look like a doorway with no top.
And then later on in the chapter when they get out of the jam that they're in, he's looking for it and he doesn't see it.
He's looking for those two pillars and doesn't see them.
So it's like he gets cut off from everybody else and then he walks to these pillars and then he just instantly knows I'm not where I'm supposed to be.
So it says out of the east the biting wind was blowing to his right there loomed against the westward stars a dark black shape.
A great barrow stood there.
I mean, I just like all of a sudden this barrow forms.
Yeah.
I mean, how fantastic is that?
Here, said a voice deep and cold that seemed to come out of the ground.
I am waiting for you.
Holy cow.
And it's like a nightmare now because Frodo says, No, but he didn't run away.
He just, his knees just buckled.
It's like, when I was a kid, I had it, I always had a nightmare of like crossing a street and I couldn't get up on the curb.
It was like I was crawling up and I just couldn't get up on the curb.
And it was this recurring nightmare.
And this reminded me of that, where he's like, he's like, no, I got to do this.
But then he just buckles and he's down.
Yeah.
Nothing happened and there was no sound.
Trembling, he looked up in time to see a tall, dark figure like a shadow against the stars.
It leaned over him.
He thought there were two eyes, very cold, though lit with a pale light that seemed to come from some remote distance.
Then a grip, stronger and colder than iron, seized him.
The icy touch froze his bones and he remembered no more.
Holy cow.
Yeah, this is not the one you read in church.
Well, the pastor's going to use this one for an illustration.
It would be a great illustration.
Why didn't they do this?
Hobbits in the hands of an angry spirit.
An angry white.
You're an angry white.
Yes, right.
Okay, so they wake up and they're in the barrow.
Well, actually, only Frodo wakes up at this point.
Yeah, the other three are like out cold.
They kind of have like a pale, sickly look about them.
I mean, Frodo sees them all there, and they're not wearing their clothes anymore.
Their hands are covered in rings.
They're wearing a circlet on their heads.
And there's one, they're all horizontal or like side by side with one long sword draped across their neck.
And I'm like, I don't know what the significance of that is, but that is another thing.
You're like, I don't know what they're chopping their heads off.
Yeah, I don't know what the white plan is here.
Yeah, right, right.
So the Barrow Whites, they're spirits that have been stirred up by Sauron.
Essentially, the Dark Lord has come back, and these spirits are all stirring in their grave.
Are these like fallen people from the wars of the past?
Or if I remember right, a white, I think, is just a spirit, a spirit of a tomb or a spirit of the ground, the land, or something like that.
But clearly, this one has been corrupted by the Dark Lord because in his incantation, he does say, Let them lie till the Dark Lord lifts his hand over Dead Sea and withered land.
So he references directly the Dark Lord.
But the things that the Hobbits are dressed in are not the whites' outfits.
It's the men of Numenor, essentially.
And because that's all the gold, that's all the stuff that's in there.
Is the, you know, the swords and all that is from the men of Numenor, the men of Westernness, which we learned later actually in the chapter.
So did the Barrow Whites have like a white supremacy movement?
No.
No, but clearly they were fragile.
Since Ethan isn't on this podcast, you've got to have a lot of fun.
I'm trying to fill in.
So we hear this.
So it says this green light, like green, not light, but like a glow is growing around him.
And so it's like he's, I don't know if it's eyes adjusting to the light or if it's this white kind of moving in that he just sees this cold green glow.
And then he hears a cold murmur and a voice that seems far away like moaning.
And he hears a stream of sad and horrible sounds.
Grim, hard, cold words.
It says it's like the night railing against the morning or the cold cursing the warmth.
And he was chilled to the bone.
And the song becomes clearer.
And then the song morphs into an incantation.
And it says, Cold be hand and hardened bone, and cold be sleep under stone.
Nevermore to wake on stony bed.
Never till the sun fails and the moon is dead.
In the black wind, the stars shall die, and still on gold here let them lie till the dark lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land.
What a master Tolkien is, huh?
I don't write him like this anymore.
There's my chill.
That's chill number two.
Hit the chill counter on the screen, please.
And so he hears this.
So imagine lying in this cold, like tomb with your friends that are all unconscious and you can't move.
You're frozen in fear.
And you see a green light, a cold green light starts to grow.
And you hear like and you start to make out and singing.
I mean, it's like singing.
And then all of a sudden you hear these words coming out that basically say, you're going to die here.
You know, like how insane is that?
And then he hears a creaking and scraping sound.
And so they're kind of like in this passage.
So he sees around the corner, slowly, this long arm that is walking on its fingers towards Sam.
Dude, that's must be between him and this corner.
Holy smokes.
It's like what I do to chills number three.
It's like what I do to scare my kids.
You slowly scrape on their door at night.
I mean, not that I do it often.
Yeah, but you're right.
But it's the way the fear of that sound alone, like something slowly coming to get to you.
And the way that he describes it, and then you see this hand, I would imagine slightly glowing hand a little bit or something that, you know, completely unearthly, but somehow corporeal still coming at him.
And this is the point, though.
This is the point at which I think Frodo first, he, well, to quote Shakespeare, he screws his courage to the sticking place, right?
He grabs it and he realizes, I can't not do what I need to do here.
Yeah, so thematically, I just wanted to talk about how, to me, this was the part that hit the hardest of the chapter is Frodo lying there in fear.
You had mentioned how when we were talking before, the podcast started about how he pictures, and I think you mentioned it, he pictures Gandalf, he pictures his way of escape of putting on the ring.
Yeah, he said, oh, even Gandalf would understand if I just booked it out of here and left my friends behind.
Yeah, he'd understand.
He's bargaining.
He's like, yeah, you know what?
Yeah.
No one would blame me if I just booked it in this moment.
Yeah, and then right after that thought, it says, but courage that had been awakened in him was now too strong.
He could not leave his friends so easily.
He wavered, groping in his pocket, and then fought with himself again.
And as he did so, the arm crept nearer.
Suddenly, resolve hardened in him and he seized a short sword that lay beside him.
And kneeling, he stooped low over the bodies of his companions.
And I think going on, it kind of goes on.
Yeah, so he grabs the sword, right?
And actually hews at the arm, breaking off the hand, and the sword breaks.
So he cuts off the he cuts off the hand and the sword shatters.
There was a shriek and the light vanished.
So I actually picture this as this light is actually kind of because this is his growing light.
It's coming from this white who's moving in.
So you're like, oh, I can see something.
And then you see, oh, something's coming down this corridor and it's singing.
And then there's this hand moving in.
And he's, so he awakens this courage.
And boom.
I mean, what a great moment that is.
What a great character moment for Frodo.
I really do see his strength here in the book.
And I love that the desperation is what awakens it.
And I think this is true for a lot of people.
Like when you're cornered, it's like, you know what?
What do I have left to lose but to fight?
I think that's just fantastic.
I'm trying to find it in my book right now, but I think this quote is in the chapter.
It says, 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.
Frodo was neither very fat nor very timid indeed, though he did not know it.
Bilbo and Gandalf had thought the best, him the best hobbit in the Shire.
He thought he had come to the end of the adventure and a terrible end, but the thought hardened him.
So kind of like when he got pushed up into the corner, that's when he realized, I got to toughen up and I got to get out of here.
Yeah, he mentions that before.
And then right here, and then he calls back to it.
Yeah.
He says, that's where it was.
Now the courage finally awakened in him.
So he hints at it and then he brings it up.
I just love that.
And I love that he does it before he calls out to Tom Bombadil.
Yeah.
So that it's not like, okay, now I've got a backup coming.
He's like, he has his moment and then he's like, oh, yeah.
And Tom.
It's like he's got his, it's like Tom's his sidekick now.
He made the first move.
Yeah.
So he calls, now he sings for Tom Bombadil the song that was given.
This is our Chekhov's gun moment where we know the song exists, so it's got to be used.
And here it is.
So he sings the song to summon Bombadil.
And I did mention when we were talking before about how I love that these dueling songs, the song of the dead, the white, of the white, this hopeless song.
And then he calls and sings for Tom Bombadil, who we know represents goodness and beauty and truth.
And there's these dueling songs in this moment, which is very Tolkien-esque.
Which is very Tolkien-esque in the fact that in the very beginning of the Silmarillion, the song of Melkor, Dark Lord, right, is against the beautiful song of, but they weave it together in the end to create this.
But here, the songs battle again.
And even then, he doesn't really call it a song so much as an incantation.
Yeah.
Which is kind of, you know, it lessens it just a little bit by calling it that, I think.
Yeah, that there's melody in the goodness.
Yeah.
And the badness kind of just this monotone.
It's a rap.
It's hip-hop is what it is.
So the Cimmerillion is the Old Testament for the Lord of the Rings.
There's a creation song at the beginning.
There is.
Yes.
Right.
Yeah.
The song of the song of milk.
What was it?
The song of Milnaphor.
Smell of Milkor.
Milk.
Not like rap core.
Yeah, the Dark Lord Morgoth.
So the world was created by song by these angels and the God.
And then one of the angels who decided to create his own song because he wanted to take control.
And so that song of the disharmony in there was weaved into the harmony of the others and the world was created, but it was created with things that were not necessarily always just pure and good.
But it was a song.
And so the song, again, comes back to being so important here.
I love how Tom Bombadil shows up in his part of the song as just like joyful nonsense.
Hey, ho, married all.
And that's what destroys the darkness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even later where he says, you know, he was singing an ancient language whose words were mainly those of wonder and delight, but they couldn't understand any of it.
Like speaking in tongues or something.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
Bombadil kicks the door down, comes in.
We see the light of day come streaming in.
What a great moment.
And this is very Tolkien-esque.
He loves these big moments of just when all hope is lost, the hero arrives or finds a strength within himself or remembers this lifeline that he has.
And we see this throw out and we'll see this again.
But yeah, and I love the contrast between this dead, cold, white, all serious, and I'm going to kill you and I have all the power.
And then goofy Bombadil comes vincent in.
Oh, there's ghosties in here.
Go away, ghosties.
And he's like, and then there's that detail where there's a cry from the part of the inner end of the chamber and it falls in with a crash.
And then there's a long trailing shriek fading away into an unguessable distance.
And after that, silence.
So like this, this guy that was going to kill the hobbits a second ago is like bailing out of there because he can't be in the same room as Tom.
Just really cool detail.
Yeah, so then he sees, as Frodo leaves, he sees a severed hand wriggling like a wounded spider in a heap of fallen earth.
And then Tom goes back in and you hear thumping and stamping.
So is he like, well, yeah, or he's just like, he's just so big, it's like maybe like Gandalf in a hobbit hole, right?
He's just bouncing around.
He's like, oh, I just got to pick that up.
I'm like, oh, I'm ahead.
And then walk over.
And then he just comes out with all this loot.
So let me bring up one question, though.
So was the hand connected to a larger body at some point?
Because he never really says it's disconnected completely.
He cuts it off, and he sees it walking, almost like maybe a ring wraith crawling over the ground.
But was the hand connected to a larger form?
Just as an aside.
Yeah, because when he's coming around the corner, what I originally pictured when I first read this passage was that there's something coming over the corner.
And it's not just the hand like walking, like in the Adam's family or something like walking on a table.
Yeah, I don't think it's.
It's like one of those wall decorations you get at the Halloween store.
Yeah.
You reach in for the candy and it's like, ah!
No, I think it's a full thing that's coming around and it just reaching around the corner and that's all you see.
And again, this is Tolkien's master of using the language to scare you because if he had just described the guy standing there, that's one thing.
But to see like the hand and you don't know what's behind that, like how fantastic.
Chills.
Number four.
I think.
Three.
Three.
So Tom Bombadil sings a song, waking up the hobbits.
And they've been dreaming or maybe not dreaming.
They don't quite remember what happened, it seems like.
Like they've been living another life a little bit, maybe.
And there was something weird about it, right?
He says, the men of Karndum came on us at, that's in Mary.
The men of Karndum came on us at night and we were worsted.
The spear in my heart.
No, what am I saying?
I'm dreaming.
Where did you get to, Frodo?
So he almost like relives the life of these men that were here.
Yeah, yeah.
He died as like, what I'm guessing, or sorry, what I'm intimating from all my knowledge in the past readings is that these are men of Numenor, Westernists, right?
That he's essentially become like he remembers now dying and he's died from the people from the men who were in league with Sauron a couple thousand years ago, right?
And so this barrow has all this armor and jewelry from the men of Numenor that they were dressed in, is the way that I'm I see it here.
So is the Barrow White like a cursed spirit that was part of that or part of those men that fell there?
Or is it just a connected to it somehow?
I mean, remember, the Barrow White was first created by Tolkien before he wrote The Hobbit when he wrote, you know, the story of Tom Bombadil.
And the Barrow White was his enemy.
It was his nemesis in that.
And so he gets caught in the Barrow Downs in a barrow with the Barrow White and has to defeat it there too.
So the Barrow White was sort of outside of the Lord of the Rings.
He just brought it in, like he brought in Tom Bombadil, but brought it in with the history of what happened before too, with all his Numenorian and other history of Middle-earth.
Just that little bit.
Cool.
So Tom Bombadil goes, you won't find your clothes again.
And he's dancing around because they've all been put in these like white robes and all this stuff.
And he's dancing around.
Yeah, I like the hobbits.
Like, what?
What do you mean?
What are you talking about?
Why can't I just find my clothes?
So then this is where he tells them.
And then he saw them dance around naked.
Cast off your cold rags.
Run naked on the grass while Tom goes hunting.
I like the crazy hobo theory at this point.
I think it's looking pretty good hobo.
Yeah.
And then Tom runs away.
And Tom returns and he brings six ponies, their own five and one more.
And the last was plainly old Fatty Lumpkin.
Larger, stronger, fatter, and older than the other ponies.
I don't know how much time we have to discuss this, but it's interesting, and I would mention this to you, but that Bombadil gives them names and it says they answer to those names for the rest of their lives.
So we talked about Bombadil kind of being this Adam character and how Adam names the animals in the garden.
And then we have Tom Bombadil naming these, and there's a power in the naming.
There's an authority in the naming that he has dominion over them.
And I had talked about too, and I don't remember if I've mentioned this on the show, but Tolkien associates namelessness with evil in a lot of places.
The old twisted evil trees in the old forest, he says some of them were nameless trees.
There's another mention of the shadow of the past where he talks about nameless evils.
Yeah, when they're talking about the evils that are creeping into the shire, it says some of them had no name.
And then later on, Gandalf talks about the things that gnaw the earth when he falls into Moria are nameless things.
And I think that for Tolkien, a linguistic scholar, like the worst possible thing would be not to have a name.
And so I think he associates that.
It's just an interesting element to me.
Yeah, and I think he does mention that a little bit in here when he says, sons of forgotten kings.
You lose any power when you lose.
There's no identity in there.
There's no identity.
Mystery.
Best way of putting it.
So they kind of have a second goodbye with Bombadil here towards the end of the chapter.
And there's a sadness associated with it.
Of course, now that Bombadil has saved them, they're like, do we really want to leave the sky?
It's just code.
Yeah, it's really interesting where Bombadil at some point says, I can't go any further.
You have to go on by yourself.
It's like, I don't leave the boundary of my land.
And he's master of this domain.
But if you go to Bree, I'm not going to help you.
Yeah, Tom's country ends here.
He will not pass the borders.
Tom has his house to mind and Goldberry's waiting.
He's like, I got a hot wife back home.
I'm staying here, man.
I'm not going for beer.
This is something better waiting for you back there.
Another significant thing as we get close to wrapping up is the swords that the hobbits are given.
So we now have these swords, and they're actually much more interesting than you see in the films.
They have like a red and gold inlaid in them.
And they are forged by the men of Numenor, which is important because they were fighting the Witch King.
And what does Mary stab the Witch King with in Return of the King?
These swords that were designed to fight the Witch King.
You don't get that in the movie because in the movie, Aragorn goes, hey, I found some swords.
Here you go.
Went to Walmart, picked up some swords for you.
You can't stab the Witch King with a Kirkland sword.
You got to have the real brand name.
And that's why that's significant.
I think it's kind of, this whole chapter feels like me, to me, like a missed opportunity for the movies.
Though I understand you can't really do it without Tom Bombadil, maybe you can, but the horror element of it, the depth of where their swords come from, you know, losing their clothes.
Yeah.
Oh, and by the way, they get new clothes.
They're not going around naked.
The rest of the Tom brings the ponies.
The ponies have all their powder-packed supply.
But it says that they have to put on like their winter clothes because they're sitting right there on parkas, and it's hot.
So they leave, and it says, before them rose Bree Hill barring the way a dark mass against misty stars under its western flank nestled the large village.
Towards it, they now hurried, desiring only to find a fire and a door between them and the night.
There's some great pros right there.
So next chapter, we're going to talk about Bree and the prancing pony.
And I think Bombadil actually tells them, go to the prancing pony.
Butterberg, he actually specifically mentions Butterberg.
Again, not Gandalf.
Bombadil mentions Butterbird.
Yeah.
Yeah, Bombadil is the one who mentions it, which I had forgotten, not having read the film.
You see the film so many times, you start forgetting and things start conflating together.
Yeah.
So, I mean, this is kind of the closing of this one arc.
This, you know, bad stuff happens.
We have the hero that comes and saves him.
And now we're going on to this inn that's coming up.
This is the end of the little Bombadil.
Completely out of the Shire.
No more.
No more anything of what they know.
Yeah, and I love the teaser of like, there's big people there.
There's the big people are there.
And now we're going out into the wider world.
Fantastic.
The main thing I really liked about this chapter was just all the history that Tolkien weaves in, like The stones on the hills and like the landmarks and the just the barrel, the barrows themselves.
And Tom seems to know things about like the objects that he picks up.
Like there's that brooch that he picks up out of the out of the treasure pile.
Yeah, doesn't he bring it?
He kind of shakes his head as if he's remembering something.
He's like, oh, this will be good for my lady.
Yeah.
The person who wore this a long time ago was special or something.
He says something like that.
So the way Tolkien, just like in every chapter so far, it's like everything's in a context.
Everything's got a lot more history than you're reading just in your hands.
So I really love that about this chapter.
All right, let's break to the subscriber in and pub.
If you're not a subscriber, subscribe so you can interact with us on comments on BabylonBee.com and we'll do that.
We also have some cool fan art that I would like to feature.
And we're going to ask her if it's okay, but we're going to throw up.
We have some of the that's on our Not the Bee social network that is doing a painting or drawing for most of the discussions that we're doing.
Digital drawing or whatever it is.
And it's beautiful, fantastic stuff.
So we're going to take a look really cool.
We're going to try to buy some and have it in the office here.
Yeah, we'd love to hang some of these up and that's be awesome.
So all right, everybody.
All right.
Thanks for joining us.
And oh, you got to read Prince at the end of the sign of the Princeton Pony, right?
Yep.
At the sign at the Sign of the Princeton Pony, chapter nine for next week.
All right, guys.
Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Babylon B Reads Lord of the Rings for next week.
I know Kyle said read chapter nine, but we're reading chapter nine and chapter ten.
So you want to read at the sign of the prancing pony and strider.
We'll see you next week.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
All right, so Laura Hollingsworth is a fan that is on our not the Be social site and she was following along with the podcast and she did a piece of art for every chapter that we were going through and they're just beautiful.
So there is that element.
I'll agree with that.
Look, Patrick's arguing with her.
Can you explain that?
Explain yourself.
Defend yourself.
In not making this allegory, Tolkien actually broadens the audience quite a bit.
Well, and you limit yourself once you start saying, I'm writing an allegory.
The boundaries around what you can write are kind of set.
Yeah, I mean, Pilgrim's Progress is fantastic.
Look, it's good for what it is.
And what it is is something to avoid.
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.