Among other stories begun but soon abandoned was the tale of Tom Bombadil, which is set in “The days of King Bonhedig” and describes a character who is clearly to be the hero of the tale: “Tom Bombadil was the name of one of the oldest inhabitants of the kingdom; but he was a hale and hearty fellow. Four foot high in his boots he was, and three feet broad. He wore a tall hat with a blue feather, his jacket was blue, and his boots were yellow.”
That was as far as the story ever reached on paper, but Tom Bombadil was a well-known figure in the
Tolkien family, for the character was based on a Dutch doll that belonged to Michael. The doll looked very splendid with the feather in its hat, but John did not like it and one day stuffed it down the lavatory. Tom was rescued. and survived to become the hero of a poem by the children's father, "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil”. which was published in the Oxford Magazine in 1934. It tells of Tom's encounters with “
Goldberry, the River-woman's daughter”, with the “Old Man Willow” which shuts him up in a crack of its bole (an idea, Tolkien once said, that probably came in part from Arthur Rackham's tree-drawings), with a family of badgers, and with a “Barrow-wight”, a ghost from a prehistoric grave of the type found on the Berkshire Downs not far from Oxford. By itself, the poem seems like a sketch for something longer, and when possible successors to The
Hobbit were being discussed in 1937 Tolkien suggested to his publishers that he might expand it into a more substantial tale, explaining that Tom Bombadil was intended to represent “the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside”. This idea was not taken up by the publishers, but Tom and his adventures subsequently found their way into
The Lord of the Rings.
