Tom Bombadil the Kingfisher

In my last post, I wrote that Tom Bombadil can be said to represent Arda Unmarred. In this post, I want to talk about what kind of person Tom is and one of the ways Tolkien subtly communicates this to us. When we first meet Tom in The Lord of the Rings, he has a blue feather in his hat:

There was another burst of song, and then suddenly, hopping and dancing along the path, there appeared above the reeds an old battered hat with a tall crown and a long blue feather stuck in the band. With another hop and a bound there came into view a man, or so it seemed.

At first glance, it seems like there’s nothing special about this blue feather, and it’s quite easy to read past it without thinking of it. More famously remembered are the other aspects of Tom’s wardrobe: “bright blue his jacket is and his boots are yellow.” So, maybe the feather just matches his jacket? The blue feather, however, has an origin story written by Tolkien. In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, the eponymous first poem introduces Tom and he has a (white) swan feather in his hat, not a blue feather:

Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow; 
bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow, 
green were his girdle and his breeches all of leather; 
he wore in his tall hat a swan-wing feather. 

Then, in the second poem called “Bombadil Goes Boating,” Tom meets a kingfisher bird who lightly mocks him. As Holly Ordway notes, a kingfisher is “a small bird with brightly colored blue and rust-red plumage; it lives by rivers and hunts by flying above the water and then diving steeply down into the water to catch fish.” Tom snaps back at the bird and the bird flies away, but as it leaves the bird drops a “jewel-blue feather” and Tom puts it in his hat, “the old feather casting [away]”:

‘Tee hee! Cocky Tom! Mind your tub don’t founder! 
Look out for willow-snags! I’d laugh to see you flounder.’ 
‘Talk less, Fisher Blue! Keep your kindly wishes! 
Fly off and preen yourself with the bones of fishes! 
Gay lord on your bough, at home a dirty varlet 
living in a sloven house, though your breast be scarlet. 
I’ve heard of fisher-birds beak in air a-dangling 
to show how the wind is set: that’s an end of angling!’ 
The King’s fisher shut his beak, winked his eye, as singing 
Tom passed under bough. Flash! then he went winging; 
dropped down jewel-blue a feather, and Tom caught it 
gleaming in a sun-ray: a pretty gift he thought it. 
He stuck it in his tall hat, the old feather casting: 
‘Blue now for Tom,’ he said, ‘a merry hue and lasting!’

And we know that Tolkien was very particular about the color of the feather because he made it a point (in Letter 240) to correct illustrator Pauline Baynes when she illustrated Tom as wearing a peacock feather:

The peacock’s feather belongs to an old draft. Being unsuitable to the L.R. this becomes in the L.R. (I p. 130) ‘a long blue feather’. In the poems as now to be published Tom appears (in line 4 of the first poem) with a ‘swan-wing feather’: to increase the riverishness, and to allow for the incident in the second poem, the gift of a blue feather by the king’s fisher. That incident also explains the blue feather of the L.R. Poem one is evidently, as said in the introduction, a hobbit-version of things long before the days of the L.R. But the second poem refers to the days of growing shadow, before Frodo set out (as the consultation with Maggot shows: cf. L.R.I p. 143). When therefore Tom appears in the L.R. he is wearing a blue feather. As far as you are concerned peacocks are out. A swan-feather in the first poem; and a blue one
after the kingfisher incident.

So what is the meaning of the blue kingfisher feather? In the same letter, Tolkien explains the symbolism he is conveying, etymologically derived of course:

I found that the bird’s name did not mean, as I had supposed, ‘a King that fishes’. It was originally the king’s fisher. That links the swan (traditionally the property of the King) with the fisher-bird; explains both their rivalry, and their special friendship with Tom: they were creatures who looked for the return of their rightful Lord, the true King.

We see this “waiting for the return of the King” symbolism explicitly referenced by Tom in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil when Tom later sees the swan after he has traded its feather for the kingfisher’s:

If one day the King returns, in upping he may take you, 
brand your yellow bill, and less lordly make you!

All well and good. So Tom’s feather is a symbol of the Return of the King, foreshadowing the end of The Lord of the Rings when Aragorn returns. But I think there’s a bit more to it than that. Tolkien comments that the attention he pays to this small detail of the feather’s color and origin is a “donnish detail” that “is just a private pleasure which I do not expect anyone to notice.” Tolkien has given this feather a good deal of thought. He has given Tom two bird feathers at various points – both from birds connected to royalty. He looks up the etymological origin of the kingfisher’s name. He makes it a point to contextualize the timeline of receiving the new feather to “the days of growing shadow, before Frodo sets out,” to ensure a closer connection to question of kingship in The Lord of the Rings.

I would like to suggest another kingfisher connection, one not mentioned explicitly by Tolkien, but one that I have little doubt would have at least been part of the “leaf-mould” of his imagination, even if it was not consciously intended by Tolkien when writing about this feather.

As I have written about before, Tolkien was very familiar with the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. He seems to have read Hopkins’s correspondence and papers, recommended Hopkins’s advice to C.S. Lewis, and also noted that Hopkins was underappreciated for his talents as a poet. He almost certainly would have been familiar with one of Hopkins’s most famous poems: “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” and it just so happens that there’s a lot about this poem that reminds me of Tom Bombadil. Here is the poem:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Hopkins’s poem begins with symbols of the robustness of life – the brightness of a kingfisher or dragonfly catching light, both are swift-moving, darting back and forth with brilliant, iridescent colors (remember that Tolkien describes the kingfisher feather as “jewel-blue”). Then Hopkins calls our attention to the sound of a stone falling down a well, transitioning the reader to think of the end of the stone’s journey, representative of death: “each mortal thing does one thing and the same.” Thus, we see the vitality of life contrasted with the finality of death, the tongue of a bell swinging reminds us of death knells.

There is baptismal symbolism here as well – dying to sin and rising to new life. The kingfisher dives into the water and comes back up having caught a fish (fish being a traditional Christian symbol for Christ). Like the kingfisher, the stone also dives into the water after a fall. The bell ringing out its name, reminds us of the Catholic practice of “baptizing” and naming bells. As Ordway explains:

To fling out broad its name: to make its distinctive sound. There is a sacramental association with this image. The Catholic tradition, since medieval times, is that church bells are given individual names. The blessing and naming of new bells (which includes holy water, chrism, and prayers of exorcism) is called the ‘baptism’ of the bells.

In this way, the kingfisher is an apt starting point: because of their contrasting plumage (bright blue on their tops and backs, with red on their breasts and under the wings), kingfishers are used by poets to highlight contrasts and transformations. Hopkins’s poem has the reader consider how one’s death and life “in ten thousand places” can eventually be unified in Christ: by being just, by keeping grace, by acting as God sees the person. For Hopkins, the kingfisher looks forward to the coming of the King of Kings – Christ himself.

Tolkien’s descriptions of Tom are reminiscent of a kingfisher: For example, Tom dives into the water and pulls out Goldberry:

But one day Tom, he went and caught the River-daughter, 
in green gown, flowing hair, sitting in the rushes, 
singing old water-songs to birds upon the bushes. 
He 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:

Tolkien almost seems to allude directly to Hopkins’s poem in his own poem called “The Last Ship,” which is included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil:

A kingfisher plunged down like a stone 
in a blue flash falling, 
bending reeds were softly blown, 
lily-leaves were sprawling.

As in Hopkins’s poem, the kingfisher is compared directly to a stone falling. For Hopkins, the kingfisher not only evokes a connection to Christ, but it also represents a particular type of person: the “just man.”

Hopkins writes: “Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells/Crying What I do is me.” All persons make known their own identity, and Tom does this in a very emphatic way. Frodo asks “who is Tom Bombadil?” Goldberry answers “he is as you have seen him.” Tom is simply himself. Or, as he might say, “I am myself.” Everything he does is…just him. “What I do is me.” Each self cries out, what I do is me. But, Hopkins says, the just man does more: he “justices” (i.e. acts justly).

Hopkins writes that the man who “keeps all his goings graces” “keeps grace.” And what else can we say about Tom Bombadil but that he “keeps all his goings graces”? Tom’s comings and going are by rule joyful, and they are musical, evoking the Music of the Ainur at Creation.

Tom sang most of the time, but it was chiefly nonsense, or else perhaps a strange language unknown to the hobbits, an ancient language whose words were mainly those of wonder and delight.

Indeed, as Tom himself proclaims: his “songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.”

Hopkins writes that the just man “Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is” – in other words, a good man doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. He acts as he knows himself to be. This fits Tom perfectly. “He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.” Frodo asks if Tom owns the land? Goldberry replies, “No, indeed! That would indeed be a burden.” Tom does not “own” the land around him. He simply lives there. He is merely himself. He tells Frodo, “Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer.” As Hopkins says “myself it speaks and spells”

Tom knows not to overextend his powers. When asked who he is, he won’t even explain and merely says, “I am myself.” Tom insists on recognizing his own limits:

They begged him to come at least as far as the inn and drink once more with them; but he laughed and refused, saying: Tom’s country ends here: he will not pass the borders. Tom has his house to mind, and Goldberry is waiting!

The kingfisher also calls to mind the Arthurian legend of the “Fisher King.” The Fisher King is a guardian of the Holy Grail, who is wounded and withdraws from the leadership of his people to spend his time fishing by the water, waiting until a chosen savior will heal him. While he withdraws from the world, his kingdom faces decline and becomes barren. Tom is not wounded, nor is he a king. But there is no doubt he has withdrawn into an isolated territory, and if we consider that he represents Arda Unmarred, then the rest of his territory – the broader natural world – is certainly in decline and at risk of destruction. As Gandalf says:

‘He would not have come,’ said Gandalf…’And now he is withdrawn into a little land, within bounds that he has set, though none can see them, waiting perhaps for a change of days, and he will not step beyond them.’

When Tom banishes the barrow-wight, he sends it into the darkness, “till the world is mended.” This reminds us that Tom is indeed waiting for a King, as Tolkien told Pauline Baynes. But it is not simply the king of Arnor and Gondor he awaits, but the King who will come to mend the world, to repair Arda Marred. As Tolkien writes in Morgoth’s Ring, in the “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth”:

‘They say,’ answered Andreth: ‘they say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end.

There is more to Tom’s blue kingfisher feather than meets the eye. The feather symbolizes Tom’s humility, his proclamation of his simple identity and his self-limitation to his own role and boundaries. The feather connects Tom to “the just man” of Hopkins’s poem, who acts gracefully in God’s eye. Being connected to the kingfisher also suggests a comparison of Tom to the Fisher King of Arthurian lore who awaits a chosen savior to heal his kingdom. Tom, bound to his territory, awaits the day when “the world is mended,” when the true King will return and Arda will be both healed and remade.