LOTR Re-Read Running Thoughts - Bombadil
Apr. 4th, 2026 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingi(I mentioned last post that East-Farthing folk tend to use "funny" instead of "queer," but this was apparently a fluke. Merry is back to calling things "queer" and so do people in Bree.)
I understand why Peter Jackson cut out the Tom Bombadil. In addition to all the singing, it's one of the most digressive parts of LOTR, as it focuses very little on anything to do with the Ring (not nothing, but little). I had forgotten that Tom not only bursts into song a lot but talks almost entirely in meter. It is interesting, though, that he drops out of meter in the paragraph where he's talking about how old he is/how he predates the coming of Morgoth.
I had also forgotten that when the hobbits are cavorting naked on the Barrow Downs, it's actually only three of them cavorting naked. Frodo never loses his clothes, which is handy for him--and possibly, in universe, the hand of God--because he could have lost the Ring right there. This means, however, he owes us a naked scene, which he will give us later on.
Accents
At Bree, the gatekeeper identifies Frodo as being from the Shire by the way he talks, which I take to mean his accent because there aren't any obvious dialectical markers in his words (that I see).
This raises a thorny problem for LOTR adaptation or just reading aloud: what on earth is one to do about all the accents that would logically exist? Traditionally, (ex. BBC radio) readings have gone for elevated RP unless the lines show non-standard dialect markers. That's how I grew up and is my happy place, but I admit it doesn't make sense, and the Bree line suggests it's not reflective of Tolkien's intent. Jackson did possibly as well as one could with this, having subtle alterations between more British and more American across different groups. But I do find it weird that there's more accent variation among three hobbit cousins than across the whole rest of Middle-earth. Elves, to date, seem to always come out elevated RP, and Rings of Power got slammed for this--unfairly, I think, as it's just doing what everyone else has done and clearly did put some thought into accents. But it's a fair point that Elves are speaking a foreign language when speaking the Common Tongue, so it might make sense to have them sound foreign, relative to English. All in all, I don't have the perfect answer and would love to hear others' views.
I understand why Peter Jackson cut out the Tom Bombadil. In addition to all the singing, it's one of the most digressive parts of LOTR, as it focuses very little on anything to do with the Ring (not nothing, but little). I had forgotten that Tom not only bursts into song a lot but talks almost entirely in meter. It is interesting, though, that he drops out of meter in the paragraph where he's talking about how old he is/how he predates the coming of Morgoth.
I had also forgotten that when the hobbits are cavorting naked on the Barrow Downs, it's actually only three of them cavorting naked. Frodo never loses his clothes, which is handy for him--and possibly, in universe, the hand of God--because he could have lost the Ring right there. This means, however, he owes us a naked scene, which he will give us later on.
Accents
At Bree, the gatekeeper identifies Frodo as being from the Shire by the way he talks, which I take to mean his accent because there aren't any obvious dialectical markers in his words (that I see).
This raises a thorny problem for LOTR adaptation or just reading aloud: what on earth is one to do about all the accents that would logically exist? Traditionally, (ex. BBC radio) readings have gone for elevated RP unless the lines show non-standard dialect markers. That's how I grew up and is my happy place, but I admit it doesn't make sense, and the Bree line suggests it's not reflective of Tolkien's intent. Jackson did possibly as well as one could with this, having subtle alterations between more British and more American across different groups. But I do find it weird that there's more accent variation among three hobbit cousins than across the whole rest of Middle-earth. Elves, to date, seem to always come out elevated RP, and Rings of Power got slammed for this--unfairly, I think, as it's just doing what everyone else has done and clearly did put some thought into accents. But it's a fair point that Elves are speaking a foreign language when speaking the Common Tongue, so it might make sense to have them sound foreign, relative to English. All in all, I don't have the perfect answer and would love to hear others' views.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-04 07:07 pm (UTC)Thanks to your post, I just found (archived) an incredible accent rationale from the dialect coach. It makes an even more interesting map of the English ear than of Middle-Earth. I am fascinated that RP has held up as the theatrical prestige dialect of contemporary adaptations given all of its shifts including within the last quarter-century. I would expect the connotations to have moved.
(I don't have an actual answer to your question of the best way to represent differences of accent in English, but I have been thinking about the sound of Middle-Earth because I spent some time a few nights ago looking for recordings of Donald Swann singing his own Tolkien settings and managed to find "I Sit Beside the Fire" in the 1967 television taping of At the Drop of Another Hat, which means I now know what he sounded like singing Quenya.)