Tolkien Trewsday Week 5: Water – Tuesday 28 March 2023

Week 5: “Water” – Tuesday 28 March 2023
#TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday #Tolkien

Welcome to #TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday.

The hub for this Twitter-based event can be found here.

Tolkien Trewsday (the Hobbit name for Tuesday!) invites the #Tolkien community to form a fellowship to collectively tweet about a pre-selected theme about Tolkien, his works and his life.

Each week a new theme will be selected, often via a poll or by a guest host/curator, and together we will build a collective outpouring of creativity, knowledge and love for J.R.R. Tolkien and the adaptions based on his works.

The inspiration for this comes from the highly successful #FolkloreThursday which engaged lovers of Folklore, academics, artists and more to use Twitter to discuss it.

We only ask that if you are joining in, please do so with courtesy and kindness in your tweets. This is a positive-action community event, open to all and supportive of fan diversity. Intolerance, racism, bigotry have no place here.

💬 This week’s theme
Week 5: “Water” – Tuesday 28 March 2023

Following a poll, Tolkien Trewsday invites you to join us for a day focused on the theme of "Water". From the crashing waves of the Sundering Sea to the vision-giving mirror of Galadriel, water is one of the most powerful elements of Middle-earth.

How to contribute

We are keeping it very simple. All you need to do to join is tweet something about the current week’s theme and use the following hashtags in your tweet:
#TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday #Tolkien

Your tweet, besides following the theme, can be anything. Examples include:

• Rivers, lakes and oceans
• Water creatures
• Magical properties of water in Middle-earth
• Water in poem, verse and song

“Tom & Goldberry” (2022) by Nico Rigobello. Source.

Week Five – Waters’ hidden depths: The River-maiden as anthropomorphic enigma

“But you always have to watch Tolkien with water. He never uses it unmeaningfully. Pools and lakes mirror stars, and hold hidden things.”

-- Diana Wynne Jones, “The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings” (1983).

Water is a powerful element in Middle-earth. During the War of Wrath nearly all of Beleriand is submerged under water and Númenor is sunk beneath the waves after the rebellion against the Valar. At the Ford of Bruinen, the River crushes the Nazgul as they attempt to reach Frodo on the bank. Thus water can be destructive. But water also provides life as a basic, though, vital necessity as the giver of sustenance to mortals. Water is special and magical. The Music of the Ainur still plays in the watery depths:

“And it is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”

Tolkien, J.R.R. and Tolkien, Christopher, “Ainulindalë” from The Silmarillion (2019 Kindle edition, HarperCollins: London)

And the King of the Sea, Lord of the Water, is Ulmo, one of the most powerful Valar who often is alone in Middle-earth, helping the Children of Eru, whilst his fellow Ainur remained in Valinor. With water as his domain, Ulmo’s reach is far:

“But mostly Ulmo speaks to those who dwell in Middle-earth with voices that are heard only as the music of water. For all seas, lakes, rivers, fountains and springs are in his government; so that the Elves say that the spirit of Ulmo runs in all the veins of the world. Thus news comes to Ulmo, even in the deeps, of all the needs and griefs of Arda, which otherwise would be hidden from Manwë.”

Tolkien, J.R.R. and Tolkien, Christopher, “Valaquenta” from The Silmarillion (2019 Kindle edition, HarperCollins: London)

Ulmo isn’t the only Ainur who came to Middle-earth and dwells in water. There is a whole host of Maiar and other beings that reside in lakes, rivers and other places. Some are monsters, like the Watcher in the Water, whilst others take on more humanoid form. In early versions of the Legendarium, Tolkien’s waterways were awash with creatures such as mermaids, nymphs, sprites, sylphs and other spirits.

The River-woman in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien

Such creatures are part of my ongoing research into supernatural/preternatural beings and their connection to the landscape within Tolkien’s works. For this blog post, I want to take a look at one type of creature, the River-maiden, for whom in Tolkien’s own works we only know of two: Goldberry and her mother, the River-woman. In adaptions of Tolkien’s works, especially in gaming, there are many more named River-Maidens as individuals, each with their own characteristics and stories. We’ll examine these along with Goldberry today and look at how games adapt them. Goldberry in particular is tied up with another enigma in Tolkien’s works, Tom Bombadil. Even whilst J.R.R. Tolkien was alive fans have asked what is Tom? Is he a Maiar? Eru? Something else? We turn to another Tom, the eminent scholar Dr. Tom Shippey, for (perhaps)an answer:

“Finally Tom Bombadil himself was from his first conception a genius loci, a “spirit of the place’, the place being, as Tolkien remarked to Unwin (see Letters, p. 26), ‘the (vanishing) Oxfordshire and Berkshire countryside.”

Shippey, Tom, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2001). HarperCollins, London, p.63

The genius loci is a Roman concept where a guardian spirit is connected with a place or building and offerings were made to them. The idea later evolved into the modern idea of there being a special association or distinctive aspect, which could be supernatural, attached to a location rather than there being a guardian spirit specifically.

 

Genius loci definition from the Collins Dicitionary. Source.

Tom Bombadil in the early days of Middle-earth wandered far and wide, but by the time of the Third Age his domain was much more limited: the Old Forest and Barrow Downs appear to be the limits. He’s the genius loci of the area bordering the Shire and Bree, dangerous lands for wandering Hobbits.

It was whilst exploring the river Withywindle in the Old Forest that Tom Bombadil encountered one of the creatures this blog is about. Tom encounters many beasts on his journeys, from badgers to awakened trees like Old Man Willow, but it is a Water-Spirit that captivates him. In the poem “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” he is sat gazing into the Withywindle:

“There his beard dangled long down into the water: up came Goldberry, the River-woman’s daughter; pulled Tom’s hanging hair. In he went a-wallowing under the water-lilies, bubbling and a-swallowing.

‘Hey, Tom Bombadil! Whither are you going?’ said fair Goldberry. ‘Bubbles you are blowing, frightening the finny fish and the brown water-rat, startling the dabchicks, and drowning your feather-hat!’

‘You bring it back again, there’s a pretty maiden!’ said Tom Bombadil. ‘I do not care for wading. Go down! Sleep again where the pools are shady far below willow-roots, little water-lady!’

Back to her mother’s house in the deepest hollow swam young Goldberry. But Tom, he would not follow; on knotted willow-roots he sat in sunny weather, drying his yellow boots and his draggled feather.”

Tolkien, J.R.R., “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” from Tales from the Perilous Realm: Roverandom and Other Classic Faery Stories (2008). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Two artists illustrate this dramatic moment of Tom being dragged into water by Goldberry, both showing the danger he is in.

Alan Lee from “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil”

“Figure 7.73 Waterlilies” by Graham A. Judd from: Judd, Walter S. and Judd, Graham A.,
  Flora of Middle-Earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium (2017). OUP USA. Image source.

Graham A. Judd replied to a tweet from a friend with the above image, when we were running the #TolkienTrewsday theme of “Trees”, about what his idea behind Goldberry in his illustration was:

“I have to check my notes,   But our goal was to show her as a wild water nymph before she had settled down.”

Graham Judd, tweet on 7 March 2023. Source.

Tom eventually wins out and continues on his way but this encounter is very reminiscent of folklore water creature that lures and drags victims into the water in order to drown them. These include:

🌊 Jenny Greenteeth (Merseyside and Lancashire)
🌊 Peg o’Nell (River Ribble - Lancashire)
🌊 Peg Powler (River Tees - Yorkshire/Durham boundary)
🌊 Grindylow (Yorkshire)

These creatures tend to be quite horrific/scary looking, as you can see from Alan Lee’s illustration of Jenny (or Jinny) Greenteeth from a book in collaboration with Brian Froud:

Illustration of “Jenny Greenteeth” by Alan Lee from “Faeries”
by Brian Froud and Alan Lee (1978). Publisher: Souvenir Press.

The Jenny Greenteeth legend has a focal point in Liverpool, particularly around St. James Cemetery and Liverpool Cathedral, though she is part of the wider Lancashire folklore and appears elsewhere too. She is described as water creature like folkloric “hag” or a witch. Local author and supernatural sleuth Tom Slemen connected her to a mysterious (and now lost) statue, of a local witch or deity, which he claimed was at the centre of an ancient village dug up whilst workers prepared the site of Liverpool Cathedral. This legend of a hag, dragging the unwary (usually children) into the depths is believed to be warning to keep away from stagnant ponds where a person can get tangled up in duckweed and drown.

Goldberry, in the early tale with Tom Bombadil where she drags him into the Withywindle, certainly has attributes attached to malevolent water spirits. She is wild and untamed, much like the rest of the Old Forest, and a threat to the unwary. She is also the daughter of another water spirit, the River-woman. Dr. Tom Shippey sees the River-woman and Goldberry as more benevolent that creatures like Jenny Greenteeth:

“The Withywindle is a combination of the Cherwell itself, and words for its two main features, its willows and its slowly twisting course. We have no name for its resident hag, but it would only be sensible to see her as more passive, and perhaps more likely to have a human-friendly daughter, than child-eating Peg Powler, the spirit of the rapid River Tees, running down from the highest waterfall in England, High Foss.”

Shippey, Tom, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2001). HarperCollins, London, p.63

There was a series of images by John Howe, which he later stated were unrelated to his work on The Rings of Power, that made me wonder (in a tweet) if we were going to see Gandalf traversing the Withywindle and meeting Tom Bombadil. We see a figure carrying a staff and wearing a hat, slowly making his way upstream whilst followed by what looks like three water-spirits. They seem more curious than presenting any actual danger. He is in a forest and strange carved menhirs lie ahead of him. This is how I imagine the wild Goldberry was!

“Just passing through” by John Howe (2022). Source.

Sometime after Goldberry has attempted to drag Tom Bombadil into the water, Tom returns and this time it is Goldberry ensnared:

“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.”

Tolkien, J.R.R., “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” from Tales from the Perilous Realm: Roverandom and Other Classic Faery Stories (2008). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

This scene is problematic due to Tom’s abduction of Goldberry and then eventual marriage – in a sense the genius loci is overpowering one of the other local spirits (this one connected to water) in his territory and takes her back to his dwelling place. It is ambiguous whether Goldberry was a willing participant in the actual wedding:

“You shall come under Hill! Never mind your mother in her deep weedy pool: there you’ll find no lover!’ Old Tom Bombadil had a merry wedding, crowned all with buttercups, hat and feather shedding; his bride with forgetmenots and flag-lilies for garland was robed all in silver-green. He sang like a starling, hummed like a honey-bee, lilted to the fiddle, clasping his river-maid round her slender middle.”

Tolkien, J.R.R., “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” from Tales from the Perilous Realm: Roverandom and Other Classic Faery Stories (2008). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

It is clear however that the River-woman, the mother of Goldberry, is not approving of this turn of events because “on the bank in the reeds River-woman sighing”. It is left unclear the relationship between Tom and his mother-in-law, If there is such a thing between genius loci and Maia. Goldberry makes Tom’s house a place of welcome and eventually Frodo and his friends become guests here during “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”. At this point Goldberry seems settled into her life with Tom, though also still very much aware of who she is, tells Frodo: “Laugh and be merry! I am Goldberry, daughter of the River.” When Tom rescued the Hobbits from Old Man Willow he was out collecting waterlilies for Goldberry.

Goldberry in writing and art is often shown as beautiful and young, especially in relation to her place within Tom’s house, in stark contrast to hag-like water creatures she resembled when she attempted to drag Tom into the Withywindle.

“Goldberry” by the Brothers Hildebrandt (1977).

We’ve explored some of Tolkien’s literary descriptions and some art of Goldberry as a River-maiden and I now want to look at two gaming adaptions where they expand the number of River-maids from the two known ones.

Before we do, I want to recap what we’ve discussed above about Goldberry as a River-maiden/water-spirit:

🌊 Water-sprite/hag?
🌊 The daughter of the River-woman
🌊 Attempts to drown/dunk the genius loci (Tom Bombadil) in her river
🌊 Kidnapped and overpowered by the genius loci
🌊 Marries the genius loci
🌊 Becomes house-proud and looks after Tom’s guests
🌊 Connection to waterlilies

River-maids in “The Lord of the Rings Online” and “The One Ring Roleplaying game”

Gaming adaptions often expand on the original source to have multiple creatures to interact with (and often fight) to make gameplay more expansive. In Standing Stones Games’s “The Lord of the Rings Online” (LOTRO) there are a collection of River-maids who are the genius loci of the rivers and lakes they inhabit. There are other Maia as spirits of the land too.

These non-player characters (NPCs) all have quests to give the player characters and some are part of storylines revolving around the corruption of the land by the forces of Sauron and evil. The locations of the River-maidens in LOTRO are often associated with eerie light and of course water – sometimes this is corrupted and in need of cleansing.

Willowsong by Silverwell (Chetwood, Bree-land) in “The Lord of the Rings Online”.

Southeast of Staddle in Bree-land is a spring known as Silverwell. Locals know a River-maiden, called Willowsong, frequents this area who is renowned for her herb-lore and healing powers. She helps players with cleansing the poison from the well in Staddle Town after sending them to collect flowers from the Yellow Tree.

Gwindeth in her cave by Lake Evendim from “The Lord of the Rings Online”.

A River-maiden, Gwindeth, who was once the advisor of the Kings of Arnor inhabits a cave, the Gwindethrond, which lies hidden behind a waterfall in Rushingdale near Lake Evendim. Her role with the players is to assist them with part of the Epic storyline.

The cave is eerie with a yellowish light and mist from the waterfall which has dimming effects on the sun above the opening in the roof of the cave. There is an otherness to the place.

Gwindethrond by Lake Evendim in “The Lord of the Rings Online”.

In the Gladdenmere area of the Vales of Anduin, the River-maiden Gultháva (Gladden River) asks for help with a lost but familiar person.

Whilst in Gondor the five main rivers have attendant River-maidens who each ask you to offer a tribute. This is a hark back to pre-Roman Britain where tribes would leave votive offerings, sometimes treasured items such as swords and brooches, in wetlands, wells and water. The Five Sisters, the River-maidens of Gondor, are:

🌊 Roamingstar (River Gilrain)
🌊 Grey-eye (River Serni)
🌊 Silverfroth (River Celos)
🌊 Truetongue (River Sirith)
🌊 The Lone Lady (River Erui)

Roamingstar in the woods of Gilrain (Lebennin, Central Gondor) in “The Lord of the Rings Online”.

In the deed lore for the Five Sisters, it is stated that Roamingstar, the genius loci of the River Gilrain is “considered gentle, dreamy, and prone to deep affections”. It is her song that delays the Elf-maiden Nimrodel, beloved of Amroth, who tragically drowns.  

Once you have discovered the tribute baskets for each of the Five Sisters, you find a handwritten note. Roamingstar’s says:

“Roamingstar of sweet-song,
Hushed winds and speckled birds.
What is it you long?
Hiding in a dreaming hall,
Mountains shift with deep affection.
Gentle Gilrain hear my call.”

The River-maidens above are benevolent and assist the players, sometimes in return for a favour. There are malevolent water-spirits in LOTRO and these are associated with the landscape and water of their domain being corrupted by evil. In Garth Agarwen, Naruhel (in LOTRO considered the sister of Goldberry) is known as the Red-maid, a major enemy for player characters, whilst the tragedy of Rauniel, originally the river-maiden of the Ithilduin (now the Morgulduin) is played out in the Rath Dúath region of the Morgul Vale.

Goldberry’s Spring in the Old Forest from “The Lord of the Rings Online”.

Finally, Goldberry (River Withywindle) can be found in several locations in LOTRO, often as a quest-giver. Whilst exploring the Old Forest you may come upon Goldberry’s Spring.

Goldberry can also be found outside and inside the house of Tom Bombadil, where ponds and saucers with lilies decorate her home.

Goldberry in the house of Tom Bombadil from “The Lord of the Rings Online”.

With the new areas of Swanfleet and Cardolan in LOTRO, there are new quests associated with Goldberry, though I have yet to complete them. One mentions the “hag of the Old Forest” so I’ll be sure to check that out when I can.

In the “The One Ring Roleplaying Game” by Cubicle 7 (first edition – second edition is produced by Free League Publishing) River-maidens make an appearance in the Wilderland. In the “The Darkening of Mirkwood” (Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan & Francesco Nepitello) there are three sisters living in the Black Tarn in Mirkwood, close to a woodman settlement:

🌊 Silverbell
🌊 Duskwater
🌊 Sunshadow

An encounter with Duskwater is thus described:

“While wandering in the swamps, one member of the company sees a beautiful dark-haired woman slipping through the trees, clad in a grey corslet of armour that glitters like fish-scales.” (“The Darkening of Mirkwood”, p.35)

In the “The Heart of the Wild“ sourcebook (Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan & Francesco Nepitello) they are described as “nature-spirits” and “River-Maidens”.

“River-maiden” from the One Ring Roleplaying game

They are described as:

“All three River-maidens usually appear as young women swimming just below the surface of the water, but they all may assume the shape of silver trouts, to best flee from a threat.” (“The Heart of the Wild”, p.91)

Interestingly, players characters can have a “Cultural Virtue: River-Blooded” as part of their stats, where it is rumoured one of their ancestors was a lover of one of the River-maidens.

Like in LOTRO, the River-maidens in “The One Ring Roleplaying game” can be both benevolent and malevolent.

Conclusion

There are so many more things to research and discover about the River-maidens of Tolkien and adaptions. I haven’t touched upon the Rhinemaidens of Richard Wagner's opera cycle “Der Ring des Nibelungen” or Grendel’s mother from “Beowulf”. There is more folklore to explore too. It’s interesting to note that modern fiction such as “The Rivers of London” by Ben Aaronovitch, best described as police investigation mixed with the supernatural, has genius loci (declared goddesses and gods) as the titular anthropomorphic Rivers.

Are we any clearer about these Middle-earth water-spirits? Tolkien tries to remain enigmatic about some of his creations, especially Tom Bombadil, but he does consider the nature of Goldberry.  

Commentating about a film proposal by Zimmerman, Tolkien writes to Forrest J. Ackerman in Letter 210 (June 1958):

“We are not in ‘fairy-land’, but in real river-lands in autumn. Goldberry represents the actual seasonal changes in such lands.”

Carpenter, Humphrey and Tolkien, Christopher, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Yet both Tom Bombadil and Goldberry remain enigmas. There is so much more research to be done on this subject, so I’ll leave it here for now, with a look at my favourite image of the couple. There is a wildness and freeness to Goldberry here and a loving care to Tom Bombadil embrace.

“Tom Bombadil and Goldberry” (2015) by Zuzana Čupová. Source.

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