Here is my essay, presented last August in Oxford...
It was also presented at the VII International Conference of Myth in the Arts last November 9, 2023 (Universidad de País Vasco, Spain), and a video recording of this specific presentation is available here.
Water-lilies Bringing:
a Horrific Monster Hidden in Plain Sight
Mónica Sanz Rodríguez
Myth is the primordial language natural to these psychic processes, and no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near the richness and expressiveness of mythological imagery. Such processes are concerned with the primordial images [Urbilder = archetypes], and these are best and most succinctly reproduced by figurative language. (qtd. in Cox, 2015, p. 121-122)
As Carl Jung formulates in this quote, mythological language is able to reflect in our fundamental mental images, and to talk to us in a way that no other rhetorical form can do. Fairy stories’ relationships with the purest emotions and feelings, from happiness to horror, makes them a powerful conductor that connects with our inmost part, no matter our age, our cultural level or even our location in the world.
Tolkien himself was a great admirer of the narrative form of Fairy and mythological Stories. On March 8th 1939, at St. Andrews University in Scotland, he offered a crucial lecture on the matter called On Fairy Stories. It was dedicated to Andrew Lang, one of the folklorists and compilers of Fairy Stories he knew the most, since he used to listen to, and to read, his Red Fairy Book stories when he was a child. This lecture was also published and, along with The Monsters and the Critics, would be the most academically influential texts by Tolkien.
In the essay we can find this bold and striking opening statement about Fairy Land, Faërie:
Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold ... The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril … The road to fairyland is not the road to Heaven; nor even to Hell, I believe. (p. 109)
Tolkien describes the realm of Faërie as “perilous”, calling it repeatedly “The Perilous Realm”, and he applies this thought to his own works. We can find an example in his tale Smith of Wooton Major, where Tim experiences some deeply disturbing and terrifying scenes while visiting Faërie, such as the landing of the elven warriors. As Tolkien said in his lecture, this evil and fear are not tied to Heaven or Hell, but to a more primeval and atavistic source.
And this Fairy Story peril can also be found in The Lord of the Rings. As Tolkien states in his 1955 letter to Molly Waldron, ‘Cannot people imagine things hostile to men and hobbits who prey on them without being in league with the Devil!’ (p. 228) He is talking here about the Old Man Willow, one of those rara avis who does not obey Morgoth nor Sauron. When the inquisitive readers face such characters, they cannot help but wonder who they are, and who they serve.
Tolkien provided an answer in his 1954 letter to Naomi Mitchison: ‘As a story, I think it is good that there should be a lot of things unexplained (especially if an explanation actually exists). … And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are’. (p.174) Following this statement, he mentions Tom Bombadil as an example.
So we are looking for a hidden monster, a supernatural creature born to perform evil deeds, who is not serving Morgoth nor Sauron, the greater foes, and is an utter and total enigma. In order to find it, we must escape from the Old Man Willow, (who is not in league with the Devil) and follow old jolly Tom Bombadil (created as an enigma on purpose). If we pay attention closely to the sounds of the forest, we would hear someone singing as he comes skipping closer and closer to where we are…
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| Tom Bombadil by Barbarroc Creations. Reproduced with the author's permission. |
Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing
Comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing?
Hey! Come merry dol! Derry dol! And merry-o…
Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o!
Many of you would wonder why this crazy author points out at Goldberry, calling her a monster. She is a kind, fair and beaming woman, living in harmony with nature, loving her husband, serving meals of milk and cream and honeycomb, singing at sunrise and doing so many more adorable things.
Well, I will try to rest my case so the veil is lifted from your eyes and you will finally discover that, under that beautiful shape, she is actually a flesh eating abomination.
Goldberry is a pretty ancient character in Tolkien’s literature. She already appears in the poem “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil”, which names the collection of poems where it was included in 1962. It is the first time Bombadil is named in a text, and it was originally published as early as 13 February 1934 at The Oxford Magazine volume 52.
Tolkien said that he included Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings because he had already created that character for the poem, and because he needed the hobbits to go through an early adventure before arriving at Bree.
Including the poem in the book The Adventures of Tom Bombadil means that Tolkien introduced the rhymes into hobbit lore, since all the pieces present there are extracted from the Red Book of Westmarch. He writes in the preface that the two poems about Bombadil ‘evidently come from the Buckland. They show more knowledge of that country, and of the Dingle, the wooded valley of the Withywindle, than any Hobbits west of the Marish were likely to possess.’ (p. 32) He also states that Bucklanders probably gave Bombadil his common name. In the poems, he adds ‘Tom’s raillery is (…) turned in jest upon his friends, who treat it with amusement (tinged up with fear)’ (p.33).
In one of the stanzas of the poem “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” we find that Goldberry, supposedly playful, grabs Tom by the beard and sinks him into the river.
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. (p. 35)
The only way for Tom to save his life is to command her to ‘Go down! Sleep again where the pools are shady / far below the willow-roots, little water-lady!’ (p.36)
Tom will use this spell, in a different fashion, for each peril he faces in the poem (the Old Man Willow, the Badger-folk and the Barrow Wight), as well as in The Lord of the Rings when he saves the hobbits from the Old Man Willow: ‘Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking!’ (p.121). That is to say, Tom has to use his special and peculiar magic in order to escape from certain death. Thus, Goldberry (whether she was playing or not) is in some way similar to the other creatures in the poem. He even sends the Barrow-wight to sleep ‘like Old Man Willow, / like young Goldberry, and Badger-folk in the burrow’ (p. 39-41). Coincidentally, the Barrow-wight is the only one among them who is, as Tolkien said, in league with the Devil, but we must remember that the poem is far older than the history tying this creature with Sauron.
Later in the poem, the idea of Tom escaping death is reinforced with another stanza:
None ever caught old Tom in upland or in dingle.
walking the forest-paths, or by the Withywindle,
or out on the lily-pools in boat upon the water. (p. 41)
And, since this poem needs a happy ending, he catches Goldberry and marries her, leaving ‘on the banks in the reeds [the] River-woman sighing’ (p. 43).
A water monster
Goldberry is associated with water in many ways: she is called the River-woman’s daughter, she lives in a pool full of water-lilies until Bombadil catches her, and later Bombadil surrounds her with vessels full of water and those flowers; as Taryne Jade Taylor reminds us in her essay “Investigating the Role and Origin of Goldberry in Tolkien's
Mythology”, in The Lord of the Ring her footsteps are described as ‘like a stream falling’, and her singing opens up ‘pools and waters’ in the minds of the hobbits; and as Ruth Noel reflects in her book The Mythology of Middle-Earth, Goldberry's attire also recalls the water spirits of myth and legend: her shoes are described as ‘like fishes' mail’, recalling the scales of mermaids, and ‘her dresses, blue and green shot with gold and silver, are water-colored’.
We can find spooky mythological creatures who share some features with the Golberry from the poem, who pulls Tom’s beard in order to drown him. We could talk about the bucca-boo or bucca dhu from Cornwall, the Scottish each-uisge, the Briton mari-morgans, the Slavic rusalkas, the nuckelavee from the Orkney Islands or the Greek naiads. We could also mention other British creatures such as Jenny Greenteeth, the Shellycoat, Peg Powler or even kelpies or braggs. Even Tolkien has some other water creatures in his legendarium, such as the Watcher in the water or the mermaid-like oarnen. But we will not be going that way…
King Kojata
In this context, it is worth mentioning the written works of Andrew Lang. He has already appeared earlier in this essay. This Scottish writer was also a journalist, poet, Homer’s translator, historian and biographer; though for this presentation we are more interested in his work as a fairy-stories compiler. As a member of the Folklore Society, he was interested in compiling British folktales, as Perrault did in France or the Grimm Brothers did in Germany. He published 12 fairy-tale books, each of them titled choosing a different color. Tolkien was in contact with his compilations since childhood, and he mentioned the Red Fairy Book stories as tales he knew and read when he was a child. Tolkien deeply respected his defense of myth as part of history.
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| King Kojata, by Henry Justice Ford. Public domain. |
At Andrew Lang’s Green Fairy Book we find a tale called King Kojata, of a Russian origin. In this story king Kojata, who was unable to produce an heir, undertakes a long journey through his kingdom. On his way back, he orders a halt because it is an extremely hot day, and he sets up camp along with his company. Feeling a sudden and violent thirst for water, he finds not far from the camp a pond of crystalline waters, where he plunges his head along with his astonishing long and bushy beard, which reached down to his knees and was his greatest pride. But when he tries to stand again, something grabs firmly his beard and threatens to drown him. This malignant creature promises to let him go if he promises to give him one thing that the king will find in his palace that was not there when he left. And of course, as you may have already guessed, the queen had a child in absence of his husband, quite a familiar trope in fairy-stories.
Nevertheless, I intend to go further with my research. There is a creature of Slavic, Germanic and Northern origin which shares more characteristics with Goldberry than any creature mentioned earlier. Its name is nøkke or, more precisely, its female counterpart, the nix.
So, what is a nøkke?
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| Nøkken by Theodor S. Kittelsen. Public domain. |
A nøkke is a mythological creature who lives under fresh water, be these rivers, streamlets, ponds, lakes or even wells.
They are regularly described as old men with long beards who live in solitude and are cruel and eager for human blood. As a kind of counterpart, some of its feminine versions or nixes are more sociable and friendly, and keen on dancing and singing, although the majority of them cultivate the peculiar hobby of homicide and cannibalism. They are natural shapeshifters, sometimes adopting the shape of a horse such as the Faroese nykur, phenomenon we can trace back to the Old Norse word nykr, meaning ‘water horse’; idea somewhat related to the bäckahäst (Swedish) or bækhest (Danish) ‘brook horse’, creatures described as a majestic white horse which, once they are mounted, would jump into the river and drown their victims.
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| Gutt Paa Hvit Hest by Theodor S. Kittelsen. Public domain. |
The first appearance of the nøkke as a horse is already attested at the oldest copy of the Landnámabók, the Sturlubók, which dates back to 1280 and was written by a nephew of Snorri Sturluson. As W.A. Craige sums up:
36. In the autumn, Audunn saw an apple-grey horse run down from Hjardarvatn to his stud-horses, and overcome the stallion. Then Audunn went up and took the grey horse, harnessed him to a two-ox sledge, and drove all his hay together The horse was easy to manage during the middle of the day, but as the day wore on he sank into the field up to his pasterns, and when the sun had set he broke all the harness, ran to the water, and was never seen again. (Craige, p. 228)
About this feminine counterpart of the nøkke, it is said that:
They were considered creatures of captivating beauty. Sitting in the sun, they combed their long golden hair. Sometimes they let themselves be seen by mortals, who immediately turned mad and were carried underwater … The nixes are sometimes beneficent spirits, helping men, giving them counsel and foretelling their future. They charm them with their sweet voices and, frequently in the legends, get married to them. (Laugé Dausà, p. 335, under Nix)
In the poem we will find that, when he is trapped by Goldberry, Tom says ‘You bring it back again, there’s a pretty maiden!’ (p.36). Also, Goldberry is described as having ‘floating hair’ (p.42) and, at the end, we can see how she ‘combed her tresses yellow’ (p.43). We should also keep in mind that Tom sends her to ‘sleep again where the pools are shady’ (p.36) and tells her to ‘never mind your mother / in her deep weedy pool’ (p. 42)
Nixes in folktales
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| The Witch-Maiden Sees the Young Man Under a Tree by Henry Justice Ford. Public Domain. |
We turn now to the works of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Apart from being compilers of traditional folktales, they are renowned for their linguistic research, reflected in their seminal etymological dictionary. The writer Clemens Brentano requested the two young brothers (of just 20 and 21 years old) to compile German folktales, keeping their essence without transforming or adapting them. The great majority of their sources were short tales told by women. Their book Children's and Household Tales was published at the end of 1812, and it brought them international renown and made their names immortal. Tolkien knew and admired Brothers Grimm both for their folktale compilations and their linguistic works, as well as for their research to study and compile Teutonic mythology. They are mentioned too in the essay “On Fairy-Stories”, both in the final version and the manuscripts preserved at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Amongst the Grimm brothers’ tales we find nixes playing malignant roles, slaving the unwary or dragging them under the water. In tale number 81, “The Nix of the Mill-Pond” (which Andrew Lang would include in his Yellow Fairy Book under the title “The Nix”), a miller makes a deal with a nix: she will grant him a life of prosperity and wealth, and he will give her the first thing to be born in his home from that moment. He agrees, thinking of a puppy, a kitty or a chick but, as you may have imagined now, the miller’s wife had just given birth when he arrived home.
In the tale number 79, “The Water-Nix”, this creature enslaves two poor kids who fell on the well where she was living. She then gives them impossible tasks, such as fetching water in a bucket with a hole in it or cutting down a tree with a blunt ax, in order to keep them at her service forever.
You may wonder now, what is the crucial piece of this puzzle that makes me identify Goldberry with the nøkken, and no other creature? What is the clue, the final sign that straightforwardly points to this premise? I have already hinted at it in previous quotes…
There my pretty lady is, River-woman’s daughter,
Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water.
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| The Miller Sees the Nixy of the Mill-pond by Henry Justice Ford. Public domain. |
Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing
When the hobbits meet Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings, he is carefully carrying ‘on a large leaf as on a tray a small pile of white water-lilies’. ‘Don’t you crush my lilies!’ (p. 121) says Tom when he puts them on the floor and helps poor old Merry and Pippin.
The first thing we perceive of Goldberry is her voice, singing from their house: ‘Reeds by the shady pool, lilies on the water: / Old Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter!’ (p. 123)
The first thing we see of her is this image:
In a chair, at the far side of the room facing the outer door, sat a woman. Her long yellow hair rippled down her shoulders; her gown was green, green as young reeds, shot with silver like beads of dew; and her belt was of gold, shaped like a chain of flag-lilies set with the pale-blue eyes of forget-me-nots. About her feet in wide vessels of green and brown earthenware, white water-lilies were floating, so that she seemed to be enthroned in the midst of a pool. … But before they could say anything, she sprang lightly up and over the lily-bowls, and ran laughing towards them; and as she ran her gown rustled softly like the wind in the flowering borders of a river. (p. 124)
Tom describes his errand as:
I had an errand there: gathering water-lilies,
green leaves and lilies white to please my pretty lady,
the last ere the year’s end to keep them from the winter,
to flower by her pretty feet till the snows are melted. (p. 127)
These two references may point out to Goldberry’s need for these flowers until spring comes again (the season in which she will be able to go and find the flowers in the ponds by herself). In the poem, it is also mentioned that Goldberry wore ‘forgetmenots and flag-lilies for garland’ (p.42)on her wedding with Tom.
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| Nøkken Fisker by Theodor S. Kittelsen. Public domain. |
The nøkken dwell in water-lily ponds in order to use the flower both as covering and as bait for their prey. We can check it by looking at this fantastic painting by Theodor Kittelsen. Nøkken wait under water-lilies and, when a lover passes by and marvels at the flower, leaning over to collect it as a present for her lady, the nøkke pulls from it carrying the lover underwater to feast on him. Theodor Kittelsen, a renowned artist, made a whole series of drawings and paintings about the nøkke and talked about these creatures in these terms:
The nøkke is insidious. He hunts for human life. When the sun goes down, beware. He can lie under the great, brilliant pond full of lilies, to which you stretch out your hand. You will have almost grabed one when he sinks you beneath the quagmire and grabs you with its wet, slimy hands.
Or those times when you sit alone down by the pond for an evening. Memories start appearing soon, one by one, in flocks, memories with the same warm color and shine as the mirroring rays amongst the pond and the water lilies. Beware then! They are the strings which the nøkke uses to play. The pond conjures up memories, and the nøkke lies beneath and lurks. He knows that he can capture us very easily in the delicious quivering reflection. (Kittelsen, under nøkke)
This creature receives many names depending on the region where it is found: nixie, nix or nixi in the United Kingdom, näkki in Finland, nykur at the Faroe Islands, nicker on the Netherlands, nøkk or nykk in Norway… all of them related to the Proto-Indo-European root *neig ᵘ̯ (Köbler, 2014, entry *neig ᵘ̯) ‘to wash’ or ‘clean’ (given that they live underwater) and also to the concept of ‘nude, naked’ (since many nøkken are naked and covered with their hair and/or their beards in the legends). In Upper and Central Germany they are called hakermann, ‘the one with the hook’, since it is told that when the unwary pick up the water-lily the monster will catch his prey with a hook to drown them. The Anglo-Saxon form of this name, nicer, appears in Beowulf with the sense of ‘water monster’. Even Tolkien, in his Beowulf: Translation and Commentary analyses one of its appearances:
Hwæþere me gesælde þæt ic mid sweorde ofsloh
niceras nigene.
it was my lot with sword to slay nine sea-demons
(p.206)
This word can still be found in some place names, such as Nicker Pit (a forest in East Yorkshire, where some very deep pools can be found). Incidentally it is said that one of the titles used to name Odin is Hjaldr Hnikar (battle-instigator), which is believed to be the origin of Old Nick, one of the names of the Devil in English. And some of the forms mentioned earlier have been used later to name animals such as crocodiles and hippopotamus.
Finally, it is word noting that in Sweden water-lilies are also called näckrosväxter, and in Norway nøkkeroser, both names meaning ‘lily of the nøkke’.
Flag-lilies, soaked in blood
The variety of water lilies that Goldberry wears as garland in the poem and as belt in the novel, flag-lilies, grows in the river streams and are coloured red. There is a Swedish tale explaining why the water-lilies of Tiveden forest have that color… and in the tale we find none other than a nøkke. Here is a brief version of the tale:
There once was a poor fisherman who lived by the Fägertarn Lake among the trees of Tiveden. He had a beautiful daughter. The lake gave him little fish, so the fisherman barely provided for his small family. One day, while the fisherman was fishing in his small oak boat, he met the nøkke, who offered plentiful catches if he gave him in exchange his daughter when she became of age. The desperate fisherman agreed and promised to give his daughter to the nøkke.
The day the girl came of age, she went down to the bank of the lake to meet the nøkke. He happily asked her to come with him to his underwater dwellings, but the girl unsheathed a knife and swore that he would never have her alive, stabbing herself in the heart and falling dead in the lake. Then her blood dyed the water-lilies red, and since that day onward, most of the water-lilies of the lake among the trees of Tiveden, are red. (Karlsson 1970, p.83, summarised version by me)
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| Nøkken by Theodor S. Kittelsen. Public domain. |
Nowadays, Tiveden is a natural reserve and the red water-lilies that grow in the lake are protected, so it is forbidden to pick them. I suppose the nøkke has moved since, looking for a better place to feed.
Last words
Maybe Goldberry’s mother, the River-woman, is none other than a nix (or nøkke, since they are natural shape shifters) who tries to chase and eat the unwary travelers walking through the Old Forest, sadly sighing for her daughter, as she is doing since the day Goldberry was taken from her.
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| Nøkken Som Hvit Hest by Theodor S. Kittelsen. Public domain. |
Maybe that is why Goldberry needs precisely water-lilies, and no other flower, to feel a little at home at the house of Tom Bombadil.
Maybe that is why Tom was on an errand to pick up the last water-lilies of the season, as it is told in the novel, when he luckily heard the hobbits asking for help.
And maybe that is why the hobbits find Goldberry like a water queen “enthroned in the midst of a pool”, amidst vessels of earthenware full of floating water-lilies.
The reverence that Tolkien professed to fairy-stories and his vast knowledge on the matter may have filtered, drop by drop, into his legendarium. Drop by drop it formed a puddle, and from that puddle a pool, and from that pool a lake, and in spring, nurtured by the Professor’s imagination and his tireless quill, the surface bloomed in spectacular and delicate water-lilies tied with invisible strings to an ancient, dark and atavistic monster.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cox, David (2015) Jung and St. Paul: A Study of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith and Its Relation to the Concept of Individuation. Burbank: Andesite Press.
Encyclopaedia Britannica (n.d.) Nix. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 22, 2023, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/nix-German-mythology
Frederiksen, A.R. (2020) The Danish “Åmand/Nøkke” – What Swims Below The Water… A.R. Frederiksen Writes Speculative Fiction. Retrieved December 23, 2023, from https://arfrederiksen.com/2020/07/11/the-danish-amand-nokke-what-swims-below-the-water/
Grimm, Jacob & Grimm, Wilhelm (2004) Household Tales by Brothers Grimm. Public domain. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5314/pg5314-images.html
Köbler, G. (2014) "Indogermanisches Wörterbuch". Public domain. Retrieved December 23, 2023, from https://www.koeblergerhard.de/idg/idg_n.html
Lang, Andrew (2005) The Green Fairy Book. Public domain. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7277/pg7277-images.html
Llaugé Dausà, Félix (2013) Diccionario universal de ángeles, demonios, monstruos y seres sobrenaturales. Barcelona: Obelisco.
Noel, Ruth (1977) The Mythology of Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Wethrin, Th., ed. (1914) Näck. In Nordisk Familjebok, public domain through Project Runeberg. Retrieved December 23, 2023, from https://runeberg.org/nfbt/0176.html and https://runeberg.org/nfbt/0177.html
Karlsson, S. (1970) I Tiveden. Mariestad: Reflex.
Kittelsen, Theodor S. (1892) Troldskab, Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Companys forlag.
Taylor, Tarine Jade (2008) Investigating the Role and Origin of Goldberry in Tolkien's
Mythology. Mythlore 27 (1), article 13. https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol27/iss1/13/
Tolkien, J.R.R. (2006) “On Fairy-Stories”, The Monsters And the Critics and Other Essays. London: Harper Collins.
Tolkien, J.R.R. (2006) The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. London: Harper Collins.
Tolkien, J.R.R. (2014) The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. London: Harper Collins.
Tolkien, J.R.R. (2021) The Lord of the Rings. London: Harper Collins.
Tolkien, J.R.R. (2015) Beowulf: traducción y comentario. Barcelona: Minotauro.
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