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Originally Posted by Pervinca Took
I'm trying to remember the precise reference to that. Does Sam say something like "Well, he's a caution and no mistake ... we may go far and find naught better, not queerer" ... I'm trying to remember where it's said that Sam draws on Tom's influence to find strength. (Although I know it's there somewhere).
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Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
I think you're thinking of Frodo, in the Barrow. (Also, apparently, at the Ford, although only specifically stated in a draft/outline)
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Yes, Sam does seem to be the most impressed by Tom, particularly in that passage,
Pervinca Took (whereas Frodo is more taken by Goldberry).
Tom's influence on Sam also comes out later in several short scenes where Sam seems to have picked up Tom's penchant for nonsense verse, with the result that Sam is always improving people's spirits through laughter and silliness.
In "Flight to the Ford" Merry asks for a song. Sam responds with the Troll Song, which he says "ain't what I call proper poetry, if you understand me, just a bit of nonsense. But these old images here [ie, the trolls who have just been caught by the sun and turned to stone] brought it to my mind." After Sam recites the verse, Pippin asks where Sam came by the song, since, he says, "I've never heard those words before." Sam "mutters something inaudible" while Frodo claims "It's out of his own head, of course, . . . . First he was a conspirator, now he's a jester. . . . "
Much later, in "The Black Gate is Closed", when Gollem says he's never heard of oliphaunts, in the midst of fear over the orcs, Sam stands with his hands behind his back "as he always did when 'speaking poetry'", and recites the comic oliphaunt verse. Of this song, Sam says, " that's a rhyme we have in the Shire. Nonsense maybe, and maybe not. " The text tells us that Frodo "had laughed in the midst of all his cares when Sam trotted out the old fireside rhyme . . . ."
Later, when speaking with Faramir of the Lady Galadriel in "The Window on the West", Sam says he can't make a poem of her for he's "not much good at poetry . . . a bit of a comic rhyme, perhaps, now and again, you know, not real poetry."
This differentiation between comic and real poetry is a continuing theme with Sam. It relates to the larger topic of how Tolkien uses nonsense throughout his writing. Sorry, I've no time now to go into it further.