[davem]

He found laid ready clean garments of green cloth that fitted him excellently

.

True Thomas lay on Huntlie Bank
A ferlie he spied wi’ his ee
And there he saw a ladye bright
Come riding down by the Eildon tree

Her shirt was o’ the grass-green silk
Her mantle of the velvet fine
At ilka tett of her horse’s mane
Hung fifty siller bells and nine.

True Thomas, he pulled off his cap
And /louted low down to the knee
‘All Hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven
For thy peer on earth I never did see

‘O no, O no, Thomas’ she said
‘That name does not belong to me
I am but the Queen of fair Elfland
That am hither come to visit thee
..........

He has gotten a coat of the even cloth
And a pair of shoes of velvet green
And till seven years were gone & past
True Thomas on earth was never seen.
(The Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer- traditional Scottish ballad)

Wearing of green is associated with magic, witchcraft, fertility. ‘A green gown is the traditional term for rustic defloration, & overall weariing of green is associated with earth-magic. Thomas the Rhymer is given clothing of green by the Queen of Elfland. The significance within the Tradition is that the wearing of Green signifies unity with the Land.
(RJ Stewart: The UnderWorld Initiation)

One of the few things that most accounts agree upon is that the favourite colour of the fairy folk was green. It is for this reason that some people still think of green as unlucky, since it could only be worn by the people of Faery & to copy them was to court their anger.

‘Virtually all the elfin folk of Britain & Ireland dress in green, a colour, indeed, that is pretty generally characteristic of fairies’ says Professor Wimberley in his Folk Lore & Ballad & goes on to cite a number of Faeriy ballads such as Tam Lin & Thomas the Rhymer (Child Ballads nos 37 & 39)....In the description of the second faery court in Tam Lin we read how:

‘The next court that comes along
Is clad in robes of green
And its the head court of them all
For in it rides the Queen

As to the reason, if any is needed, why the Faerie folk should choose this colour, one may decide whether one sees it as a natural reflection of their closeness & participation in the world of growth & greenness, or whether the association of the colour green with death & witches derives from the faery tradition, or whether it influenced that tradition in turn. (John Matthews, ‘Robin Hood: Green Lord of the Wildwood’)

So, wearing green is symbolic of death, & is the colour of the clothing worn by the inhabitants of the OtherWorld. Frodo has crossed fully into the OtherWorld now. In a sense he did die at the ford, symbolically at least, & entered the magical world of the elves. Bilbo had crossed over into the Otherworld previously & found the Ring, which he took back to the living world with him, but the wrath of the OtherWorld powers pursued him. The Magical object must be returned by Frodo if the fury of the powers is not to lay the Land waste. So, Frodo must pass symbolically into the realm of the dead to return the magical object to its place of origin.

We know we are no longer in ‘our’ world ‘Time doesn’t pass, in Rivendell, it just ‘is’, its difficult to even stay awake - one is constantly drifting into dreams. Frodo has finally passed over the ‘River’, which he had dreamed of doing, but he will never fully be able to pass back. The others will, like Thomas, returning from the OtherWorld with the gift of prophecy (‘The Tongue that Cannot Lie’) but Frodo won’t ever be able to reintegrate fully into this world - why? Perhaps because he became too bound to the ring, the ultimate source of OtherWorldly power & magic. Ironically, the more he integrates himself into the OtherWorld, the more he severs his links with the world of the iving. On their return the others feel like they’re waking up from a long dream, but Frodo feels like he is falling asleep. In the end the living world will become for Frodo what the OtherWorld is for his fellow hobbits - a place of dream, unreal, & he will always feel out of place, yearning for the place he has come to belong in.