Bombadil’s Green Girdle

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Balfrog

Morthoron

Your last post is not particularly well thought out and lacks balance. I don't see the “stray words out of a hat” comment as at all appropriate. Just like any medievalist would react, if one were to air out the phrase 'green girdle' there is, certainly to my mind, only one possible way Tolkien would have connected it. Unless you can prove otherwise?

As for its significance – much scholarly work has been published on the matter. Significance has been conjectured to exist on multiple fronts. So when it comes to Tolkien's own translation:

“For whoever goes girdled with this green riband,
while he keeps it well clasped closely about him,
there is none so hardy under heaven that to hew him were able;
for he could not be killed by any cunning of hand.”

it's this 'invincibility' significance that Ms. Seth has focused on as a parallel – which you seem to want to ignore. I don’t recall the Professor ever called Lady Bertilak a liar? Nor to my knowledge did he ever imply the poet lied? Nor did he doubt whether it truly possessed magical qualities. Do you?

Saying my "last post was not particularly well thought out and lacks balance" is as laughable as the premise you started with. Because I am not required to do public relations work for a semi-pseudo-Tolkien scholar, I simply use common sense, and do not need to grasp at straws to get the gullible to read tripe and increase a site's click count.

Does Bombadil have a girdle of invincibility? No. As Glorfindel noted, "I think that in the end, if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First, and then Night will come." Tolkien never implied Bombadil was invincible, that is not the character's raison d'être.

Does Bombadil need a girdle of invincibility? No. Upon whom exactly does he wish to exert his invincibility, since a girdle of invincibility implies a martial stance that Bombadil in no way has an interest in. He is not bellicose; in fact, he allows Old Man Willow his space, and does not even attack the Barrow Wights in a conventional sense.

Does Bombadil wear a girdle of invincibility? Oh, of course, right along with his yellow boots of uber trajectory and his ever-expanding blue jacket of excessive caloric-intake. Because Goldberry sews nuclear-powered clothes.

The more realistic, less specious consideration is that the colors of Bombadil's clothing match his environment. He is, after all, a metaphor for the old Oxfordshire countryside. And Tolkien's love of alliteration would certainly allow for a green girdle in much the same way as a "great green dragon".

Again, you've missed the symbolism of the green girdle in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" completely (not surprising, considering the Snark hunts you engage in).

Does the original author ever have Gawain actually use the green girdle of invincibility in battle against the Green Knight? No, because it is a badge of shame for Gawain to seek to cheat in order to defeat the Green Knight. He dons the girdle out of fear. In essence, the minute he puts it on he loses the valour and honour that were quintessential to the code of a chivalrous knight (and the tale itself is invested with that code of chivalry). Gawain wears it ever afterward as an act of atonement for his deceit.

Why would the scholar Tolkien equate a badge of shame to Bombadil, who neither cares for invincibility nor wants dominion over others? The symbolism does not in any way equate. Your house of cards is blown over by your own flatulence.