Ah, Bombadil. Whatever else he may be, he’s an excellent ‘door-guard’ guardian-spirit for The Lord of the Rings, preventing unworthy readers from entering the rest of the book — the readers who just can’t get their dull heads past the idea of what they see as merely a ‘jolly annoying singing garden-gnome, with a fish for a wife’. For the more perceptive reader, he more or less works the opposite way, as an enticing enigma and riddle. Partly shaped by Tolkien’s memories of his father-figure guardian Father Francis, obviously, and a dash of St. Francis… but far more than that and an enduring riddle for most.