My girlfriend and I are listening to the LotR audiobooks (which will be my first time audiobooking it, but like my 11th or 12th read through if you count my mom reading them to me twice as a child).

Anyway, it occurred to me Tom, Goldberry and their house may only have taken physical form because the hobbits were there, and they appeared as they did so that the hobbits would have something they could understand to relate to and interact with.

I was thinking about how Tom and Goldberry both sing about themselves and each other. About how Song is literally how the world was created. It occurred to me that Tom is manifesting himself into physical form as he describes himself in song "Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow." The way he appears so quickly when Frodo calls for help, and again when Frodo sings for him in the barrow.

People speculate so much about what / who Tom might be, but after this listen through, I really think both Tom and Goldberry are simply wild spirits of the land, awakened in the ancient days and still able to influence to manifest themselves in their little, untamed corner corner of the world. While Tom may have been "First and Fatherless," that doesn't mean he has some complex or epic nature, or is tied in some way to Eru Ilúvatar (as people have long speculated). But all that aside, I found the way they sing about themselves to be profound in a way I hadn't noticed before.