Tom Bombadil is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He first appeared in print in a 1934 poem called The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which also included the Lord of the Rings characters Goldberry (Tom's wife), Old Man Willow (an evil tree in Tom's forest) and the Barrow-wight, from whom Tom rescues the hobbits. They were not then explicitly part of the older legends that became The Silmarillion, and are not mentioned in The Hobbit.
