The final clue that Tom and Goldberry are in some sense emblematic of the unfallen Adam and Eve is given in Tom’s naming of the hobbits’ ponies. The ponies had not been given any such names by Merry, to whom they belonged, “but they answered to the new names that Tom had given them for the rest of their lives.” The connection once again to the book of Genesis and the power that God gave Adam to name the beasts is all too obvious: “And the Lord God having formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: for
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