Meery dreams of water coming from some unknown source and surrounding the house until he fears that it will enter the house and he will drown.  He thinks his bed is a bog, but when he wakes, he, like Pippin, recalls Goldberry's words and falls back to sleep, untroubled.

Water, one dream interpretation site tells me, is "always a bad omen" in a dream.  Of dreaming of drowning, it says, "To dream that you drown or in the midst of drowning is a bad omen as it pertains to the health of your business and partnership activities. If you die, your business will fail and a great loss will occur for you but if you are rescued and revived, then you will have a good friend step in and save your business."

Of course, one can easily say that Merry dreams of water because it's raining heavily.  But water figures most prominently in this chapter is association with Goldberry.  Why is water a threatening force in his dream?  The dream also carries with it a sense of inevitability ("I shall be drowned!" he thought.  "It will find its way in, and then I shall drown.").  Is he foreseeing the future adventure — can he already sense at some level that he cannot escape some doom before him?

I also find it interesting that at the end of this passage, it says "A little breath of sweet air moved the curtain."  Pippn, whose dream Merry's most closely mirrors, gets no such good sign after waking.  Is this, in fact, a good sign?  Does this suggest some difference between Merry and Pippin?  Or did Tolkien just feel like being more descriptive here than above?

E-mail: lottelita@hotmail.com
AIM: Miss Vannette
Current LOTR projects: FOTR callback script, first attempt at fanfic, Tengwar tattoo

Boromir: "What the bloody 'ell is that?"
Aragorn: "It's a frothing mass of fangirls,
led by that raving tart, Lottelita!  This
is a foe beyond either of us: RUN!"