In both cases the origin stories are not known. Perhaps both emerged from the original music. In any case, they both have a fundamental strength to them that possibly surpasses even Maiar and Valar (Ungoliant had Morgoth on the ropes after sucking the trees dry, so that Morgoth had to call on his balrogs to gang up and rescue him; I have not seen any record of a similar struggle with Tom vs. anything other than barrow wights, so his power is perhaps more speculative).
Ungoliant appears to crave darkness and to draw strength from consuming light. Tom appears to both crave and draw strength from Arda and from nature. Or perhaps he is nature.
So what happens if they had met, back in the first age? Would they have regarded each other warily and passed on by? Would Ungoliant have greedily tried to consume Tom, and get a nasty surprise? Would Tom sing a song that would drain the power from Ungoliant?
I have no idea, so I’d be interested to know what you all think.
Ungoliant’s nature at least, I think, is known: She’s a fey, an embodied manifestation of some fundamental aspect of nature (in her case, darkness). Fey are as old as the World, and part of it, but no older. It’s a concept that doesn’t get much written on it in the later revisions of the writings, but they’re all over the earliest writings. Bombadil’s wife Goodberry (the River-Daughter) is probably also a fey, as is the cruel spirit of Caradhas that might have been the origin of the storm.
As for Bombadil, well, one hypothesis I’ve seen is that he’s also a fey, but the arch-fey: He’s a manifestation of Nature as an entire whole. If that’s the case, then he would be superior to Ungoliant, because Darkness is but one sub-aspect of Nature.
Personally, though, I suspect that Bombadil doesn’t fit into any of the standard categories, other than the category of beings who are Tom Bombadil. And I think that he has no particular power (beyond what one would naturally pick up over such a long life), but that likewise, no one and nothing holds any power over him, either.
We know Ungoliant is an evil spirit born or created before the world. She is similar to the Maia bit not counted among them. To some degree she is the manifestation of night.
Bombadil is a mystery. Tolkien did not know what he was or quite how he fit. He was the first in Middle Earth apparently, but that doesn’t narrow it down much. He could be anything from the local spirit of the Old Forest to Eru Ilúvatar himself. Arda was made with the Music of the Ainur and Tom is stronger in music than anyone else it appears.
I always assumed that Tom was one of the Maiar, at least that is what I assumed after Gandalf implied kinship with him:
I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time. He is a moss-gatherer, and I have been a stone doomed to rolling. But my rolling days are ending, and now we shall have much to say to one another." - The Return of the King (Homeward Bound)
I don’t what the fey are; where is this canon from? For the record I have only read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. From these books I assumed there were only a limited list of sentient creatures: Iluvatar, the Ainur (including the Valar and all the Maiar like Gandalf, Tom Bombadil, Sauran and Ungoliant), the Children of Iluvatar (Elves, Men, Orcs (twisted Elves), and Hobbits who I always assumed were related to men), and the “children of Yavanna and Aule” (Ents and Dwarves). Of course this leaves big holes for Huan, trolls, and the eagles of Manwe. What the hell were they?
I’ve always imagined that Tolkien didn’t quite know what he was getting Tom into when he wrote that scene with the ring. Without it, Tom is just another random, mystical inhabitant of Middle Earth. But the flippant way he treats the One Ring catapults him into a spotlight that doesn’t do much more than illuminate how little we know about him.
As powerful as it is, the Ring was made for a specific purpose and for specific creatures. I think Tolkien was just showing us that Tom - who is Very Old and Not a Man (or Man-Adjacent) - exists far outside its purposes. He’s a null factor where the One Ring is concerned.
Plus, there’s the whole Catholic-inspired redemption arc at the core of the story. Tolkien wanted to show us yet again that there are never easy solutions. You can’t fly the eagles to Mordor. The journey and sacrifice always had to happen.
Tolkien was very deliberately trying to create a synthetic epic myth cycle to match the great European epic myth cycles, like the Norse Edda, the Finnish Kalevala, and the Irish Mabinogion, which he felt England lacked. An important aspect of real world myth cycles is that they are syncretetic, emergent blends of different stories and cultural elements. Even after they’ve been standardized and rationalized and written down in a single “canon” text, they include inclusions from earlier, not entirely compatible myths. I’ve always thought Tom Bombadil was one such.
He’s so enigmatic and discordant because he’s not really part of the Silmarillion-cycle. He’s from a simpler, more folksy, less cosmic set of folktales (along with Goldberry and Old Man Willow). The One Ring has no hold over him and he’s unconcerned with it because they are mythic elements from two very different traditions.
I also tend to think of Hobbits as being an inclusion from a simpler, less cosmic set of folktales. I don’t think its a coincidence that Tom Bombadil lives on the outskirts of the Shire - he and Hobbits were originally elements of the same set of folktales. Hobbits wound up being mostly but not completely integrated into the Silmarillion-cycle (their origins as a people and their history before the Third Age are entirely obscure), while Tom Bombadil remained an odd inclusion.
Reading the post Galactus linked to, unfortunately for this theory, it doesn’t actually seem like Tolkien intended this. I still think it fits, though.
So, what happens in a meeting between Tom Bombadil and Ungoliant? Well, they’re from two very different sorts of myth cycles. But, I think Tom the folktale trickster manages to trick Ungoliant and escape her, possibly stealing something important from her lair. I think it’s possible he manages to steal back the Sun before Ungoliant can devour it, and hides it from her by keeping it out of sight for half the day, but that seems a bit too cosmic for him. In any event, he doesn’t really defeat her, much less slay her, because that’s not how his tales work. Since Ungoliant can be frustrated and her hunger thwarted in her own tales, Tom manages that.
I had some similar thoughts: Old Man Willow is at least evil enough to corrupt an entire forest and was fair on his way to killing all four hobbits – and ooh, there’s another thought: what would happen when Old Man Willow (or Shelob) tried to digest or encapsulate the One Ring? Well, someone else can start a thread on that if they like: it wasn’t going to happen because, well, it would wreck the story to be told.
We know little about Ungoliant except ‘super evil’ – but was she older or stronger or more evil than Old Man Willow? Lacking any evidence, we might suppose they were comparable. If comparable, we know how Tom Bombadil handled Old Man Willow – sang the right song, released the captives, and otherwise left Old Man Willow alone again. Between Ungoliant and Tom Bombadil, it might not be much of a fight. Tom would achieve what he wanted, then move on.