[mnbvkhgvmj]

There are several inaccuracies and inconsistencies in this.

- Elrond knew of Tom Bombadil.

- Tom Bombadil had heard about Frodo's journey from both elves and hobbits. I.e. He was known to and communicated with both.

- Was there not a hobbit song about him?

As to why the hobbits had little to do with Tom Bombadil...

- A character of his power could easily have chosen to wipe the hobbits memories. Maybe this was his usual approach to hobbit intruders?

- Another possibility it that given Hobbits extreme social taboo about adventures and their fetish for respectability it is quite possible that many hobbits had interacted with Tom Bombadil but few talked about it (e.g. Farmer Maggot).

[ekianjo]

> - Elrond knew of Tom Bombadil.

the text does not say otherwise. But the text is correct that Elrond does not seem to have clear memories of him. From LOTR itself:

> [Elrond said,]‘The Barrow-wights we know by many names; and of the Old Forest many tales have been told: all that now remains is but an outlier of its northern march. Time was when a squirrel could go from tree to tree from what is now the Shire to Dunland west of Isengard. In those lands I journeyed once, and many things wild and strange I knew. But I had forgotten Bombadil, if indeed this is still the same that walked the woods and hills long ago, and even then was older than the old. That was not then his name. Iarwain Ben-adar we called him.

He is not even sure it is the same person that the hobbits are referring to.

[hannasanarion]

Or it could be that he is unremarkable in most of his appearances. As the article states, he is presented as the epitome of hobbithood: a jolly old man who loves song and drink and rarely leaves home, who just so happens to live near a dangerous place.

If Gildor and Farmer Maggot met him, they would have found him entirely unremarkable: just another hobbit with a strange taste in homesteading.