The first time I read J.R.R. Tolkien's book, "The Hobbit", I remember when Thorin and Company were captured by giant spiders in Mirkwood Forest. Bilbo Baggins attempts to distract and enrage the arachnids by singing an insulting song while wearing his invisibility ring. This is in the chapter titled "Flies and Spiders".

The song he makes up is called "Old fat spider spinning in a tree!". The second stanza had a reference to "Tomnoddy" that I didn't know as an eight year-old reader. Being an Asperger kid, I of course looked it up and used it on the dumber bullies at school. I'd be annoyed if someone called me a fool or dunce, so I can see why the spiders were all in a huff.

The section goes:

 Old Tomnoddy, all big body,
 Old Tomnoddy can’t spy me!
 Attercop! Attercop!
 Down you drop!
 You'll never catch me up your tree!

Oddly enough, I knew what Attercop meant. 

Tom"nod`dy (?), n. [Tom (see Tomboy) + noddy.]

1. Zool.

A sea bird, the puffin.

[Prov.Eng.]

2.

A fool; a dunce; a noddy.

 

© Webster 1913.

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