Bombadil Question

[geke]

I'm preparing to paint my favorite character from LOTR, Tom Bombadil. I know a lot of people dislike the character, but he is my favorite. I've been trying to pick out a color scheme, and I noticed something that never occurred to me before.

In the description, there's a line "Green were his girdle and breeches all of leather". Now I've always taken this to mean that his girdle WAS green, and his breeches were leather. But I noticed the word "were" (love the rhyming of "were" with "girdle", by the way). Doesn't that change the meaning to "His girdle and leather breeches were green"? Of course, I'm no expert in medieval English, so maybe I'm wrong here?

The GW model appears to be wearing a belt (girdle) and breeches. But he is also wearing some sort of medieval tunic or whatever you call it as a shirt. I don't believe the tunic color is addressed in the book, but most pictures I've seen have it painted brown, which seems like a good choice. I believe I will paint the breeches and belt a dark green though.