Ents in the Shire...

[Elvish Archer]

In the FotR, Sam and Sandyman go at it in the Green Dragon a lot. One of their topics of disscusion was whether or not a certain hobbit had seen or not seen a walking treee in the Northern Moors. Later in the TTT, Treebeard asks Merry and Piipin if they'd seen any Entwives in the Shire.
Is it possible that there were Ents in the Shire? If so, could they be there and not have the hobbits know it?

EA

[Firefoot]

I've actually wondered the same thing. Like maybe the lost Entwives or something? As for how the Hobbits could not know about them, it also says that it is up in the North Farthing, and I'm pretty sure that the North Farthing is not nearly as populated as the other three. Here is the passage:

"All right," said Sam, laughing with the rest. "But how about these Tree-men, these giants, as you might call them? They do say that one bigger than a tree was seen up away beyond the North Moors not long back."
"Who's they?"
"My cousin Hal for one. He works for Mr. Boffin at Overhill and goes up to the Northfarthing for the hunting. He saw one."
"Says he did, perhaps. Your Hal's always saying he's seen things; and maybe he sees things that ain't there."
"But this one was as big as an elm tree, and walking - seven yards to a stride, if it was an inch."
"Then I bet it wasn't an inch. What he saw was an elm tree, as like as not."
"But this one was walking, I tell you; and there ain't no elm tree on the North Moors."
"Then Hal can't have seen one," said Ted.

I'm pretty sure that Ents had a stride of about seven yards which would match. Also Merry and Pippin reported that different Ents looked like different trees, which would account for an Elm tree on the North Moors. My guess is that they are Entwives.

[Eruantalon]

I had the same question for Cami(child of the 7th age)

She said that Sauron scortched land in the second age. Tolkien stated that they where either killed or imprisioned. Or they where just lost forever.

Sorry I was pretty disappointed by this one to.

[Teleri]

Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin that it is said the Ents will find the Entwives again, only when the Ents have lost everything. The way he said it sort of reminded me of the Elves "fading" and going west. Perhaps the Entwives are waiting for the Ents in the west. That would explain them being lost.

Didn't Hal see the walking elm on the borders of the Old Forest? It is said in the book that the Old Forest is very similar to Fangorn. The trees are waking there too, and high elves pass through to get to the Havens. Perhaps what Hal saw was a Huorn... Or maybe he was hallucinating... [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Finwe]

Hal could have also been at the pipeweed a bit too much. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

[Osse]

Guys... this has been discussed at least once a month for the past few years [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] please have a look in the past post section.

[img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 10:41 PM January 14, 2004: Message edited by: Osse ]

[Kaiserin]

Huorns aren't the same as ents [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

actually,,we're told that they're are(or were) ents in the old forest. The Old Willow was a Huorn, and Huorns are Ents who have grown weary and "tree-ish",right? So we're given evidence that there at least WERE ents in the old forest and/or around the shire.comments please!

[Erundil]

Though it is logical that there would be Huorns left in the Old Forest, since Fangorn and the Old Forest were both outliers of the great forest that once stretched across most of Eriador and Enedwaith, they need not have been Ents who became tree-ish. They could be trees that were becoming Ent-ish, which is what it seems that Old Man Willow was.
I think that there may have been a possibility that the tree that Hal saw in the Northfarthing was an Entwife, I can't be sure and Tolkien never explicitly says what it was that was seen (at least not to my knowledge), so I can't make a judgement one way or the other.

[inglorion]

'... Aye, aye, there was all one wood once upon a time from here to the Mountains of Lune, and this was just it's East End.
Those were the broad days! Time was when I could walk and sing all day and hear no more than the echo of my own voice in the hollow hills. The woods were like the woods of Lothlórien, only thicker, stronger, younger. And the smell of the air! I used to spend a week just breathing.'

This is also a quote from Treebeard. He speaks of the days when Elves taught them to speak, before the 'Great Darkness' came. The Old Forest and Fangorn were once connected as one big Wood over the whole of length of Arnor. That explains that once the Ents were walking through all those parts and why there are Huorns in the Old Forest.

Later Treebeard mentions the loss of the Entwives, in the years of Sauron and the Men of the Sea, this probably being the Elendil and his people. The Entwives were the opposite of Ents, who like the wild broad forests, and loved organized gardens, so they made there own. Those were near the Anduin, and are in time of LotR called the Brown Lands. Treebeard says:

'We crossed the Anduin and came to their land; but we found it a desert: it was all burned and uprooted,for was had passed over it. But the Entwives were not there.'

What happened here is unknown, yes, battle was fought, but what happened to the Entwives is unknown. I don't think they were perished in this War, because when the Ents search for them many say they have seen them, yet ever these people pointed in other directions, and so the Ents do never find them.
My conclusion to all this is that the Entwives have been searching themselves as did the Ents, only the Entwives searched for a Land. A land for them to create their gardens anew. This would explain that many people had seen them in many different directions, for just as the Ents the Entwives would search long and far.
After searching for a long time, I guess they settled just North of the Shire, for, as Treebeard says in LotR, that was a land which was to their liking.

He made them describe the Shire and it's country over and over again. He said an odd thing at this point. 'You never see any, hm, any Ents round there, do you?' he asked. 'Well, not Ents, Entwives I should really say.'

The 'He' is of course Treebeard.
The fact that Treebeard makes them describe the Shire AND it's country seems to me as another point on which we might base the idea of the Entwives in the lands north of the Shire.
A point of consideration however is the '7-yard-stride' that Sam talks about. LotR says that Treebeard was 15 feet tall, which is ±4,60 meters. A seven-yard-stride (this being a length of ±6,3 m) seems highly unlikely. Treebeard made, according to LotR, long deliberate strides, yet to assume that a creature made strides larger than his own length seems impossible.
The answer to this seems absurdly simple. The tale of Sam's cousin Hal seeing the Walking Tree would have been told many times and especially in bars and such places. And the ability of Humans, Hobbits etc. to exagerate about length, size or other features of importance, is great. Because, when you see a Walking Tree the thing that matters is that it is walking, it is a possibility that especially the speed of it or the length of it's strides would be exagerated. The 'seven-yard-stride' is an exageration!

To answer the post of Eruantalon:

Sauron indeed scorched the Land in the Second Age! He had all the lands in Darkness and Arnor was fallen apart. Yet at that time the Entwives didn't live in Arthedain, but they had their gardens near Anduin (Brown Lands). Sauron and the War against him scorched those lands as well and their gardens were destroyed and they were lost. But if they were imprisoned or slain, how can people have reported seeing them when the Ents searched for them?
I think they left their lands, alive and free, but grieving for the loss of their gardens, and searched therefore a land that would satisfy them again.

Well... this is how I think of the topic and I hope to have been of help!

greetings,
lathspell

[lathspell]

Sorry people, the Post of inglorion was mine, but made under my brothers login-name.

I ain't even able to take care of being here on my own name [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

greetings,
lathspell

[Armetiel]

I read somewhere online that Tolkien had stated in one of his letters when asked about the subject that he had not even thought of it before, and that he would like to believe that the entwives were in the shire even though he had originally stated that they were killed in the battle, however he himself was not to sure on that matter...So if Tolkien was not sure then how are we to be sure. I myself would also like to believe that the entwives were in the shire.

I'm sorry I don't have the source of this for you...It was a long time ago that I read it when I was studying up on the matter. I'm going to sleep now being that it is 2:30 in the morning here, but if I can find it again I will certainly post the link to it here [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

[lathspell]

Yes indeed, Armetiel! I have ridden the same source and that source is the reason why we can assume things about the Entwives. If Tolkien would've hold on to the statement of the killed or imprisoned Entwives, the answer would be unquestionable. Yet he himself doubts, so that gives us the room to speculate and we're good at that! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

lathspell

[Armetiel]

^okay since we are allowed to come to our own conclusions here's mine [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

The entwives simply did not ALL come to the same fate...SOME were killed, SOME became Olog-hai, and SOME went to live on the outskirts of the Northfarthing [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] And this solution would explain All the possibilities [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

*ducks and leaves before someone throws something at her*

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 6:29 PM January 17, 2004: Message edited by: Armetiel ]

[Armetiel]

In the FotR, Sam and Sandyman go at it in the Green Dragon a lot.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I really only remember them "going at it" once, and I'd hardly call that "a lot". There was however a "going at it" style discussion between their fathers, Sandyman and Hamfast Gamgee, in "The Long-Expected Party" but I only recall one conversation between Samwise Gamgee and Ted Sandyman in FOTR and that took place in the second chapter "The Shadow of the Past"...

Anyways, sorry I know what was OT...just wanted to either point this out or have someone else point out to me another conversation between the two.

[Sharkû]

Tolkien didn't really see a chance for any surviving Entwives (cf. Letters 144 and 338), so, whatever that tree was, he wasn't female. Unless he was a real tree and didn't walk, of course.

[Elvish Archer]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I really only remember them "going at it" once, and I'd hardly call that "a lot". There was however a "going at it" style discussion between their fathers, Sandyman and Hamfast Gamgee, in "The Long-Expected Party" but I only recall one conversation between Samwise Gamgee and Ted Sandyman in FOTR and that took place in the second chapter "The Shadow of the Past"...

You are indeed correct, I misspoke and stand corrected.

However, if Ents are supposed to be practically immortal (the live a LONG time) would they not have eventually found the Entwives? With unlimited time on your hands (or limbs in the case of the Ents) you can do almost anything.

Whatever happened to the Ents in the end anyway? They didn't exactly take the ships to Valinor...


EA

[Armetiel]

^Thank you, this would mean I have NOT gone insane [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

As for what happened to the Ent's I'm not entirely sure, I'll have to look that up, however, you scared me there...see I just got back from the movie and it's late and I'm tired so therefore not reading right, and I still have the picture of the wooden ship in my head and you saying something about ents going to the grey havens (i know you said NOT, but this is the part where the "not reading right" comes in) and I suddenly have this mental image of them making the ships from...k well I won't say it, but you get the picture...anywayz, I think I'm going to bed now lol

[Noxomanus]

Well, in the song about the Ents and Entwives they say they'll meet 'in the west' and both of them will go this way so I suppose they did eventually go to Valinor. It might seem a strange idea for an Ent to go to the Grey Havens but it's never mentioned they couldn't or wouldn't.

[Finwe]

Perhaps they meant that in a figurative sense. I suppose that at the end of the world, when Arda will finally be destroyed (along with Morgoth), all the Free Peoples will be reunited. Then, the Ents could be reunited with the Entwives again.

[lotrfreak90]

good point finwe

this is my favorite topic to debate about with my friends
but you have to take into consideration that tolkien never followed up and so we can never be sure(sigh)




______
And they shall soar on wings like eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not grow feint, those who hope in the Lord. Isaiah 40:31

[Encaitare]

My personal opinion regarding the fates of the Ents is somewhat grim... I have this feeling that they eventually became very tree-ish and woke less and less as the years wore on. This isn't based on anything, really, it's just a thought. I do like to think of the Ents and Entwives meeting in the West, though. No one's very hasty there anymore.

[The Perky Ent]

I always like to believe that wherever there's trees, there's ents! It gives hopes to those un-protected trees

[Encaitare]

Indeed! When I see a tree that's been chopped down I have the urge to say (and often do say), "See that? Somewhere, Treebeard is crying right now." Poor unprotected trees...

[lotrfreak90]

I know this is kinda out of place but anyone in here like the forest so much and like tolkien so much that they belive ents exsist or did at one time? They way tolkien talks about some of his writing you never know (-;

[The Perky Ent]

I do not believe there is physical evidence to support that ents are in the world. However, I feel that in forests, there's always a hidden presense. Just my opinion...

[Boromir88]

Firefoot

I've actually wondered the same thing. Like maybe the lost Entwives or something?

I've always speculated the same way. Thought if Hal did see those walking Treepeople they were the Entwives. I mean as Treebeard describes the Entwives The Shire seems like a place they would enjoy and love. Also, if you listen to Bombadil he explains there will be inhabitants in the Shire after all the Hobbits are gone/extict so to say. This is just speculation by me though, there really is no proof that they were Entwives, or even if Hal did see these walking trees, which I don't see where a Hobbit would just make up the idea of a Walking Tree.

Teleri

The way he said it sort of reminded me of the Elves "fading" and going west. Perhaps the Entwives are waiting for the Ents in the west. That would explain them being lost.

You see a lot of that in Tolkien, with a lot of races. As the strength of men grow and become stronger the other races begin to fade. You have elves leaving Middle-earth, dwarves are a dwindling race with very few women, now you just brought up the Ents.

[lotrfreak90]

must there be physical evidence for something to exist?

just a thought

[Encaitare]

must there be physical evidence for something to exist?

Of course not. But the point is that Ents, no matter how awesome they are, are fictional. I wish there were Ents around, though.

However, I feel that in forests, there's always a hidden presense. Just my opinion...

Yes, indeed. The woods are just so beautiful and natural, I get that feeling too.

[ninlaith]

I think there very well could have been Ents in the Shire. Treebeard said that the Entwives would like the place Merry and Pippin had described to him. And another thing, Merry always liked the forests in the Shire. He said he would run through the tress with his hands reaching up trying to touch the leaves and it was almost like the trees bent over just for him. So I think there were Ents in the Shire.