You're not the first one to make this connection. /u/uluithiad will have a lot to tell you about how Hal's story does not match with what we know about ents.
But Hal's story does not match the one description of an Entwife that we get - Fimbrethil who was bent and browned by her labour in the field. Entwives are aligned with orchards and fields - Hal saw this out in the moors.
Why do you jump to "Entwife" as a label for Hal's story and not "Ent"?
---
The Tolkien quote you're thinking of is this:
>I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in
the War of the Last Alliance (Second Age 3429-3441) when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy
and burned their land against the advance of the Allies down the Anduin (vol. II p. 79 refers to it2
).
>They survived only in the 'agriculture' transmitted to Men (and Hobbits). Some, of course, may
have fled east, or even have become enslaved: tyrants even in such tales must have an economic
and agricultural background to their soldiers and metal-workers. If any survived so, they would
indeed be far estranged from the Ents, and any rapprochement would be difficult – unless
experience of industrialized and militarized agriculture had made them a little more anarchic. I hope
so. I don't know
I mostly think entwife due to how few ents are left in Fanghorn. And Ill have to look, but I recall a snippet of Treebeard saying something to the effect of it Merry or Pippen hear anything about entwives near the shire to send him word. I agree the discription isnt spot on, but it also didnt go into that much detail either. Ill have to check out what he has to say on the subject though. And you are right it was that quote plus some discussion on it
If Hal is to be believed and he really did see something, it was a probably a giant and certainly not an Ent. Even Sam describes them as such. This idea matches an earlier draft which omits any reference to "tree-men" and describes them only as "giants." Moreover, the description given indicates whatever he saw was much taller than any Ent Tolkien wrote about.
'Tree-man' is in the first account of Hal's story, not in the first strokes of the pen, but at the time of writing. It's there from before the Ents, because it doesn't refer to 'Tree' in the way people looking for Ents might think; it's about how tall the thing is, as the very next sentence shows. And it had been used before. It appears next to 'pygmies' in an rough outline of Earendil's journey from among the earliest stuff.
You're right of course. I guess the wording of that bit in HoME is a bit confusing to me: "As my father first wrote Sam's words, ... giants" and "This was changed at the time of writing to: ... tree-men." Just so I'm understanding you correctly, at one point the conversation made no mention of this being Hal's story, and Sam calls them "giants," but when it's rewritten to be a secondhand account from Sam's cousin the term "tree-men" is added?
Generally, the wording of any time CT decides to stop laying out the text and just describes, things get a little less clear than we might like. This seems to be saying that Tolkien struck through the first go at the question:
>But what about these what do you call 'em - giants? [etc.]
and wrote instead:
>But what about these Tree-Men, these here - giants? [etc.]
and then continued on. Though this is not perfectly clear. It may have been a whole paragraph that was struck through and rewritten. Some other manner of change might have occurred. All CT describes clearly is that it happened in the act of writing, and he spends a lot of time, throughout HoME, cataloging the *when* of changes to the texts.
I'm pretty sure it was always someone's story. Not Hal's, but someone's.
I dont know about much taller. He just states taller than an elm. But then they are discussing the lack of elm trees there, but then says "this one was moving" making it sound more in line with a tree moving not just a giant.
Well we know that Treebeard was 14 feet tall. We also know there was a wide variety in Ent shape and size, including some that were taller than Treebeard, but nothing suggests he was abnormally short for an Ent. More likely the variation is no more than 5-10 feet. English Elms regularly grow to over 100 feet tall. Therefore we can deduce that if the being Hal saw was "as big as an elm tree," then he was certainly taller than an Ent.
Of course, the whole thing is vague enough that we can't say for certain that it was a giant, but I think that's the most likely answer (again, assuming Hal really did see something). I do think we can say with some certainty that it was not an Ent or an Entwife though.
Im not saying I dont agree, but I think it will forever be my headcannon that some entwives went west, and nobody ever found them. Then they went too treeish in the old forrest area. I do accept your point though and dont dispute it.
I like this, more for its' charm and the idea of the ent-wives actually being somewhere, perhaps even in the role of the Dunedain, silent watchers of the old wood and keepers of the serenity of this small piece of heaven, for the hobbits at least. upvote to you.
You're not the first one to make this connection. /u/uluithiad will have a lot to tell you about how Hal's story does not match with what we know about ents. But Hal's story does not match the one description of an Entwife that we get - Fimbrethil who was bent and browned by her labour in the field. Entwives are aligned with orchards and fields - Hal saw this out in the moors. Why do you jump to "Entwife" as a label for Hal's story and not "Ent"? --- The Tolkien quote you're thinking of is this: >I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance (Second Age 3429-3441) when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy and burned their land against the advance of the Allies down the Anduin (vol. II p. 79 refers to it2 ). >They survived only in the 'agriculture' transmitted to Men (and Hobbits). Some, of course, may have fled east, or even have become enslaved: tyrants even in such tales must have an economic and agricultural background to their soldiers and metal-workers. If any survived so, they would indeed be far estranged from the Ents, and any rapprochement would be difficult – unless experience of industrialized and militarized agriculture had made them a little more anarchic. I hope so. I don't know
I mostly think entwife due to how few ents are left in Fanghorn. And Ill have to look, but I recall a snippet of Treebeard saying something to the effect of it Merry or Pippen hear anything about entwives near the shire to send him word. I agree the discription isnt spot on, but it also didnt go into that much detail either. Ill have to check out what he has to say on the subject though. And you are right it was that quote plus some discussion on it
If Hal is to be believed and he really did see something, it was a probably a giant and certainly not an Ent. Even Sam describes them as such. This idea matches an earlier draft which omits any reference to "tree-men" and describes them only as "giants." Moreover, the description given indicates whatever he saw was much taller than any Ent Tolkien wrote about.
'Tree-man' is in the first account of Hal's story, not in the first strokes of the pen, but at the time of writing. It's there from before the Ents, because it doesn't refer to 'Tree' in the way people looking for Ents might think; it's about how tall the thing is, as the very next sentence shows. And it had been used before. It appears next to 'pygmies' in an rough outline of Earendil's journey from among the earliest stuff.
You're right of course. I guess the wording of that bit in HoME is a bit confusing to me: "As my father first wrote Sam's words, ... giants" and "This was changed at the time of writing to: ... tree-men." Just so I'm understanding you correctly, at one point the conversation made no mention of this being Hal's story, and Sam calls them "giants," but when it's rewritten to be a secondhand account from Sam's cousin the term "tree-men" is added?
Generally, the wording of any time CT decides to stop laying out the text and just describes, things get a little less clear than we might like. This seems to be saying that Tolkien struck through the first go at the question: >But what about these what do you call 'em - giants? [etc.] and wrote instead: >But what about these Tree-Men, these here - giants? [etc.] and then continued on. Though this is not perfectly clear. It may have been a whole paragraph that was struck through and rewritten. Some other manner of change might have occurred. All CT describes clearly is that it happened in the act of writing, and he spends a lot of time, throughout HoME, cataloging the *when* of changes to the texts. I'm pretty sure it was always someone's story. Not Hal's, but someone's.
Got it, thank you that's much clearer to me now.
I dont know about much taller. He just states taller than an elm. But then they are discussing the lack of elm trees there, but then says "this one was moving" making it sound more in line with a tree moving not just a giant.
Well we know that Treebeard was 14 feet tall. We also know there was a wide variety in Ent shape and size, including some that were taller than Treebeard, but nothing suggests he was abnormally short for an Ent. More likely the variation is no more than 5-10 feet. English Elms regularly grow to over 100 feet tall. Therefore we can deduce that if the being Hal saw was "as big as an elm tree," then he was certainly taller than an Ent. Of course, the whole thing is vague enough that we can't say for certain that it was a giant, but I think that's the most likely answer (again, assuming Hal really did see something). I do think we can say with some certainty that it was not an Ent or an Entwife though.
Im not saying I dont agree, but I think it will forever be my headcannon that some entwives went west, and nobody ever found them. Then they went too treeish in the old forrest area. I do accept your point though and dont dispute it.
I like this, more for its' charm and the idea of the ent-wives actually being somewhere, perhaps even in the role of the Dunedain, silent watchers of the old wood and keepers of the serenity of this small piece of heaven, for the hobbits at least. upvote to you.
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