Lord of the Rings: Has anyone figured out who the entwives were?

Does anyone have any good theories on what the entwives were or what they represented. I've always loved this part of the books: I've been to some LOTR websites but never found any theories.

"Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves
and the dreams of trees unfold
When woodland halls are green and cool,
and the wind is in the west
Come back to me. Come back to me,
And say my land is best."

Also I'm wondering if anyone knows any good audio tapes of these books? I found some youtube clips of Tolkein reading sections of the books and wonder how do I get more of this?

Just finished reading LOTR last night for the umpteenth time The entwives are definitely a loose thread. I'm just wondering if Tolkien always meant to revisit them but then either forgot or couldn't think of a way to bring them into the plot neatly.

I think the implication in the book is that they were probably all destroyed by Sauron when he burned their gardens creating the Brown Lands. It seems to be a forlorn hope of Treebeard's that they survived and somehow escaped to the lands in the east or possibly around the shire.

As to what they represent, if anything, I don't really know. Do you have your own theory?

They might just be sleeping. That would be the most fantasy'ish thing I guess..

OMG
you don't know!?

(/slap Peter Jackson)

The Entwives were the living
trees just outside the shire.
Sam was almost swallowed by the roots of one.
So were Merry and Pipin.

It's heart breaking when the Ent Treebeard is helping those two,
tells the the story how the trees have lost their women
and will now go extinct, when Merry and Pipin
say nothing, yet they know where one is.

How many times have we had the answer
to some problem we face and didn't
realize it. Letting something
go extinct out of the world.


David Grouchy

reply to post by davidgrouchy


I don't know if that can be right. Tom Bombadil calls the tree that attacked the Hobbits 'Old Man Willow'. I've always assumed the willow tree was a Huorn. Entwives loved cultivating the land and gardening so it's doubtful they would live in the Old Forest which is a very Entish place.

There's an entry on wikipedia en.wikipedia.org... which has a quote from Tolkien saying he himself didn't know what happened to them but that they were probably destroyed by Sauron.

I just assumed they were Dryads. After all, Tolkien took much from folklore, and these tree-dwelling nymphs seem to fit the bill.

Originally posted by davidgrouchy
OMG
you don't know!?

Old man Willow is not a ent, he is a huorn. I believe Samwise say's that his cousin spotted a ent north of the Shire around Bucklebury. Thats the best we get.

This is one of those things Tolkien wrote and never finished, just like who Tom is really. We can only guess.

Tolkiens last known remarks on the matter....

"I think that in fact the Entwives have disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance"

Originally posted by MarrsAttax

I don't know if that can be right. Tom Bombadil calls the tree that attacked the Hobbits 'Old Man Willow'.

The hobbits missunderstood what he said.
He called it "Old Man's widdow."

That's my story
and I'm sticking too it.


David Grouchy

Originally posted by davidgrouchy

Originally posted by MarrsAttax

I don't know if that can be right. Tom Bombadil calls the tree that attacked the Hobbits 'Old Man Willow'.

The hobbits missunderstood what he said.
He called it "Old Man's widdow."

That's my story
and I'm sticking too it.

David Grouchy

I like that one.

On a side note, the forests of the south used to be contected to the forests in the north. Sauron destroyed the forest right in the middle and cut the south off from the north. Old Man Willow is a surviver of those times and is most black hearted over the whole thing and takes it out on any middle earthers, if Tom will let him.

Its been years since I rambled Tolkien lore and it makes me want to read the books again.

Originally posted by FreeSpeaker

I like that one.

Yeah Bombadil's Scottish accent,
on British ears and all that.


David Grouchy

Originally posted by FreeSpeaker

On a side note, the forests of the south used to be contected to the forests in the north. Sauron destroyed the forest right in the middle and cut the south off from the north. Old Man Willow is a surviver of those times and is most black hearted over the whole thing and takes it out on any middle earthers, if Tom will let him.

The thing I like about the books is how it gives me pause to reflect and wonder.
Do I live in a forest cut off from the north, that used to be whole?
Being from Louisiana, it's entirely possible.


David grouchy

Originally posted by davidgrouchy

The thing I like about the books is how it gives me pause to reflect and wonder.
Do I live in a forest cut off from the north, that used to be whole?
Being from Louisiana, it's entirely possible.

David grouchy

edit on 7-8-2011 by davidgrouchy because: spelling

I know what you mean. Much of the cottage country in my province all used to be the land of the beaver before the Hudson's Bay Company took millions of furs back to europe. I look around every year and try to imagine just what this land used to look like.

Swampy and boggy I imagine.

I think they were Middle Earth's answer to to Feminazis who were radicalised by a couple of runaway Orc Lesbians. They'd had enough of living in the shadow of their Ent oppressors, and having beardy Entsex, so they left, crept away one night, to take their twisted message that all Ents were rapers and defilersto the faraway Ent-Aunties, and their other oppressed sistren far and wide. Like a band of feral, twiggy Wiccans, I suppose.

Of course this is mere speculation, but hey! everything's fictional in the end.

they are bearers of genetic knowledge knowable only though the blood

reply to post by tekeen

they are bearers of genetic knowledge knowable only though the blood

And I thought my post was asinine. Anyway, Ents don't have blood, they have sap.

My guess is the Old Forest. Sam mentions at the start of The Fellowship of the Ring that his cousin Andy (I think) saw a walking tree as big as an Elm.

Probably the best answer we'll ever have is what Tolkien himself had to say about it..

He actually mentions them twice in his letters..

Entwife - LOTR Wiki

One of the primary comments on the survival of the Entwives is found in Letter 144 of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien:

"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..."

And later in Letter 338, answering the direct question: Did the Ents ever find the Entwives?

"As for the Entwives: I do not know. I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age. . . . But I think in Vol. II pp. 80-811 it is plain that there would be for Ents no re-union in 'history' — but Ents and their wives being rational creatures would find some 'earthly paradise' until the end of this world: beyond which the wisdom neither of Elves nor Ents could see. Though maybe they shared the hope of Aragorn that they were 'not bound for ever to the circles of the world and beyond them is more than memory.'...."

reply to post by Novise


Wasn't there a part in "Fellowship of the Ring" where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were talking about a story that another hobbit told in a pub about seeing a tree walking along the borders of the Shire? None of the hobbits believed the story. I always thought the hobbit telling the story saw an Entwife, since later on Treebeard said that he thought the Entwives would like the Shire. Now I'm going to have to go dig out my copy of "Fellowship" and see if I can find what I'm trying to explain...

dave_welch
My guess is the Old Forest. Sam mentions at the start of The Fellowship of the Ring that his cousin Andy (I think) saw a walking tree as big as an Elm.

Yes--this is the part I'm thinking about...