The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

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- - Entwives (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=11769)

Whatever happened of the ent-wives and entings that tree beard spoke of, did he ever find one?

We're never told. Perhaps it was an ent-wife that Sam's counsin Hal saw in the North-farthing (mentioned in Sam and Ted's conversation in FotR), but mostly the fates of Ent-wives and Entings are the stuff of fanfics.

i guess that is kind of sad, a noble race such as the ents were abandoned by their own wives. Comical, yet sad

Yes, sad that they couldn't compromise. The Ents wanted huge forests, but the Ent-wives wanted pleasant orchards.

Does anyone know what prompted the Ent-wives to leave the (now called) Brownlands?

Maybe the ents disapproved of the entwives gardening because they wanted to watch football. I think it says in the lotr somewhere that they left for the greener lands of the north.

no, never such a hastey game as football. Perhaps a rousing game of chess?

The gardens of the Entwives in the later so called Brown Lands were destroied by Sauron when he withdraw before the forces of the Last Alliance. Sauron tried a tactic of "burned earth" to hinder his foes.

Respectfully
Findegil

We can't know what happend to the ents and the entwives - but I think Tolkien hints in LotR that they maybe met again in Valinor. How did they get there - no idea. A "tree" in a ship sounds strange...

The world is vast. There are many places that they could have gone. The only part that is known, is that they are not in a known part(of the world). I guess they could have gone just about anywhere, assuming they weren't completely wiped out by Sauron. I don't think that could happen, considering how hardy the Ents are.

Another thing that I wonder. Just how far did the Ents go searching? Maybe they didn't go far enough? Yet, I can hardly believe that the Entwives would travel forever.

In Letters 179 (#144) Tolkien said that the Entwives were probably destroyed by Sauron during the War of the Last Alliance. However he also said that he hoped that some may have survived, even though they would have been much changed:

Quote:

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 industrialised and militarised agriculture had made them a little more anarchic. I hope so. I don't know.

In Letters 419 (#338) he wrote:

Quote:

As for the Entwives: I do not know. ... But I think it is plain that there would be for the 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.' ....

However, he doesn't speculate as to where this 'earthly paradise' would be. Logically, Valinor would seem to be out of the question. Maybe the 'walking elm tree' that cousin Hal saw actually was an entwife. After all, the green and verdant Shire would seem like an 'earthly paradise' to the ents.

well... you did youre research thanks