[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I have a plausible idea, though can't fit it well into all the stanzas, or maybe lack the pre-Silm lore to make the connections. But I gotta ask:

ELMS? As in Elm trees?

But Neldoreth forests are beech... unless Beren happened to prop himself up on the one elm he could find in that forest, lol. Yeah, not sure how it fits, but I was ruminating on Ents and trees for a bit now, and this actually makes sense. Who cut then down in the end? Was it the chopped tree alleyway in the Scouring (or even in Galadriel's mirror)? But Sam and Frodo know about it, so the final line doesn't make sense.

The answer is indeed ELMS.

At the first we stood high on the slopes,
Watching waiting as the wanderer climbed.

Originally Posted by Book of Lost Tales, Chapter 1: The Cottage of Lost Play

Now as he stood at the foot of the little hill there came a faint breeze and then a flight of rooks above his head in the clear even light. The sun had some time sunk beyond the boughs of the elms that stood as far as the eye could look about the plain, and some time had its last gold faded through the leaves and slipped across the glades to sleep beneath the roots and dream till dawn.

Eriol approaches Kortirion, in what is arguably the third paragraph of the Legendarium - "at the first" indeed. These are the famous elms of Warwickshire, which Tolkien loved.

One of us watched the dance in the dark,
Held the haggard hero lest he fall.

Originally Posted by The Tale of Tinuviel

Now the lies of Melko ran among Beren's folk so that they believed evil things of the secret Elves, yet now did he see Tinuviel dancing in the twilight, and Tinuviel was in a silver-pearly dress, and her bare white feet were twinkling among the hemlock-stems. Then Beren cared not whether she were Vala or Elf or child of Men and crept near to see; and he leant against a young elm that grew upon a mound so that he might look down into the little glade where she was dancing, for the enchantment made him faint.

This is a real elm; apparently there was one by the glade where Edith danced for Tolkien, though it is gone now. (This is foreshadowing.)

And one strode swift through gentle hills,
Great gait drawing the gaze of passer-by.

Originally Posted by Fellowship of the Ring: The Shadow of the Past

"But this one was as big as an elm tree and walking - 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.

Did this elm, or elm-like Ent (or Entwife?) actually exist, or was it all in Hal's head? Who even knows?

But at the last we fell, frail and weak:
The master may have mourned us, if he learned.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia: Dutch elm disease

By 1990, very few mature elms were left in Britain or much of continental Europe. One of the most distinctive English countryside trees (See John Constable's painting Salisbury Cathedral from the South-West), the English elm U. minor 'Atinia', is particularly susceptible as it is the elm most favoured by the Scolytus beetles. Thirty years after the outbreak of the epidemic, nearly all these trees, which often grew to more than 45 m high, are gone.

There are no (mature) elms in Warwickshire now. There are none on the moors. There are none by the clearing where Edith danced in the hemlocks. From the late 60s to the 90s, Dutch Elm Disease wiped the English elm almost out of existence. The few that survive are protected by strenuous and constant effort (Brighton), or too far north for the disease to spread (Edinburgh).

I haven't been able to determine how fast the disease spread, or when the Warwickshire elms in particular were felled. I don't know if it happened by 1973, or whether it would have made the newspapers. But I know for certain-sure that Tolkien would have grieved for them if he knew they were dying.

~

That's it for Huinesoron's Fun With Trees; over to G55 if you want it.

(Urwen, I love the idea of using a specific piece of poetry to make a riddle, there's a definite risk of me doing that next time round. )

hS