[davem]

I’m later than usual for this thread & a lot of important points have already been made. Its difficult to know where to begin. As this is a long chapter, & we have a couple of weeks to go into it, I’ll take it bit by bit. First off:

Its clear at least, that the LotR Ents appeared first, & that Tolkien wrote them back into theSil. In HoME we find him speculating on their origin:

Did first lord of the Elves make Tree-folk in order to or through trying to understand trees? And...

Notes for Treebeard.

In some ways rather stupid. Are the Tree-folk (Lone-walkers) hnau that have gone tree-like, or trees that have become hnau*?

Difference between trolls - stone inhabited by gobli-spirit, stone-giants, & the ‘tree-folk’

* hnau are a Lewisian idea - conscious beings with souls.

So, Tolkien has invented the Ents, but hasn’t come up with an account of them. It seems like he knew they were there, but had no idea where they had come from. In fact, in letter 157 he says:

I always felt something ought to be done about the peculiar Anglo-Saxon word ent for a ‘giant’ or mighty person of long ago - to whom all old works were ascribed.

It does seem though that he ‘knew’ they weren’t beings like Trolls - unnnatual creatures - stone animated by goblin spirits, or stone- giants - natural creatures who had existed always in their current forms. The Ents are rational beings who may have once been something else - ordinary trees, perhaps, which were given sentience.

Whatever, Tolkien, through Treebeard, does have something interesting to say about tom Bombadil:

What about whom? said Treebeard. ‘Tombombadil? Tombombadil? So that is his what you call him. Oh, he has got a very long name. He understands trees, right enough; but he is no herdsman. He laughs & does not interfere. He never made anything go wrong, but he never cured anything, either

It seems Treebeard feels that it is important to be an active participant in the world - Bombadil is in the wrong as far as the Ent is concerned, because while he may not have done anything bad, he hasn’t done any good, either. Yet Treebeard himself has been passive enough in his own land up to this point, & has to be stirred up to take action. Treebeard seems to think a lot, but he isn’t a great doer. And he doesn’t have Bombadil’s excuse, either.

Another interesting tidbit from HoME, perhaps tying it into the Lorien theme, is Treebeard’s comment on the distance he has carried Merry & Pippin to his Ent-house:

’I have brought you three times twelve leagues or thereabouts, if measurements of that kind hold good in the country of Fangorn.

It almost seems as if at this point Tolkien is thinking of Fangorn as an otherworldly place similar to Lorien; In Lorientime may move differently to the outside world, in Fangorn it is space[/i] that follows different laws. Or perhaps just as the Elves perceptions affect their understanding of time, the Ents perceptions affect their understanding of distance. Perhaps the Ents are more complex beings than may at first appear.

But to the actual chapter under discussion. Th efirst thing that struck me was Treebeard’s statement:

"For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.

Which ties in with what he said in the draft about Tom Bombadil:

[i]Tombombadil? Tombombadil? So that is his what you call him. Oh, he has got a very long name.

So, in Entish a ‘name’ isn’t just a ‘label’, its a ‘story’. Its the story of the thing itself. To know a thing or person’s Entish name is to know their history, their nature, everything about them.

’Hm, but you are a hasty folk, I see,’ said Treebeard. ‘I am honoured by your confidence; but you should not be too free all at once. There are Ents & Ents, you know; or there are Ents & things that look like Ents but ain’t, as you might say.’

This is interesting, not simply because its a warning to innocents who have strayed into a potentially dangerous place, but for another reason. Names were once considered to be magical things. To know a thing’’s true name was believed to give him or her power over it. Le Guin uses this idea in the Earthsea books, but it was a common belief once uopn a time. But Tolkien uses the idea himself in the Conversation with Smaug. Bilbo, there, is extremely careful to avoid telling his right name to Smaug.

The other interesting thing about Entish names is that they are very often incomplete or unfinished. The ‘right name’ of a person or thing is their story, & it continues to change & develop as long as their ‘story’ (their life or existence) goes on. Perhaps it doesn’’t even attain a final form even then - not if their acts or one time existence continue to have repercussions after they’ve gone. Its easy to understand Treebeard’s confusion over Pippin’s statement about Gandalf’s fall:

’But you speak of Master Gandalf as if he was in a story that had come to an end.’

Because to him its not just a case of Gandalf dying, but of the end of that particular story. Gandalf, for Treebeard, was both in a story & the story itself. He is being told that the story ‘Gandalf’ has been finished. The Entish name of anything is its story, but do the Ents see everything as just a ‘story’? Perhaps for the Ents the story is more is more important than the person or thing it is told about? Treebeard seems incredibly concerned about the ending of stories, because when a story ends it may be put aside & forgotten, & the telling of tales is the reason Entish exists. Perhaps Treebeard feels some connection between the fading of his race & the fading of his language? After all, when the Ents finally die out, Entish will die out too, & so will the stories which were told in it. After the last Ent has died there will be no-one left who knows the name of the ‘thing’:

’we are on, where i stand & look out on fine mornings, & think about the Sun, & the grass beyond the wood, & the horses, & the clouds, & the unfolding of the world....

Its Entish name will be lost forever, hence it’s story will be lost forever, & it will become just a ‘hill’, one among many, & thus nothing special - even as the trees Treebeard has known from nut & acorn, trees with voices & names of their own - stories of their own - will become simply ‘trees’, sources of timber, any of which may be cut down - to feed the fires of Orthanc, or anything else ‘orcs’ may decide to do with them.

When a thing’s ‘right name’ is forgotten, its story is lost, & then it becomes worthless. It is only the Ents who keep those stories alive - even the Elves have developed other concerns. Ents are the ‘record keepers’ of Middle earth, & something vital will be lost with their passing. Its easy to overlook that - that the Ent’s role in Middle earth is to be its ‘living memory’ - & see their passing as a tragedy for them alone. It isn’t. Its a loss for the whole of Middle earth & everyone in it, because the ‘stories’ that make up ‘Middle earth’ are the stories of its people, places & things, & the only ones who know those stories are the Ents. The right names of things, their stories, will be forgotten, & those things will then begin to lose any sense of their real value & their unique identity. The Ent’s tragedy is Middle earth’s tragedy, because their passing will inevitably bring about its passing. Middle earth will become the world we know, precisely because there are no Ents who know every ‘thing’s’ ‘right name’,& are able to tell it’s story. No ‘right name’ means no true story, & no true story means no uniqueness, no meaning.

We are witnessing the beginning of a terrible loss - even greater in some ways for the world than the loss of the Elves - but we may not realise it, because the form it takes is the dying out of a bunch of strange walking & talking trees.