I Found the Entwives!

[Alcuin]

Forgive me, but I am confused. Would you please explain to me why that event is more “inconsistent with something that happens in the second half of FOTR and information we know from FOTR and TTT” than this one from Tower Towers, “Journey to the Cross-roads”?

Gollum ... turned back towards the trees, working eastward for a while along the straggling edges of the wood. He would not rest on the ground so near the evil road, and after some debate they all climbed up into the crotch of a large holm-oak, whose thick branches springing together from the trunk made a good hiding-place and a fairly comfortable refuge...

The bay tree, also known as the laurel and by many other names, is “an aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub reaching 10–18 m tall,” although a British vendor says that “without pruning the tree will grow to 12m (40ft) high by 10m (32ft) wide.” Note that the plant – whether “tree or large shrub” – has limbs extending from the base of the tree almost as soon as it leaves the surface of the earth. For Sam to “[scramble] a little way up into one of the larger of the bay-trees” sounds to me as if he climbed no more than 3 or 4 feet at the most – about the height of his own head, in a tree (“or large shrub”) easy to climb in order to get a better view. No great courage involved in that, and Ithilien was already described this way in one of the preceding chapters, “Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”:

Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendants; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes … and marjorams and … parsleys, and many herbs of forms and scents beyond the garden-lore of Sam. … As [the Hobbits] walked, brushing their way through bush and herb, sweet odors rose about them.

Ithilien in early spring was a riot of color and scent and smell – so much so that “Gollum coughed and retched.” (Perhaps he had hay-fever, or some other serious allergy, hm?) Finding a large bay-tree in Ithilien should be no more surprising that finding a paved street in Minas Tirith or an orc-hold in Morannon or a flet in Lórien or Sam Gamgee in an inn when home in Hobbiton. To “[scramble] a little way up into one of the larger of the bay-trees” is quite different from climbing to the top of a bay tree (“or large shrub”).

Feel free to accuse me of willful ignorance, but I fail to see the significance of this. I readily agree that it is a “‘tiny little action’ in the second half of TTT,” but I cannot agree that it “is inconsistent with something that happens in the second half of FOTR and information we know from FOTR and TTT,” or the rest of LotR, or The Hobbit, for that matter: even Bilbo could have “scrambled a little way up into one of the larger of the bay-trees” (“or large shrubs”), and for once without climbing onto Dori’s back or shoulders to inconvenience him or slow down the good-natured Longbeard.

If you were looking for something different in the behavior of Frodo and Sam (but not different in the behavior of Gollum, who according to Legolas at the “Council of Elrond” in FotR climbed “a high tree [in Mirkwood] standing alone far from the others … up to the highest branches, until he felt the free wind; … he had learned the trick of clinging to boughs with his feet as well as with his hands...”), you can hardly do better than agreeing to climb “up into the crotch of a large holm-oak,” which often has no limbs for several feet off the ground. But of course, sleeping in flets and shimmying down 200-foot cliff-faces and climbing into the mallorns of Caras Galadhon whose “height could not be guessed, but … stood … in the twilight like living towers” (FotR, “Mirror of Galadriel”) and even far into the upper reaches of what was described as the mightiest mallorn in Lórien (and hence in all Middle-earth), not to mention walking in the shadow of the “tall houses” of Bree, might inure even the wooziest, most vertiginous Hobbit (Sam, perhaps?) to being overcome in a moment of sheer joy, excitement, and unprecedented expectation to climb 3, 4, 6 or even (gasp!) 9 feet – to see an Oliphant. (Two Towers, “Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”)

To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight, Sam saw a vast shape crash out of the trees and come careering down the slope. Big as a house, much bigger than a house, it looked to him, a grey-clad moving hill. ... On he came, straight towards the watchers [including Sam], and then swerved aside in the nick of time, passing only a few yards away, rocking the ground beneath their feet...

Sam drew a deep breath. ‘An Oliphant it was!’ he said.

To be fair, Sam “scrambled a little way up into one of the larger of the bay-trees” (“or large shrubs”) in order to get a glimpse of the battle between the Rangers of Ithilien and the Southrons, but he was rewarded for his dash of derring-do with the sight of a Mûmakil of Harad.

Maybe I’m just being obstinate, but I fail to see what “[scrambling] a little way up into one of the larger of the bay-trees” (“or large shrubs”) in a land already stipulated to be full of bay trees or laurels or whatever other lovely names you care to apply to them, as well as lots of other trees, bushes and shrubs redolent with aromatic fragrance like the bay-trees (“or large shrubs”) which by inference were planted by the Númenóreans in the first days of their colonization (“Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendants,” remember?) has to do with the Entwives.

Ardamir, I have given you a very hard time in this post, but I know you from other forums and do respect you. I hope you – and others – will read it in the spirit of light-hearted mischief in which it was intended. I must salute you for having the courage to step up to the plate (an American saying – it’s a baseball reference) and offer this morsel, which you must have guessed would be torn to shreds by the first raptor that could sink its claws into it. I have read your essay “The Great Search”, and I commend you on your scholarship and efforts; but to the lasting regret and sorrow of the Ents (and many, many readers of LotR), I just don’t believe the Entwives will ever be found.