I Found the Entwives!

[Huinesoron]

Vladimir - I think you're onto something! I've made something of a sad little study of this weird thread over the last couple of weeks, and I'm pretty sure you've found something no-one has pointed to before.

First things first: Tolkien was very clear that he never wrote the Entwives into the books. Teleporno was almost certainly wrong. But we can still try and figure out what he was looking at - and I think you've done just that.

So what do we need to be looking for? Ardamir collected it all in the first post: Teleporno believes the Entwives are 'alive and living' in Book 4, that they're a sort of in-joke referencing the Suffragists or women like them, that we need to look at clusters of certain types of words, and that they're in danger from the Nazgul.

There are five passages in The Two Towers which people have pointed to (I said I'd looked into this... I've combed all three threads in case someone came up with something):

The Taming of Smeagol

The cleft was longer and deeper than it seemed. Some way down they found a few gnarled and stunted trees, the first they had seen for days: twisted birch for the most part, with here and there a fir-tree. Many were dead and gaunt, bitten to the core by the eastern winds. Once in milder days there must have been a fair thicket in the ravine, but now, after some fifty yards, the trees came to an end, though old broken stumps straggled on almost to the cliff's brink.

For a long time, this was my favoured option. Treebeard is originally described as looking like a stump, there are references to both fir and birch at the Entmoot, and the Emyn Muil is directly adjacent to the Brown Lands. The idea of Suffragists being on the edge of a cliff, or willing to throw themselves off a cliff out of spite, sounds plausible as a Tolkien opinion. There's also the notion that Sam's rope (which was tied around one of the stumps) was untied by a kindly Entwife.

Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit

All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress. and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs. The long journey from Rivendell had brought them far south of their own land, but not until now in this more sheltered region had the hobbits felt the change of clime. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.

The plants of Ithilien are strongly anthropomorphised - the word 'dryad' is a key one, as are the green 'fingers' of the larches. Nearby paragraphs also specifically reference the Northfarthing of the Shire (which is where Sam's tale of a walking tree comes from, plus Treebeard thought the Entwives would like the Shire). It's inarguable that the Entwives would feel right at home here. But... there is also a specific mention of 'falling into untended age', and (of course) no suffragist jokes.

Journey to the Cross-roads 1

"[The staves given by Faramir to Frodo and Sam] are made of the fair tree lebethron, beloved of the woodwrights of Gondor, and a virtue has been set upon them of finding and returning."

This is a quite horrifying idea I came across... 'lebethron' means something like 'polished fingers' or 'finger-tree', which is highlighted as a perfect name for an Ent, and the link to finding and returning is a good one. But I can't quite believe that Teleporno believes the Entwives were being chopped up for use in walking sticks...!

Journey to the Cross-roads 2

For the most part it was covered with a thick growth of gorse and whortleberry, and low tough thorns, though here and there clearings opened, the scars of recent fires. The gorse-bushes became more frequent as they got nearer the top; very old and tall they were, gaunt and leggy below but thick above, and already putting out yellow flowers that glimmered in the gloom and gave a faint sweet scent. So tall were the spiny thickets that the hobbits could walk upright under them, passing through long dry aisles carpeted with a deep prickly mould.

On the further edge of this broad hill-back they stayed their march and crawled for hiding underneath a tangled knot of thorns. Their twisted boughs, stooping to the ground, were overridden by a clambering maze of old briars. Deep inside there was a hollow hall, raftered with dead branch and bramble, and roofed with the first leaves and shoots of spring. There they lay for a while, too tired yet to eat; and peering out through the holes in the covert they watched for the slow growth of day.

But no day came, only a dead brown twilight.

As discussed by Vladimir immediately above. I would add that the 'hollow hall', 'stooping', and specific use of 'dead brown' as a descriptor in the following paragraphs are words that could easily evoke the Ents/Entwives - and also that the idea that suffragists could easily be 'prickly' when confronted with 'foolish, boorish men' (per Teleporno's description). The presence of a suffragist joke which isn't a massive stretch is what's convinced me that this is the best candidate.

Journey to the Cross-roads 3

Presently, not far ahead, looming up like a black wall, they saw a belt of trees. As they drew nearer they became aware that these were of vast size, very ancient it seemed, and still towering high, though their tops were gaunt and broken, as if tempest and lightning-blast had swept across them, but had failed to kill them or to shake their fathomless roots.

[...]

At length they reached the trees, and found that they stood in a great roofless ring, open in the middle to the sombre sky; and the spaces between their immense boles were like the great dark arches of some ruined hall.

Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king's head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. `Look, Sam!' he cried, startled into speech. `Look! The king has got a crown again!'

This is one of my favourite passages of The Two Towers, and the conspicuous formation of living trees - specifically noted to be ancient - at a location associated both with attacks from the Nazgul and a gardening-type miracle caught my eye. I really wanted this to be Teleporno's reference - perhaps suffragists liked to hang out in circles? - but I don't think it can be. These are gigantic trees with massive roots, which... isn't how the Entish folk are described. Alas.

~

Finally, since we're doing Entwife theories: my personal pet theory is that Treebeard (and Tolkien) got their fate precisely backwards. The Brown Lands and their inhabitants were burned during the War of the Last Alliance - but not by Sauron. Whose country did they live right next to? Who did the men they taught agriculture to serve, obey, and worship? Who would absolutely sympathise with the Entwives' efforts to bend their entire country to their will, setting it all into neat rows with nothing out of place? Who, in point of fact, would be utterly wasting his time trying to stop the Last Alliance by burning the Brown Lands, seeing as most of his enemies would probably come up from the south (by way of Gondor and the Gap of Rohan)?

Exactly. The Brown Lands were the Breadbasket of Sauron, and were burned by the Men and Elves to stop them from supplying his armies any longer. When the Ents came looking, they would have looked around shiftily and said, "Er, yeah, I've seen them, they went... south. I mean west! Definitely west. Go back that way."

(What, you don't think? ^_^)

hS

[vladimir]

Huinisoron, I'm not quite down with your Brown Lands / breadbasket theory. Admittedly, Tolkien omitted any explanation of how Sauron would provision his forces, and that's a bit of a hole in things, given that plants don't grow in Mordor. No doubt orcs can get by on smegma and guano, and trolls can just eat dirt (though it makes them cranky at potty time,) but food is needed for the legions of Southrons and Easterlings et al. Maybe Sauron can pull some wizardry like the loaves & fishes thing. But then there's all the industry to forge weapons and arms, and all the other requirements of an immense army. Of course, there are evidently no female orcs, just sayin', so maybe Sauron gets a bit of a break in that regard.

But the idea that Entwives were servants of Sauron is just too untidy in the big picture. It would break Treebeard's heart.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

The Brown Lands were the Breadbasket of Sauron

Originally Posted by vladimir

plants don't grow in Mordor.

What about Nurn? It was the largest part of Mordor, and was completely given over to farming to feed Sauron's armies.

Neither he nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Núrnen

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by vladimir

Of course, there are evidently no female orcs, just sayin', so maybe Sauron gets a bit of a break in that regard.

Yes, and if you look at Trajan's Column, you'll see clear evidence that Roman legionaries reproduced asexually, with females only existing amongst their captives...

I don't think there's much grounds for the 'no female orcs' theory, since the only place we ever meet them is in military camps (or, if we're including Goblin Town, in a context where our protagonists hardly had time to go checking for pigtails and petticoats, as it were). We know orcs can breed - Azog had a son, Bolg, and there are sundry half-orcs in the later stages of the books - so assuming that they didn't (because... what?) seems to be in violation of Occamwë's Razor (which states 'Do not unnecessarily multiply entities, or they'll be like this razor - completely useless, what do I need with a razor, do I look like I'm in my third stage of life?!').

Back towards (though not on) topic... I should clarify that the Breadbasket of Sauron theory shouldn't be taken entirely seriously, since it does go directly against the closest we have to an authoritative statement from Tolkien. It is rather depressing - but is it more so than the flirted-with notion that Luthien died early because wearing the Silmaril burned her out? 'The Entwives fall to evil by their love of Order' is at least more nuanced than Saruman's fall, which seems to have been 'because power is fun'. It's on a level with Denethor's, I think, which also ends in fire.

Zigûr, Nurn is indeed the biggest argument against the necessity of the Breadbasket; without it, I would probably be convinced by my own theory (Lorien help me). But it's always possible to theorise inconvenient facts away (maybe Nurn wasn't yet farmed, due to being not as fertile), and it doesn't address the big question of whose side the Men taught by the Entwives were on...

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

I don't think there's much grounds for the 'no female orcs' theory

To take it further, there is in fact quite hard evidence of the existence of female Orcs from the pen of Professor Tolkien himself, as seen in the 'Munby Letter', quoted at the Tolkien Gateway here: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Mrs._...1_October_1963
Professor Tolkien told his correspondent that

There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

To take it further, there is in fact quite hard evidence of the existence of female Orcs from the pen of Professor Tolkien himself...

! Perhaps we need to take a cue from Teleporno the Entwife-finder and go on a hunt for any obscure passage that might indicate the presence of the Orcwives? Here, I'll start:

Originally Posted by Book 6 Chapter 2: The Land of Shadow

To their surprise they came upon dark pools fed by threads of water trickling down from some source higher up the valley. Upon its outer marges under the westward mountains Mordor was a dying land, but it was not yet dead. And here things still grew, harsh, twisted, bitter, struggling for life. In the glens of the Morgai on the other side of the valley low scrubby trees lurked and clung, coarse grey grass-tussocks fought with the stones, and withered mosses crawled on them; and everywhere great writhing, tangled brambles sprawled.

Obviously what we have here are the Gardens of the Orc-wives, where they grow their orchards and their berries. It's a miserable life - the Orc-wives are 'harsh, twisted, bitter, scrabbling for life' (obviously an in-joking commentary on the lives of the wives left behind by the poorer soldiers of WWI) - but it's all they've got. Note the specific use of the word 'glens', pointing us towards the Scottish highlands where the women stayed at home while the men went a'warring; the name 'Morgai' could also be another hint, since it evokes 'Morgan', as in le Fay, noted for being a women who was not attached to a man. And of course, i think we can take this passage as proof that all Orc-wives were named Marge...

(And, come to think of it, there's no reason not to claim the 'low scrubby trees' who 'cling' and 'lurk' are another one of those endless hints at Entwives, too...!)

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

The Taming of Smeagol

...

For a long time, this was my favoured option. Treebeard is originally described as looking like a stump, there are references to both fir and birch at the Entmoot, and the Emyn Muil is directly adjacent to the Brown Lands. The idea of Suffragists being on the edge of a cliff, or willing to throw themselves off a cliff out of spite, sounds plausible as a Tolkien opinion. There's also the notion that Sam's rope (which was tied around one of the stumps) was untied by a kindly Entwife.

I hate to come back to this, but on further consideration, I've swung back towards this passage. The key piece of evidence is the 'clusters of words' concept. Compare this:

Originally Posted by Treebeard

In the face of the stony wall there was something like a stair: natural perhaps, and made by the weathering and splitting of the rock, for it was rough and uneven. High up, almost level with the tops of forest-trees, there was a shelf under a cliff. Nothing grew there but a few grasses and weeds at its edge, and one old stump of a tree with only two bent branches left: it looked almost like the figure of some gnarled old man, standing there, blinking in the morning-light.

[...]

They came at length to the edge of the shelf almost at the feet of the old stump; then they sprang up and turned round with their backs to the hill, breathing deep, and looking out eastward.

With this:

Originally Posted by The Taming of Smeagol

Some way down they found a few gnarled and stunted trees, the first they had seen for days: twisted birch for the most part, with here and there a fir-tree. Many were dead and gaunt, bitten to the core by the eastern winds. Once in milder days there must have been a fair thicket in the ravine, but now, after some fifty yards, the trees came to an end, though old broken stumps straggled on almost to the cliff's brink. The bottom of the gully, which lay along the edge of a rock-fault, was rough with broken stone and slanted steeply down.

[...]

The outer fall was indeed no longer sheer, but sloped outwards a little. It looked like a great rampart or sea-wall whose foundations had shifted, so that its courses were all twisted and disordered, leaving great fissures and long slanting edges that were in places almost as wide as stairs.

[...]

With that he stood up and went down to the bottom of the gully again. He looked out. Clear sky was growing in the East once more.

[...]

He took up the rope and made it fast over the stump nearest to the brink...

Teleporno made a big deal of 'clusters of words', and in these two passages we have a whole heap of matching pairs:

• 'Something like a stair' versus 'almost as wide as stairs'.
• 'Rough and uneven' rock versus 'rough with broken stone'.
• 'One old stump' versus 'old broken stumps'.
• 'Gnarled' old man versus 'twisted' birch.
• M&P 'looked out' eastward; Frodo 'looked out', also to the East.
• M&P move 'to the edge of the shelf almost at the feet of the old stump'; Sam ties his rope 'the stump nearest to the brink'.

Both quotes also make a point that very little grows where they are, and on a trivial level, both descriptions of the view (not quoted) include smoke.

I don't think Tolkien wrote the two sequences as intentional mirrors to each other (for one thing, you can see how broken up the description in Book 4 is), but I think it's entirely possible Teleporno thought he had. It fits with the claim that they're in danger from the Nazgul (we get a Nazgul screech in the Emyn Muil sequence), and, as I said before, the Emyn Muil is right where you would expect to find fleeing Entwives: on the edge of their old lands, run right up against a cliff.

But I still rank vladimir's thicket as a close second. ^_^

hS

[Morthoron]

Teleporno...perhaps the most unfortunate name in the whole of Tolkien's canon.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Teleporno...perhaps the most unfortunate name in the whole of Tolkien's canon.

Poor J.R.R.T never dreamed that the term could one day be used for an actual prurient operation.

I still think Sam's mention of the "Tree-man" was 1. An RL move by Tolkien to foreshadow the "giant" episode he planned; and 2. An in-book appearance of a Huorn from the Old Forest.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Poor J.R.R.T never dreamed that the term could one day be used for an actual prurient operation.

If he didn't, he showed a surprising ignorance of Greek for a Classical exhibitionist. Teleporno is the Greek prefix Tele (roughly 'remote', 'at a distance' cf Television) and porno, from póron 'harlot, prostitute' (e.g. in pornocracy*). JRRT could be remarkably stubborn about his projected audience reception, as in his insistence for years that readers would associate gnomes with knowledge and wisdom as in gnomic, gnomon, and not garden ornaments.






*Apparently describing the tenth-century government of Rome.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

If he didn't, he showed a surprising ignorance of Greek for a Classical exhibitionist. Teleporno is the Greek prefix Tele (roughly 'remote', 'at a distance' cf Television) and porno, from póron 'harlot, prostitute' (e.g. in pornocracy*). JRRT could be remarkably stubborn about his projected audience reception, as in his insistence for years that readers would associate gnomes with knowledge and wisdom as in gnomic, gnomon, and not garden ornaments.

Hmm. If he was aware, maybe he just didn't think, or at least hoped, that the average English-reading consumer wouldn't make any negative association.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I think it's probably more complicated than that. Whatever associations somebody might make, that was the proper form according to the phonological rules JRRT had laid down. To change it to something else would mean inventing a reason for the exception or rethinking the rules themselves, potentially having to change dozens of other names distributed around a frightening array of manuscripts. Also Tolkien preferred to write his way around problems like this rather than simply remove them. In any case, this sort of coincidental double meaning crops up in natural languages all the time. I found a reference once to a Persian personal name Nazgül, meaning 'shy rose'.