![]() These are the Nermir and the Tavari, Nandini and Orossi, brownies, fays, pixies, leprawns, and what else are they not called, for their number is very great: yet must they not be confused with the Eldar, for they were born before the world and are older than its oldest, and are not of it, but laugh at it much, for had they not somewhat to do with its making, so that it is for the most part a play for them. Tom Bombadil is one of those other "problems" about Middle-earth, but I think it's pretty well solved in this passage from The Lost Tales:Īnd with them came many of the lesser Vali who loved them and (.) these are the Mánir and the Súruli, the sylphs of the airs and the winds.Ībout them fared a great host of sprites of trees and woods, of dale and forest and mountain-side, or those that sing amid the grass at morning and chant among the standing corn at eve. We were like your Tombombadil when we were young." ![]() Treebeard says: "But it was not so, of course, in the beginning. ![]() Needling at the point of elves "creating" Ents, let's look at the rest of the first draft of the Treebeard chapter. I think we can accept this lore of the Silmarillion as being an editorial contradiction - because the text of The Hobbit and the trilogy is just full of things that talk: troll purses, foxes watching hobbits sleep, speaking thrushes and ravens, etc. Ipso facto, Ents must have been made by Ilúvatar "off screen." The Silmarillion goes into some depth about how speech was evidence of sentience, and sentience can only be given by Ilúvatar. They always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did."Īnd here is one of the contradictions between the trilogy and the Silmarillion. Treebeard says as much in The Two Towers: "Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak and learning their tree-talk. They sought the Havens long ago.”Įlves can talk to things, even seemingly unliving things. Only I hear the stones lament them: deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us but they are gone. “But the Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the silvan folk, and the trees and the grass do not now remember them. If we take him at his word, Legolas can hear the speech of the stones of Hollin: "Did the first elves make Tree-folk in order to understand trees"? "Hnau"? "Goblin spirits"? There are some gems in these notes that make my hair stand on end. ![]() 'Time was when a fellow could walk and sing all day and hear no more than the echo of his voice in the mountains.'ĭifference between trolls - stone inhabited by goblin-spirit, stone-giants, and the 'tree-folk'. Treebeard might be 'moveless' - but here are some notes. Are the Tree-folk ('Lone-walkers') hnau that have gone tree-like, or trees that have become hnau? This seems largely true. Here are the accompanying notes to the first draft of Treebeard's appearance from The Treason of Isengard:ĭid first lord of the Elves make Tree-folk in order to or through trying to understand trees? In Letter 180, Tolkien writes: "I have long ceased to invent.I have no recollection of inventing Ents.I wrote the 'Treebeard' chapter without any recollection of any previous thought." (For that matter, what are we supposed to do about giants, who are only mentioned in an off-handed passage in The Hobbit?) If the Silmarillion goes into all this detail about who gets to be Ilúvatar's special boy, what about Ents? If Treebeard is called the oldest creature, what of Tom Bombadil? What of the Elves awakening first? And what are we supposed to do about the connection of ents -> trolls that Treebeard mentions, considering Tolkien was refining his “problem of thinking evil creatures” up until his death? One of the reasons that "Where did Ents come from" is a perennial question is because of Tolkien's editorial gaps. I believe Tolkien would still be tinkering if he could. In truth, he was an ambitious writer who was constantly rewriting. I want to talk about both the origin of Ents, both within the mythos and also in Tolkien's writing process.Ĭaveat: Some ascribe a near mythical status to Tolkien, imagining that he had a perfect understanding of the entire corpus of written literature, and that his books were divinely inspired, unerring, and delivered on golden tablets. ![]() Despite the inappropriateness of the format, I've made several long threads about Tolkien on Twitter.Īs Twitter crashes and burns, I wanted to pull this one out. ![]()
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