The Lord of the Rings: Treebeard [Part Two]

The Tale

As Treebeard carries Merry and Pippin easily along, each in one crook of an arm, they pass some trees that either quiver of lift their limbs as the Ent passes. The hobbits feel quite safe, and after a while they begin to talk with their strange new acquaintance. Pippin asks why Celeborn, the Lord of Lorien, warned them against getting entangled in Fangorn Forest?

Treebeard replies he would have given them similar advice about getting entangled in Lorien. It is a strange place, and perhaps perilous for mortals. Strangers seldom visit it. The Ent could say the same about Fangorn; it can be dangerous for the unwary. Some of the Ents are getting sleepy and becoming ‘tree-ish’, but there are also trees that are waking up and becoming almost ‘Entish’, aware and able to move around. Some trees that wake up have ‘bad hearts’, however, and can be quite dangerous.

 There are parts of the forest where the Darkness has lain since even before Fangorn’s time. Merry mentions the Old Forest back in Buckland (where they ran across Old Man Willow), and Treebeard seems to know about the place and agrees. But the real Ents try to keep strangers away, ‘and we train and we teach, we walk and we weed.’

The Ents are tree-shepherds, but they say that sheep become like shepherds and shepherds like sheep. It goes quicker with Ents and trees, as they spend more time together. Ents are like the Elves, more interested in understanding the inside of things, but much like Men, in that they more changeable, able to take on ‘the colour of the outside’. But, Treebeard states with some satisfaction, Ents are better than both in that they keep their mind on things longer than either race.

As he strides along he reminisces about the old days. The Elves started waking up the trees and teaching them speech, a duty the Ents carry on to this day. There was a time when the Forest spread from the Mountains of Lune on what is now the western coast of Middle-earth, to where they are walking now, and Fangorn was just the East End. He begins to recite a poem about those expansive early days and his travels through the wide and beautiful woods in the Elder Days. It concludes with the melancholy thought that he is now confined within his own limited space in this dark and ancient remnant. ‘He ended, and strode on silently, and in all the wood, as far as ear could reach, there was not a sound.’

By the evening they have reached the foot of Methedras, the ‘Last Peak’ of the Misty Mountains (Fangorn is upon its eastern slopes, and Isengard is to the south). Treebeard heads up the slope along the edge of the Entwash. They reach a strange space: two evergreen trees rise like gate posts on either hand, that lift their branches to let them in. Inside is an area like a shallow bay partly roofed by living branches, its walls rising until it ends in a recess curtained by falling water. The water then gathers into a stone basin that overflows and runs down to join the Entwash again.

Treebeard brings them into the shallow bay behind the curtain, setting the hobbits down and standing under the falling water a moment to refresh himself. They have come ‘seventy thousand ent-strides’. Inside there is a large table but no chairs; Ents are not very bendable. Treebeard lifts up two stone bowls and holds his hands over them; they begin to glow, one gold and one green. Even the trees outside seem to start to glow.

He goes to several covered stone jars at the back of the bay and dips out three bowls of drink, one big and two smaller for the hobbits. He sets Merry and Pippin on the table, six feet off the ground, and they drink. This ‘Ent-draught’ that they sip tastes a lot like the water they drank out of the river, but with a strange savor like a distant forest, and an even stranger effect. It begins at their toes and rises through their bodies, bringing vigor and refreshment until they feel the very hair on their heads growing and curling. Treebeard takes a long deep draught that seems like it will never end.

Then he lies down so the drink won’t go to his head right away and sits the hobbits next to him, asking them now to tell their tale now that they are rested. They tell him everything that has happened to them since Hobbiton, and Treebeard is very interested in it all, ‘the Black Riders, in Elrond, and Rivendell, in the Old Forest, and Tom Bombadil, in the Mines of Moria, and in Lothlorien and Galadriel.’ They say nothing, however, of the Ring and Frodo’s quest. But the old Ent asks them about the Shire a lot, and wonders if they have seen any Entwives there. But he is more particularly interested in Gandalf’s doings, and most of all about his neighbor, the wizard Saruman.

The hobbits can tell little of him, except for the damning fact that that he is using Orcs now; it was he that sent the Uruk-hai. Treebeard can tell that they haven’t told him everything, but that was probably as Gandalf wished. There is undoubtedly a storm coming, and war, but he has not been troubled with the Great Wars. ‘I do not like troubling about the future. I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me: nobody cares for the woods as I care for them, not even Elves nowadays.’ But he is altogether not on the side of the Orcs and their masters. He wasn’t troubled when the Dark Power moved from Mirkwood to Mordor, because that was a long way away. But now the wind is setting East and might wither all the woods of the world. ‘There is naught that an old Ent can do to hold back the storm: he must weather it or crack.’

But Saruman now; Saruman is a neighbor. The wizards came to Middle-earth a while back, as the hobbits might reckon time. When Saruman stopped wandering around and settled at Isengard, he was at first polite to Treebeard and asked his leave to wonder the forest, and he learned quite a few secrets about the land from the old Ent, though he never shared any himself. As time went on the wizard became more closed and secretive.

‘He is plotting to be a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things.’ Worse, he seems to have not only taken up with Orcs but is messing around with them in a very unnatural way. Evil things out of the Great Darkness can’t abide the sun, but these Uruk-hai can. ‘Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men?’

Treebeard grows angrier and angrier as he thinks about it. Orcs are passing through the forest, taking advantage of what Saruman now knows about his secret ways. On the border they are felling many trees, good trees, some that were his old friends with voices of their own. Though some are taken to feed the fires of Isengard, others are just left to rot: pure orc-mischief. Treebeard has been idle. He has let things slip. It must stop!

He jumps up and bangs his fist on the table. He asks Merry and Pippin to join him, and they eagerly agree to help take down the power that killed Boromir and kidnapped them.

But Treebeard checks himself; he is being a little hasty. He must settle down a bit and think; ‘it is easier to shout stop! than to do it.’ He gets under the falling water until he cools down, then lays back down and is silent a while.

Bits and Bobs

We learn quite a bit more about Ents. An ‘ent-stride’, for instance, is later calculated to be about four feet. Seventy thousand ‘ent-strides’ means they’ve come about 53 1/3 miles. We are teased with a mention of the ‘entwives’. We hear about the ancientry of Ents, their relations with the Elves, and how even the Wizards seem like relative newcomers to them.

There are several more examples of Treebeard’s philological preciseness: he seldom says that something ‘is’ something; he says that the name he gives you is what it is called, or as you would say in your language (which here of course is Westron, or the Common Speech).