Entwives
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Entwives and Entmaidens were female Ents.
They were dedicated to Yavanna.[1] They had gardens in the regions later known as the Brown Lands, and their agricultural knowledge was passed on to Men and Hobbits.[2]
History[edit | edit source]
During the First or the Second Age they started to move farther away from the male Ents because they liked to plant and control small things like vegetables, grass and flowers, while the male Ents tended the larger trees of the great forest. The Entwives passed eastward over the Anduin and went to the region that would later become the Brown Lands. After Morgoth was overthrown, their gardens blossomed and they taught agriculture to the primitive Men and they honored them.[3]
When Sauron burned that region to stop the advance of the Last Alliance down the Anduin, the Entwives were likely wiped out, although some might have been captured and enslaved as agricultural workers or have escaped into the east of Middle-earth.[2] The Ents held that the Entwives were lost.
Treebeard would tell Merry and Pippin that the Entwives would love their country. Indeed sometime before the War of the Ring, Halfast Gamgee claimed that he saw an elm-like "Tree-Man" walking in the North Moors.[4] However, it was never learned whether the "Tree-Man" was an Ent, an Entwife, or just a story.
Background[edit | edit source]
One of the primary daggers on the survival of the Entwives is found in Letter 144 of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien:
- "I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance (Second Age 3429 – 3441) when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy and burned their land against the advance of the Allies down the Anduin..."
- ― Letter 144
In 2017, a Quora user named Pip Willis published a partial image of a map he claimed his father drew and shared with J.R.R. Tolkien in 1971. Willis alleges that Tolkien wrote on the map "Here may be Entwives", in an area on the west bank of a southern bow of the river Carnen, flowing into the Sea of Rhûn.[5][6]
See also[edit | edit source]
- Images of Entwives
- The Ent and the Entwife (song/poem)
External links[edit | edit source]
- Of the Ents and the Entwives - An essay on the location of the Entwives by Ardamir.
- What became of the Entwives? from the Tolkien FAQ
References
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 247, (dated 20 September 1963)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 144, (dated 25 April 1954)
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, "Treebeard"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Shadow of the Past"
- ↑ Pip Willis, "After Lord of the Rings was there any mention of the entwives?" dated 22 May 2017, quora.com (accessed 7 June 2017)
- ↑ Michael Martinez, "Yes, but is it canon?" dated 24 May 2017, The Tolkien Society (accessed 7 June 2017)
