Treebeard

• 1. Introduction

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  Gandalf calls Treebeard "the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth." That single description raises a question worth sitting with. What kind of creature outlasts every age, tends an ancient forest, and marches to war when the moment demands it? Treebeard, known in Tolkien's Sindarin language as Fangorn, is an Ent in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He stands at least fourteen feet tall. His eyes are brown, shot with a green light. His lower face carries a grey beard that runs bushy and twiggy at the roots and thin and mossy at the ends. Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took stumble into his forest in The Two Towers. Their meeting carries consequences that reach all the way into The Return of the King. What those consequences are, and what Treebeard's story reveals about the world Tolkien built, is where this documentary begins.

• 2. The Forest of Fangorn

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  The Forest of Fangorn sat at the south-eastern end of the Misty Mountains, near the Gap of Rohan. Saruman's stronghold of Isengard stood near the forest's south-western corner. To the east and south lay Rohan; to the north and slightly east, Lothlórien.

  Two rivers shaped the forest's inner life. The Limlight flowed from the northern reaches, forming the northern border of Rohan before it merged with the Anduin. The Entwash reached deep into the southern reaches from a mountainous area called Methedras, then flowed out through Rohan to join the Anduin. From the Entwash, the Ents brewed their legendary drink, the Ent-draughts.

  Fangorn was humid and thickly grown, with trunks and branches so dense that little light could reach the ground. Deep within lived creatures called Huorns, who resembled Ents but kept themselves far more hidden. The valley of Derndingle lay to the south-west. A path along the Entwash led into Wellinghall, a region that held one of Treebeard's homes. The Huorns of Fangorn would eventually march alongside the Ents, playing their own part in the Battle of Helm's Deep.

• 3. Shepherds of Trees

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  Treebeard recounts that Ents were created in the Elder Days to be the "Shepherds of the Trees." Their purpose was to guard forests against the destruction that Dwarves were expected to cause. The Elves awakened the Ents and taught them to speak during those first ages of the world.

  Of all the Ents who walked in the Elder Days, Treebeard says only three survive from that time. He names them: himself, Leaflock, and Skinbark. He recalls being able to walk through the woods of Middle-earth for days at a stretch. He sings of Beleriand's forests, regions destroyed in the war with Morgoth that now lie beneath the waves.

  The Great Darkness was Morgoth's rule over the world before the Moon and Sun first rose. In certain Fangorn valleys, Treebeard says, that darkness never lifted. The trees growing there are older than he is. The Ents would soon enough have reason to act, and the impulse would come from what Saruman was doing to the trees.

• 4. The Last March

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  Treebeard says of Saruman, after the hobbits bring him news at Wellinghall, that there is "something very big going on, that I can see." He muses aloud: "I must do something, I suppose." He recalls that he told Saruman many things over the years, while Saruman never told him anything in return. He realizes that Saruman is plotting to become "a Power." He wonders why Saruman has allied with Orcs, why there are so many Orcs in his woods, and why these Orcs can bear sunlight. Most of all, he is angered by trees being felled "to feed the fires of Orthanc." He tells the hobbits about the Entwives, then thinks aloud and begins planning for the next day.

  The next day, Treebeard announces they will drink and then travel to the Entmoot, a gathering of Ents. He carries the hobbits to the meeting, which lasts three days. It ends with all the Ents shouting together, then singing a marching song as they stride toward Isengard. Treebeard leads the column and calls it "the last march of the Ents." Huorns follow and march, as the characters later discover, to the Battle of Helm's Deep.

  At Isengard, the Ents wait for Saruman's army to depart before attacking. Treebeard bangs on the gates and calls for Saruman to come forth. Saruman refuses. The Ents reduce the outer walls to rubble and destroy much of what stands inside. Treebeard directs the Ents to divert the river Isen, flooding the ruined fortress and its underground furnaces and workshops. Saruman is left stranded in the tower, surrounded by water and watchful Ents.

  Gandalf arrives with a delegation and, except for Gandalf himself, they are amazed to find Isengard destroyed. Treebeard promises that Saruman will remain in the tower. Later, Aragorn, King of Gondor, arrives after the victory over Sauron. Treebeard admits he had let Saruman go. Gandalf gently chastises him, suggesting that Saruman might have used "the poison of his voice" to persuade Treebeard to release him. Treebeard delivers the keys of Orthanc to the King and receives, in return, the valley of Orthanc for the Ents. Tolkien records the valley's new name as the Treegarth of Orthanc.

• 5. Names and Languages

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  In Sindarin, one of Tolkien's constructed Elvish languages, the name Fangorn breaks into fanga, meaning "beard," and orne, meaning "tree." That makes Fangorn the direct Sindarin equivalent of the English "Treebeard." The Riders of Rohan had their own name for the forest: the Entwood.

  Treebeard also gave the forest several names in Quenya, Tolkien's other major Elvish language. "Ambaróna" means "uprising, sunrise, orient," built from amba, "upwards," and róna, "east." "Aldalómë" combines alda, "tree," with lómë, "dusk or twilight," making "tree twilight." "Tauremorna" joins taur, "forest," with morna, "gloomy," yielding "gloomy forest." A fourth name, "Tauremornalómë," fuses these elements into "gloomy twilight forest."

  The word "Ent" itself came to Tolkien through Old English, where ent or eoten meant "giant." He drew it from a specific phrase in two Anglo-Saxon poems, The Ruin and Maxims II. That phrase, orþanc enta geweorc, means "cunning work of giants" and was used in those poems to describe Roman ruins in Britain. The names in Sindarin and Quenya alike invited the same close analysis that scholars would later apply to Treebeard's speeches.

• 6. Tolkien in the Trees

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  Tom Shippey, who like Tolkien had been a university professor, called Treebeard's explanations "authoritative," adding that they "admit no denial." Shippey's own academic background made him alert to a quality in Treebeard that other readers might pass over: the character does not argue or persuade; he simply states, and his statements carry the weight of certainty.

  Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien's biographer, identified the model for Treebeard's voice. The character's deep booming tones and "hrum, hoom" mannerism, Carpenter wrote, were based on the voice of C. S. Lewis. Lewis was Tolkien's friend and a fellow member of the group known as the Inklings. He was also a professor of English at the University of Oxford.

  Shippey also noticed an echo from Middle English literature in Treebeard's farewell to Celeborn and Galadriel. Treebeard bids them farewell with the words "It is long, long since we met by stock or by stone." Those words mirror a line in the Middle English poem Pearl: "We meten so selden by stok other stone." In Pearl the phrase refers to earthly reality; Shippey notes it fits Treebeard well. His sense of loss, Shippey writes, naturally centres on felled trees and barren ground.

  Matthew T. Dickerson and Jonathan Evans read Treebeard as voicing a vital part of Tolkien's environmental ethic. That ethic is the need to preserve and look after every kind of wild place, and especially forests. Tolkien's biographer John Garth put it plainly: a deep feeling for trees was Tolkien's most distinctive response to the natural world. Inger Edelfeldt, John Howe, Ted Nasmith, Anke Eißmann, and Alan Lee are among the artists and illustrators Treebeard has inspired.

• 7. A Life in Adaptation

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  John Westbrook voiced Treebeard in Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Stephen Thorne took the role in BBC Radio's 1981 serialization. On The Tolkien Ensemble's album At Dawn in Rivendell, Christopher Lee performs the character.

  In Peter Jackson's 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Treebeard combines a large animatronic model with CGI. His voice is performed by John Rhys-Davies, who also plays Gimli in the same film series. Jackson's interpretation makes Treebeard far more suspicious of the hobbits, treating them as possible Orcs. He is also far more reluctant to go to war until he sees the damage done to the forest. Treebeard appears again in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King from 2003.

  A 6-metre-high sculpture of Treebeard by Tim Tolkien received planning permission in Birmingham. Tim Tolkien is Tolkien's great-nephew. Birmingham is the city where J. R. R. Tolkien grew up. The sculpture will place Treebeard back in the English landscape that shaped the author who first imagined him.