Quote:
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Did Hal see an Entwife in the North Moors?
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That depends upon whether you want to believe that he did or not. It is equally possible that he simply imagined it. Tolkien leaves it to the reader to decide, based upon his or her preference. Either way, the incident is easily explicable.
The appearance of the old man in Fangorn is less easily explicable, for the reasons that dininziliel has stated.
As a literary device, I believe that this passage is intended to help make the reader think (at first) that Aragorn and co have encountered Saruman in
The White Rider, when it in fact turns out to be Gandalf.
It is an effective literary device, but it does leave us with the problem of explaining it (assuming that we feel the need to [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ). Gandalf denies that it was him, and we must (as always with Gandalf, I think) take him at his word. I had always thought that it was Saruman, but at the same time, I was puzzled why he did not cause more harm than simply scaring the horses off.
Surely, it must have been left deliberately ambiguous by Tolkien, since he has Gimli raise the question, but never provides us with the solution. He could, for example, simply have had Gandalf say: "Oh yes, that was me, by the way" (although perhaps he might have put it better than that [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ).
We are left, I think, with two possible solutions. Either it was Saruman and there was some reason why he didn't feel the need to (or perhaps was unable to) cause any great harm to the three hunters (perhaps he was just as surprised by the encounter). Or it was a shade of Gandalf appearing to them in some kind of collective premonition.
Or perhaps it was just some other crazy old man wandering in Fangorn. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]
Radaghast? [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]
<font size=1 color=339966>[ 8:14 PM February 06, 2004: Message edited by: The Saucepan Man ]