[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I must congratulate elempi for the wisdom of this poll. He omitted orc and troll, therbye limiting any potential problems caused by the likes of spammers, trolls (hey, there's a real identification ), monkeys, hacks, and just your plain garden-variety jokers. Sometimes, you just have to ruin some people's fun.

I actually did consider their inclusion, but discluded them ultimately on the ground that they are, in Tolkien's mythos, degradations of the originals.

I must ponder the inclusion of ent, though. Not because ents aren't a race in Middle-earth, but because I wonder whether ent includes entwives. I notice that elempi carefully sidestepped this issue of gender inclusiveness by using human rather than the term Tolkien himself used, man, or men. But since entwives are differentiated from ents, does that not suggest that ent refers only to the male form of the species? (Assuming that trees have male and female gender and not some other biological expression of reproduction).

Entwives are, of course, Ents. Just because females of our own species are called WO-man does not mean we fail to include them in the race of Men. Of course, in this era we always say Human, but Tolkien didn't.

I notice also another omission, one probably due to the enigmatic difficulty of categorizing his race. And that of his wife. I speak, obviously, of the omission of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry from this list. Are they a race unto themselves or do they belong with the Ainur?

I am no authority other than that based on my creation of this poll, but for the purposes of this thread, Tom and Goldberry are excluded on account of them being (in my opinion) among the Ainur.

Originally Posted by Selmo

The only thing missing is the hairy feet.

Give it a few years....

Eomer, how soon will your choice of Ent make your significant other an Entwife?