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Old 01-03-2007, 08:50 PM   #68
Ardamir the Blessed
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Yes, I think there is. I will now present my theory regarding the Entwives' (former) location, one that I have long hoarded.

In Letter #180, Tolkien explains that he had long been planning to have Frodo 'run into a tree-adventure', but it turned out later that it did not happen to him (but instead to Merry and Pippin):
Quote:
... though I knew for years that Frodo would run into a tree-adventure somewhere far down the Great River, I have no recollection of inventing Ents. I came at last to the point, and wrote the 'Treebeard' chapter without any recollection of any previous thought: just as it now is. And then I saw that, of course, it had not happened to Frodo at all.
It is true that in the published LOTR, Frodo does not experience anything that could be called a 'tree-adventure'. But what if Tolkien still left in some remnants of his old thoughts when he worked on the Frodo-Sam narrative thread?


I will now demonstrate the analogies between aspects of Rohan and Gondor (there are most likely more, but these are hopefully enough for my purposes):

Rohan – Gondor
Théoden – Denethor
Saruman – Sauron (or the Lord of the Nazgûl)
The Hornburg – Minas Tirith
Merry and Pippin – Frodo and Sam
Treebeard – Faramir


And thus the one that will be of the highest importance in this thesis:

Fangorn Forest – Ithilien


The Entwives, unlike the Ents, liked small trees, agriculture and gardening:

LR, 'Treebeard':
Quote:
... the Entwives gave their minds to the lesser trees, and to the meads in the sunshine beyond the feet of the forests; and they saw the sloe in the thicket, and the wild apple and the cherry blossoming in spring, and the green herbs in the waterlands in summer, and the seeding grasses in the autumn fields … So the Entwives made gardens to live in.
Thus the Entwives would have liked the vegetation of Ithilien, 'the garden of Gondor':

LR, 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit':
Quote:
All about them [Frodo, Sam and Gollum] were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs. The long journey from Rivendell had brought them far south of their own land, but not until now in this more sheltered region had the hobbits felt the change of clime. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.
South and west it looked towards the warm lower vales of Anduin, shielded from the east by the Ephel Dúath and yet not under the mountain-shadow, protected from the north by the Emyn Muil, open to the southern airs and the moist winds from the Sea far away. Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendants; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjorams and new-sprouting parsleys, and many herbs of forms and scents beyond the garden-lore of Sam. The grots and rocky walls were already starred with saxifrages and stonecrops. Primeroles and anemones were awake in the filbert-brakes; and asphodel and many lily-flowers nodded their half-opened heads in the grass: deep green grass beside the pools, where falling streams halted in cool hollows on their journey down to Anduin.
As is described in the above passage, the 'garden' was planted long ago and had been untended for a long time. But who had tended it? The Men of Gondor, of course. Or?

In Ithilien, Frodo and Sam also finds a small lake within a curious stone basin:

LR, 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit':
Quote:
They [Frodo, Sam and Gollum] followed a stream that went quickly down before them. Presently it brought them to a small clear lake in a shallow dell: it lay in the broken ruins of an ancient stone basin, the carven rim of which was almost wholly covered with mosses and rose-brambles; iris-swords stood in ranks about it. and water-lily leaves floated on its dark gently-rippling surface; but it was deep and fresh, and spilled ever softly out over a stony lip at the far end.
It seems to have been unused for a long time. What purpose did it serve?

Now, inside Wellinghall, Treebeard's home, there was also a water-filled stone basin, albeit smaller:

LR, 'Treebeard':
Quote:
A little stream escaped from the springs above, and leaving the main water, fell tinkling down the sheer face of the wall, pouring in silver drops, like a fine curtain in front of the arched bay. The water was gathered again into a stone basin in the floor between the trees, and thence it spilled and flowed away beside the open path, out to rejoin the Entwash in its journey through the forest.
It is clear that the water gathered in the basin is the special sort that Treebeard seems to like and that made Merry and Pippin to grow taller:

LR, 'Treebeard':
Quote:
For a moment Treebeard stood under the rain of the falling spring, and took a deep breath; then he laughed, and passed inside.
Quote:
'You [Merry and Pippin] are thirsty I [Treebeard] expect. Perhaps you are also tired. Drink this!' He went to the back of the bay, and then they saw that several tall stone jars stood there, with heavy lids.
Quote:
As for Treebeard, he first laved his feet in the basin beyond the arch, and then he drained his bowl at one draught, one long, slow draught.
In the drafts for the account of the Three Hunters' chase, the hunters also find a basin, which was removed from the published text:

The Treason of Isengard, 'The Riders of Rohan':
Quote:
...a rough path descended like a broad steep stair into the plain. At the top of the ravine Aragorn stopped. There was a shallow pool like a great basin, over the worn lip of which the water spilled: lying at the edge of the basin something glistening caught his eye. He lifted it out and held it up in the light. It looked like the new-opened leaf of a beech-tree, fair and untimely in the winter morning.
What purpose could this basin have served, and why did Tolkien remove it? The wording is quite similar to the one describing the basin that Frodo, Sam and Gollum found in Ithilien – I quote again from 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit':
Quote:
They [Frodo, Sam and Gollum] followed a stream that went quickly down before them. Presently it brought them to a small clear lake in a shallow dell: it lay in the broken ruins of an ancient stone basin, the carven rim of which was almost wholly covered with mosses and rose-brambles; iris-swords stood in ranks about it. and water-lily leaves floated on its dark gently-rippling surface; but it was deep and fresh, and spilled ever softly out over a stony lip at the far end.
It should perhaps also be noted (as is mentioned in the LOTR Companion, note for p. 650) that Tolkien added the account of the flora in Ithilien, probably including the passage concerning the basin, after he wrote in the following pages of Sam cooking rabbits, and (as is mentioned in The War of the Ring, 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit') that he pencilled a note
Quote:
Describe baytrees and spicy herbs as they march.'
Therefore it seems that Tolkien moved this basin to the Frodo-Sam narrative thread. What for? Was this initially to be Treebeard's basin (or a 'public' basin for all his Ents, or even the Entwives as well), and was later moved because Treebeard's basin had to appear much later, or was it to have some other purpose?


The research presented above has led me to suspect that the vegetation of Ithilien, described in 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit', was planted, or at least tended, by Entwives – some had survived the desctruction of their gardens south of Mirkwood and then come to Ithilien, a fairly obvious new home and garden - the wood corresponding to Fangorn forest, the Entwood. The basin was used by them for the same purpose that Treebeard used his basin. For some reason they later disappeared, maybe finally eradicated by Sauron, or had fled once again somewhere else.

It should also be noted though, that Frodo, Sam and Gollum both drank and bathed in the pool within the basin they found in Ithilien:

LR, 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit':
Quote:
[... it [the lake] was deep and fresh, and spilled ever softly out over a stony lip at the far end.
Here they washed themselves and drank their fill at the in-falling freshet.
A growth in stature in neither Frodo, Sam or Gollum is ever mentioned afterwards. This was apparently 'normal' water, or at least it did not affect the travellers' height – after all, it was probably only water from the Entwash that was special:

LR, 'Flotsam and Jetsam':
Quote:
Tired?" he [Treebeard] said, "tired? Well no, not tired, but stiff. I need a good draught of Entwash.

Last edited by Ardamir the Blessed; 01-04-2007 at 08:01 AM.
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