Middle-earth Mysteries

[Balin999]

Sam says his cousin saw a tree on the northern borders of the Shire walking "Seven feet to a stride if it was an inch".

You're forgetting that the Entwives didn't resemble the Ents in form and statue.
Treebeard says that they had round faces, were smaller and more concerned with the Earth and blossoms. So the tree in the Shire could only have been a male Ent.
I hate to say it, but I'm rather pessimistic concerning the entwives.
Since they had their gardens in what later became the Brown Lands, they might have died in the Great War.

[Frodo Baggins]

Well, I never said Sam's cousin didn't see a round faced tree walking. And besides, from a Hobbit's prespective even if it were smaller than an ent it would be pretty durn big. And may it was only five feet to a straide?

[Balin999]

That may be true, but the Entwives still didn't look like trees (as far as I remember), and the one in the Shire was resembling a tree, so...

And it was seen by a cousin who was regarded to as being a little stupid, so the whole story is quite... fishy.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Balin999

That may be true, but the Entwives still didn't look like trees (as far as I remember), and the one in the Shire was resembling a tree, so...
.

Any idea where you're getting this from? Not saying it's wrong, just that I can't recall ANYTHING about the Entwives' looks anywhere...

And, for what it's worth, the females of a species usually tend to resemble the males somewhat...

[Balin999]

I found this in the chapter "Treebeard" in TTT. It's the page before Treebeard sings his song of the Entwives:

Very fair she was still in my eyes, when I had last seen her, though little like the Entmaiden of old. For the Entwives were bent and browned by their labour; their hair parched by the sun to the hue of ripe corn and their cheeks like red apples. Yet the eyes were still the eyes of our own people.

A rather good description, though it doesn't say that they didn't resemble the Ents. I guess I formed that picture only in my imagination.

[alatar]

I'd given up on the Entwives, and if Treebeard really can't remember what they specifically looked like...And think that I commented on this in the SbS, as Peter Jackson adds a little ent lore to The Two Towers, but come on. Was any other race so doomed to extinction? Not only can the Ents not remember the Entwives, but they also forget to go back and visit for a billion years or so. As far as we know, the entwives crossed with elves or humans and begat the Hobbits - not that I have any evidence, but am only adding 2+2 to get 22.

The Blue Wizards, like Saruman and Radagast, went native and so stayed to play in Middle Earth. With the little information known about the blue two (noted above) one is free to speculate. Possibly they are 'the great evil' of the Fourth Age?

Saruman's ring is also intriguing. We know that he made a ring, and also that he had access to a palantir, which presumably could see across both space and time. Did he watch the hands of Annatar and the elven smiths? Not that that is 100% helpful, as I can read (and rewrite) Bêthberry's posts but still cannot recreate her style of posting (and hopefully no one would ever want to emulate mine ). So even if Saruman could watch the making of even the One, he still lacked both the skill, the individual talents and the superhot furnace of Sammath Naur.

But he made something.

One then needs to look at Saruman's personality to discover what kind of Ring this being would desire. A ring that begat control? That read person's minds? That increased one's cunning and skill in making things? That hides one from other's scrutiny?

Another thought: Was the reason that Gandalf the White easily bested Saruman of Many Colors due to Saruman's Ring? Do rings, in their making, require a bit of the maker, subtracting from the maker's original power (i.e. Sauron)? Are rings both givers and takers, and one hopes to be lucky enough to stay on the plus side?

And here are my thoughts on old Tom.

[Balin999]

Another thought: Was the reason that Gandalf the White easily bested Saruman of Many Colors due to Saruman's Ring? Do rings, in their making, require a bit of the maker, subtracting from the maker's original power (i.e. Sauron)? Are rings both givers and takers, and one hopes to be lucky enough to stay on the plus side?

As far as I can remember, Gandalf was sent back to more or less replace Saruman, since the original white wizard had failed. Gandalf himself says that in a way he IS Saruman.
Although I think that you're right with your theory of losing some of yourself to the ring you create. BUT, if you're wearing the ring, you can use its power, so that doesn't necessarily make you weaker.