LotR -- Book 3 - Chapter 05 - The White Rider

[Formendacil]

As excellent a chapter as "The White Rider" is, I sort of get where Tolkien is coming from in identifying it as a weaker point in the story, sandwiched as it is between two stellar chapters. Indeed, prior to reading this thread, my thoughts as I reread were mired in "Treebeard": I noticed, perhaps consciously for the first time, that the main part of this chapter takes place on what Tolkien very deliberately names (and capitalises) as Treebeard's Hill.

It's an interesting point to me because in our last dramatic meeting on this hill, Treebeard is loth even to call it that, such a hasty name for something that has been there since the mountains were reared. We talked a lot in that chapter about how Entish is a language where every name is a story, and by virtue of these two chance meetings on it, this hill is getting some mighty chapters to add to its tale: the destinies of many peoples changed because of two related encounters here.

Before, it was just a hill; now, it is Treebeard's Hill. Not the whole story of an Entish name, but maybe a name to preserve the memory of Treebeard for a time when the Ents are forgotten--as I learned thanks to Tolkien, place-names preserve some of the oldest linguistic pieces, through conquests and language-changes.