Old Man Algernon

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

It is the case though that willows were a very common element in Victorian tombstone iconography, so there was apparently some association with death.

Yes! Also in Goethe's well-known ballad Der Erlkönig, it is 'the old willows grey' that appear to the bewitched boy as the Alder-Kings daughters. They seem to be associated with desolate places adjacent to what may be called the dark side of Faerie.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

And let's not forget the idea of animated trees was introduced to Tolkien via Shakespeare

There's that, of course, and it's definitely where the Ents marching on Isengard came from. But I'm thinking more of the Old Forest, which seems to me haunted by echoes from Blackwood. In a shorter story, Ancient Lights, a wanderer loses his way in a copse that seems overseeable from the outside, but once inside he is led astray by the twisting path and the trees ever shifting around him, much like the Hobbits are nudged ever closer towards the Withywindle against their will. We learn that the fairies inhabiting the copse resent the land-owner's plan to cut the trees down, in which the wanderer is complicit in his profession as surveyor's clerk ('They do not like all that about ending and failing'...). But while Blackwood's fairies embody the will of the trees (or vice versa), the sprite of the Old Forest, Bombadil, is sovereign master of the trees and helpful to travellers in his realm. If Tolkien was indeed aware of these tales by Blackwood, the Old Forest chapters read, in my eyes, like a reply that says "Yes, but...".