Entwives

[ringbearer]

You would think the Elves would know where the Entwives are...they seem to know everything else about Middle-Earth!

[Selwythe]

When Gandalf and the hobbits returned to The Shire, Gandalf went to have a long talk with Tom Bombadil.

I daresay he was telling him about the Ents he had seen and their counterparts in the Old Forest. So in the Fourth Age, maybe they got united? :P

[Ñólendil]

You may have noticed Merry, Pippin and Treebeard discuss the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil in Book III.

[XRogue]

Come to think of it, I don't either. The Ents were quick of foot, and therefore the Entwives would be also. The Old Forest being the one of the last remnants is also a factor in its' favor in this case.

[bombcar]

Poor ents. Tolkien himself says in a letter somewhere (don't have the book with me) that he didn't think that the ents would find the entwives.

But this does not mean that the ents had to fade like the elves did. For we quote Treebeard:

Some of us are still true Ents, sleepy, going tree-ish, as you might say. Most of the trees are just trees, of course; but many are half awake. Some are quite wide awake, and a few are, well, ah, well getting Entis_. That is going on all the time.

So the Ents could last as long as their forests last, theoredically.

But likely they would dwindle. Tolkien thought that the entwives had gone EAST, and Sauron probably whooped them.

[arwen]

That is soooo sad .. or maybe JRR just forgot to mention it and the ents still meet the entwives !

hey Ereve .. thanks ( extremely late)! but i forgot to thank u in my last post.

[Ñólendil]

I'll gladly post the relevent stuff from the Letters when I'm not feeling particularly lazy!

It is an interesting fact that about the same time some of the Entwives are supposed to have been enslaved by Sauron, the Olog-hai appeared to trouble the world.

[Erewe]

Now that I think about it, I seem to remember hearing that somewhere. Oh, well.

--Erewë

PS-- Thank me for what? Sorry, I guess I just don't have a very good memory for online stuff.

[ladyisme]

Every thing about the story of the Ents is sad, but what sturck me most was as much as the Ents seem to miss the Entwives they seem to miss the young Entings just as much if not more.

"The road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began."

[galadriel]

The Tolkien FAQ has a whole page on the fate of the Entwives. It quotes a letter by Tolkien:

What happened to them is not resolved in this book. ... I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance (Second Age 3429-3441) when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy and burned their land against the advance of the Allies down the Anduin. They survived only in the 'agriculture' transmitted to Men (and Hobbits). Some, of course, may have fled east, or even have become enslaved: tyrants even in such tales must have an economic and agricultural background to their soldiers and metal-workers. If any survived so, they would indeed be far estranged from the Ents, and any rapprochement would be difficult -- unless experience of industrialised and militarised agriculture had made them a little more anarchic. I hope so. I don't know.

While this is a rather bleak fate, at least Tolkien gives us the hope that a few survived.

A later letter makes it pretty clear that they're never going to meet again, not until Arda is remade at any rate.

As for the Entwives: I do not know. ... But I think in TT, 80-81 it is plain that there would be for the Ents no re-union in 'history' -- but Ents and their wives being rational creatures would find some 'earthly paradise' until the end of this world: beyond which the wisdom neither of Elves nor Ents could see. Though maybe they shared the hope of Aragorn that they were 'not bound for ever to the circles of the world and beyond them is more than memory.' ....

As for the whole idea that Sam's cousin Hal saw an entwife, the passage in which Sam and Ted are discussing this event was written before Ents had even been invented, so initially it was just coincidence. However, according to the FAQ, Tolkien edited the more fairytale-like first chapters thoroughly; he would not have left such a suggestive conversation in if he didn't want us to connect it with the Ents. This isn't definite proof, but there is hope.

I personally think that their might be a few Entwives left, but the chances that they'll meet again anytime soon are slim. But, quoting ROTK:

'Not in Middle-earth, nor until the lands that lie under the wave are lifted up again. Then in the willow-meads of Tasarinan we may meet in the Spring.'

[Agburanar]

It certainly would be a great loss if the Ents perished, I had almost expected them to leave with the others to the Grey Havens but it seems they still had time to spend in the world. Here's a nice idea:

After the return of Aragorn to Minas Tirith the Ents began work to re-cultivate the valley of Isen. Deep within Orthanc they, with the help of Gandalf, discovered and translated an account of Saruman's experiments with certain Entwives and revealing that they had been seen as a threat and dispersed over Middle Earth. The Ents pursue and find the Entwives, releasing them from Saruman's imprisonment. The two travel together to Mordor and begin work on the transformation of the dark domain into a towering, sub-tropical rainforest where they live happily ever after!

[galadriel]

cool idea! you should make a fan fiction of it!