Drúedain

The Drúedain are based on the mythological woodwoses, the wild men of the woods of Britain and Europe; the Riders of Rohan indeed call them woses.

[T 2] John S. Ryan, writing in Mallorn, notes that Tolkien also uses the forms "Drúadan Forest" (the home of the Woses) and "Drúwaith-laur" (the Dru-folk's ancient wilderness).

[3] Ryan adds that the word survives in English placenames such as Puckshot in Surrey, Pock Field in Cumberland, Puxton, Puckeridge, Pokesdown, Pockford, Pucknall, and perhaps Pucklechurch.

According to the Elves and other Men, they had "unlovely faces": wide, flat, and expressionless with deep-set black eyes that glowed red when angered.

At the end of the Third Age the Drûgs still lived in the Drúadan Forest of the White Mountains, and on the long cape of Andrast west of Gondor.

The term Púkel-men used by the Rohirrim was also applied to the statues constructed by the Drúedain to guard important places and homes;[T 3] some evidently had the power to come to life.

[T 5] Because of their ugly appearance and frightening statues the Drúedain were feared and loathed by other Men of the region; they were considered little better than Orcs, and there was much enmity between those peoples.

It was the "woodcrafty beyond compare"[T 1] Drúedain who held off the Orcs with poisoned arrows whilst they guided the Rohirrim through the forest by secret paths.

"[9] Susan Pesznecker describes the "Wodwoses", including Tolkien's, as a variant of the medieval Green man, which she calls "a Pagan symbol of fertility and rebirth".

Ghân-Buri-Ghân talks "like a Hollywood Tarzan" using short broken phrases like "Wild Men live here before Stone-houses" and "kill orc-folk".