Treebeard

This meeting proves to have consequences that contribute significantly to the story and enables the events that occur in The Return of the King.

[T 2][T 1] Fangorn Forest was said to be humid, and trunks and branches of many kinds of tree grew thick, allowing little light to penetrate.

In The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard recounts to the hobbits Merry and Pippin how the Ents were "awakened" and taught to speak by the Elves.

He sings a song about roaming the woods of Middle-earth, naming regions of Beleriand which were destroyed in the war with Morgoth and now lie "beneath the waves."

He says there are valleys in Fangorn forest where the Great Darkness, the period of Morgoth's rule before the arising of the Moon and Sun, never lifted, and the trees are older than he.

It belonged to a large man-like, almost Troll-like, figure, at least fourteen foot high, very sturdy, with a tall head, and hardly any neck.

The lower part of the long face was covered with a sweeping grey beard, bushy, almost twiggy at the roots, thin and mossy at the ends.

[T 1] He overcomes his anger and then, thinking aloud, begins to make plans for the next day, and tells Merry and Pippin about the Entwives.

Treebeard gets the Ents to divert the river Isen, drowning the ruined fortress and its underground furnaces and workshops.

[T 4] Treebeard is still at Isengard, now renamed the Treegarth of Orthanc, when a group led by Aragorn, King of Gondor, arrives after the victory over Sauron, made possible partly because the Ents had helped to destroy Saruman's forces.

[T 5] In Sindarin, one of Tolkien's Elvish languages, "Fangorn" is a compound of fanga, "beard", and orne, "tree", so it is the equivalent of the English "Treebeard".

Treebeard gave it various names in Quenya, another Elvish language: "Ambaróna" means "uprising, sunrise, orient" from amba, "upwards" and róna, "east".

[T 8][3] The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes that Treebeard says farewell to the elf-rulers Celeborn and Galadriel "with great reverence" and the words "It is long, long since we met by stock or by stone",[T 5] in words which echo a line in the Middle English poem Pearl: "We meten so selden by stok other stone".

Where in Pearl the mention of stock and stone means in earthy reality, Shippey writes, the phrase fits the Fangorn context well, since Treebeard's "sense of ultimate loss naturally centres on felled trees and barren ground.

"[4] Matthew T. Dickerson and Jonathan Evans see Treebeard as vocalizing a vital part of Tolkien's environmental ethic, the need to preserve and look after every kind of wild place, especially forests.

[8] Treebeard has inspired artists and illustrators such as Inger Edelfeldt, John Howe,[9] Ted Nasmith,[10] Anke Eißmann,[11] and Alan Lee.

[15] Jackson's interpretation of Treebeard makes him far more suspicious of the Hobbits (as possible Orcs) than Tolkien does,[16] and far more reluctant to go to war with Saruman until he sees the damage done to the forest.