Ents
Shepherds of the Trees; the old wisdom of the forest
The Ents
Names
- Ents — the Shepherds of the Trees; in Sindarin the Onodrim (singular Onod). -
Their own name for themselves is never fully recorded — they are “the old people”, the tree-herds who “loved the great forest… and the deep woods”.
Origin
When Aulë made the Dwarves, Yavanna feared that the children of the Smith, with their axes and forges, would cut and burn her woods. She went to prove her grievance before Eru. The outcome, told in
Of Aulë and Yavanna: Yavanna asked that the trees be defended: “When the children awake, then shall the shepherds of the trees awake also… the Ents”. Eru heard, and at his will the Ents were called into being — shepherds of the trees, the oldest of the free wild things, waking “in the same hour as the Elves” (in the deep woods of the world). Thus the Ents are the third of the “adopted” races: neither Children of Ilúvatar in the strict sense nor of Aulë’s making, but willed by Eru in answer to the grief of Yavanna.
Nature
The Ents are tree-herders, partaking of both tree and being: “the tree-shepherds… are shepherds… old, wise, and slow”; their shape “changed with the ages” — they are shepherd-like, tree-like, ancient. They speak Old Entish, a language slow as growing, and in their deep songs lie the memories of the forest. They are “slow” and “patient”; their wrath, when at last it wakes, is terrible — the unleashing of the oldest strength of the woods. Their relation to the trees: they are guardians, not masters; and within the Silmarillion’s frame they appear only at the margins — the deep woods of Beleriand were their realm, and the first Ent heeds… (post-First Age history — the Entwives, Fangorn — belongs to later Ages).
In the Silmarillion
Within the First Age the Ents are glimpsed only in the framing legends and the chapter of the Ents’ awakening; their servants and shepherds of the great forests (Brethil, Doriath, the woods of Sirion) are part of the background. Their full stature is one of the later developments woven into
The Lord of the Rings (outside current scope), where Treebeard (Fangorn) remembers the elder days.