Radagast
Aiwendil; Radagast the Brown; the friend of beasts
Origin and Office
Radagast — in Valinor Aiwendil (“bird-friend”) — was the fourth of the Istari, sent to Middle-earth as a fellow of the five. His love was not with Elves and Men but “with the birds and beasts and the wild lands of the earth”; the Unfinished Tales note that he was “the friend of all… things that were free and wild”. It is said that Yavanna, who loved the trees and the living things, had begged that one be sent for their care, and Radagast was that one.
The Brown Wizard
- He dwelt at Rhosgobel, on the eastern eaves of Mirkwood, where he kept his knowledge of the creatures of the wood; he was often seen with the birds of the forest, and the beasts of Mirkwood were his familiars.
- In the time of the Ring, Gandalf sought him for aid: it was through Radagast’s birds and beasts that the message of Rivendell reached its journeys, and it was Radagast who — sent to Isengard — carried Gandalf’s own requests unwittingly into Saruman’s trap.
The Failure of his Office
The texts speak plainly of his “falling out of count”: his bond with the wilds — though not evil — made him “too… a friend of the beasts of the wild and of the birds of the sky” and blind to the war against Sauron; Tolkien judged that he “went native”, lingered in the eastern woods, and “failed in his mission” of aiding against the Shadow, though never serving it. His actual fate in the later years is unrecorded; some say he remained to the end the overlooked friend of the wild.
Significance
Radagast is the tragic-counterpart of his fellows: the Istari who, loving the good wild things, let that love break the order’s purpose — neither a traitor like Saruman nor a hero like Gandalf, but the “beautiful failure” of the mission. His birds (the great crebain of the Mountain) still carry the news of the later age.