Treebeard
Fangorn; the eldest of the Ents; the keeper of the forest
Name and Nature
Treebeard — in the Ent-tongue Fangorn, the name of the forest he keeps — is the eldest and greatest of the Ents, “the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the sun upon this earth”: a being of the elder world whose memory reaches to the years of the Sun’s first rising and beyond (he speaks of a time “before the darkness… the Ent-wives”).
The Shepherd of Trees
Of the Ents’ calling the Quenta tells (in Of Aulë and Yavanna): shepherds were given to the trees at Yavanna’s asking — and Treebeard is their patriarch, “the Shepherd of the trees… the oldest”. He is slow, wise, patient, and long of speech; his Old Entish is a language that “grows” like the woods; and his grief is the fading of his kind — “the trees… dying, and the treachery of the wood-cutters”.
The Last March
- When Saruman's axes fell in his forest, Treebeard roused the Ents in their last great wrath: “the last march of the Ents” against Isengard, the ringing of the broken gates, and the flooding of the wizard’s works. He met the two hobbits and, through them, chose the side of the free; at the liberation of the Shire and the healing of the wood he is remembered as the prime mover of the forest’s vengeance.
Significance
Treebeard concentrates the mythological Ents: the “good shepherd” who, slow but terrible in wrath, stands as the old earth’s answer to the machines of the Shadow; his fellowship feeds the later hope that the woods may outlast their devourers.