Today’s video is brought to you by Magic the
Gathering’s new expansion: the Wilds of Eldraine. This brand new set, available now, dives into
the world of fairy stories. Go to the link in the description to check out these fairytales with
a twist and dive deeper into the world of Magic! They are among the great tree
folk of Yavanna. While they would have a fruitful mentorship
with the humans of Middle-earth, their lands would meet tragedy and
their fate would be shrouded in mystery. Today, on Nerd of the Rings, we
cover the Entwives of Middle-earth. Like the male ents, the entwives date
back to some of the earliest days of Arda. After Iluvatar shows mercy upon her
husband Aule’s creation - the dwarves, she pleads to Eru through Manwe, to give life
to some of her creation. For she feared for the trees and plants that they might be
so easily destroyed by Aule’s creation. Thus, the ents are born. Tolkien says they
were either souls sent to inhabit trees, or they slowly took on the likeness of trees
due to their inborn love of them. The Ents, also known as the Shepherds of the Trees, would protect the forests from the beings of
Middle-earth like dwarves, orcs, and others. The male Ents were devoted to Orome, the huntsman
of the Valar, while the Entwives are devoted to Yavanna herself. While an exact time isn’t given,
it is implied that the ents are created around the same time the elves awoke at Cuivienen. And it
is indeed the elves who teach the trees to talk, giving them desire to speak, and teaching
them elvish. As Treebeard would say, the elves “cured the ents of their dumbness”
- a great gift that could not be forgotten. In addition to learning evlish, the Ents
would develop their own language - Entish, which grew in complexity over the long years of
their existence. In our video on Treebeard, we covered the Ents time in Beleriand, and how they
assisted Beren in defeating a group of dwarves. However, it is in the lands of Eriador where the
tale of the Entwives takes place. As remembered by Elrond during his council in Rivendell,
there was once a time when a squirrel could carry a nut from tree to tree from Rivendell to
the Great Sea - indicating the vast forests that once covered the majority of Eriador. Not only
would the forests dwindle over the centuries, but those of ent-kind would also split
on separate missions, as Treebeard says: ‘When the world was young, and the
woods were wide and wild, the Ents and the Entwives – and there were Entmaidens
then: ah! the loveliness of Fimbrethil, of Wandlimb the lightfooted, in the days
of our youth! – they walked together and they housed together. But our hearts
did not go on growing in the same way: Sometime during either the First or Second
Age, the Entwives began to move farther away from the male ents. While the males
of their race shepherded the forests, the Entwives loved to plant and tend to
smaller things like flowers, grass, and herbs. The Entwives pass over the Anduin River and
settle in lands south of Mirkwood in Rhovanion. We are told that after Morgoth is defeated
at the end of the First Age in Beleriand, the gardens of the entwives blossomed. It is
also said that the Entwives taught agriculture to the Men of that land, who in turn held
the entwives in great honor. Unfortunately, destruction would come for
the gardens of the Entwives. Late in the Second Age, as the Last Alliance of
Elves and Men marches toward Mordor, the dark lord would turn to terrible methods to slow their
progress. He burns the gardens of the entwives, and they are ever after known as
the Brown Lands. Treebeard recounts the day when the Ents left to find the
Entwives, only to discover devastation: ‘I remember it was long ago – in the time
of the war between Sauron and the Men of the Sea – desire came over me to see Fimbrethil
again. Very fair she was still in my eyes, when I had last seen her, though little like the
Entmaiden of old. For the Entwives were bent and browned by their labour; their hair parched by the
sun to the hue of ripe corn and their cheeks like red apples. Yet their eyes were still the eyes of
our own people. We crossed over Anduin and came to their land; but we found a desert: it was all
burned and uprooted, for war had passed over it. But the Entwives were not there. Long we called,
and long we searched; and we asked all folk that we met which way the Entwives had gone. Some said
they had never seen them; and some said that they had seen them walking away west, and some said
east, and others south. But nowhere that we went could we find them. Our sorrow was very great.
Yet the wild wood called, and we returned to it. For many years we used to go out every now
and again and look for the Entwives, walking far and wide and calling them by their beautiful
names. But as time passed we went more seldom and wandered less far. And now the Entwives are only
a memory for us, and our beards are long and grey. Here we turn to what is without question
one of the most asked about mysteries of Middle-earth - what happened to the
Entwives? In the Letters of JRR Tolkien, he twice responds to this very question. In
April 1954, Tolkien responded to a number of questions from Naomi Mitchison and after
talking about Tom Bombadil - and mentioning Bombadil didn’t have any connection
to the Entwives, he goes on to say: I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared
for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance (Second Age
3429–3441) when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy and burned their land against
the advance of the Allies down the Anduin. They survived only in the ‘agriculture’
transmitted to Men (and Hobbits). Some, of course, may have fled east,
or even have become enslaved: tyrants even in such tales must have an economic
and agricultural background to their soldiers and metal-workers. If any survived so, they
would indeed be far estranged from the Ents, and any rapprochement would be difficult
– unless experience of industrialized and militarized agriculture had made them a
little more anarchic. I hope so. I don’t know. One of the prevailing hopes of fans for the
survival of the entwives comes in one of the early chapters of The Lord of the Rings: The Shadow of
the Past. In this chapter, we find Sam conversing with Ted Sandyman and among the things they
butt heads on is the alleged sightings of giant tree-men beyond the North Moors of the Shire.
Sam relays that it was as big as an elm tree and walking seven yards to a stride. He also notes
that there are no elm trees on the North Moors. The issue of the entwives has not only brought
about discussion among fans for decades, but was one Tolkien was undecided on for many
long years. 18 years after his previous letter we referenced, Tolkien was still unsure as to
what happened to the Entwives. In June 1972, he wrote back to Fr. Douglas Carter who had
asked if the Ents ever found the Entwives: As for the Entwives: I do not know.
I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age…
…But I think in Vol. II pp. 80–811 it is plain that there would be for Ents no
re-union in ‘history’ – but Ents and their wives being rational creatures would find some
‘earthly paradise’ until the end of this world: beyond which the wisdom neither of
Elves nor Ents could see. Though maybe they shared the hope of Aragorn
that they were ‘not bound for ever to the circles of the world and beyond
them is more than memory.’. . . . Like the fates of the Blue
Wizards, Radagast, Shelob, or any number of mysteries of Middle-earth,
the fate of the entwives has captured the imagination of fans and lead to a
multitude of theories. More recently, in a since-deleted 2017 Quora post, a user
named Pip Willis claimed that his father had drawn a map of Middle-earth and was able to
meet with Tolkien in person in 1971. Willis further alleges that Tolkien wrote on the map
west of the Sea of Rhun “here may be Entwives”. This certainly makes for an interesting potential
development in the Entwives discussion. However, it’s worth noting that the area shown in
the alleged map depicts a forest south of where the River Running meets the River Carnen
- where no forest is depicted in the published map of The Lord of the Rings. Its authenticity
debatable, it is yet another in a long line of uncertainty surrounding the Entwives. And while
fans will continue to debate and speculate for years to come, we can take comfort in Tolkien’s
final words in the 1972 letter that the Ents and Entwives could be reunited after the ending
of the world - beyond the wisdom of elves or ents - and perhaps beyond the very circles
of the world where there is more than memory. Like Tolkien himself, I enjoy a good fairy tale.
And with the new Wilds of Eldraine, every Magic game I play features age-old tales with fun,
new twists. With its fairy story roots, Wilds of Eldraine makes a great addition to your existing
Magic the Gathering deck. Whether you go for things like dragons, dwarves, and fighting bears,
or you want to get nuts and unleash a gingerbread horseman, you can’t go wrong. No matter how you
play, there’s a great time to be had while playing Magic: the Gathering: The Wilds of Eldraine.
Order now through the link in the description. As always, I want to say a huge
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Haired One, Wyland, Michael Woo, and Debbie. Thanks so much for watching and subscribing, and
we’ll see you next time on Nerd of the Rings.
