What is the true fate of the Entwives?

[Celebthôl]

wots Hal???

 

[Beorn]

What is Hal?

Rather, who is Hal:

'No thank 'ee,' said Ted, 'I won't. I heard tell of them when I was a youngster, but there's no call to believe in them now. There's only one Dragon in Bywater, and that's Green,' he said, getting a general laugh.
'All right,' said Sam, laughing with the rest. 'But what about these Tree-men, these giants, as you might call them? They do say that one bigger than a tree was seen up away beyond the North Moors not long back.'
'Who's they?'
'My cousin Hal for one. He works for Mr. Boffin at Overhill and goes up to the Northfarthing for the hunting. He saw one.'
'Says he did, perhaps. Your Hal's always saying he's seen things; and maybe he sees things that ain't there.'
'But this one was as big as an elm tree, and walking - walking seven yards to a stride, if it was an inch.'
'Then I bet it wasn't an inch. What he saw was an elm tree, as like as not.'
'But this one was walking, I tell you; and there ain't no elm tree on the North Moors.'
'Then Hal can't have seen one,' said Ted. There was some laughing and clapping: the audience seemed to think that Ted had scored a point.
'All the same,' said Sam, 'you can't deny that others besides our Halfast have seen queer folk crossing the Shire - crossing it, mind you: there are more that are turned back at the borders. The Bounders have never been so busy before.

From the beginning of The Shadow of the Past,

 

[Manwe]

sorry to take thisnthread off track slightly but i was just wondering about the origins of trolls. i mean after the first born and then the birth of men i'm pressuming that trolls weren't created by eru. so who were they created by ? ithrynluin you said that trolls were mockeries of dwarves ?

 

[Ithrynluin]

No,I said trolls are mockeries of ents.
No evil creature was created by Eru...orcs,trolls - they were all perverted and corrupted by the dark power. The former were elves and the latter ents.

From The Two Towers, Chapter 4: Treebeard

'Will you really break the doors of Isengard?' asked Merry.
'Ho, hm, well, we could, you know! You do not know, perhaps, how strong we are. Maybe you have heard of Trolls? They are mighty strong. But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves. We are stronger than Trolls. We are made of the bones of the earth.

 

[Gil-Galad]

That is very interesitng theory,but what would be Sauron's purpose of destroying the entwives and creating Olog-Hihgs?

 

[Anamatar IV]

Originally posted by Celebthôl
i wondered that same thing but Tree beard knows of the old forest, and so therefore knew that there were no Entwives there.

Thôl

but listen to what Treebeard has to say of that very matter:

He made them describe the Shire and
its country over and over again. He said an odd thing at this point. 'You
never see any, hm, any Ents round there do you?' he asked. 'Well, not Ents,
Entwives I should really say.'
'Entwives?' said Pippin. 'Are they like you at all?'
'Yes, hm, well no: I do not really know now, said Treebeard
thoughtfully. 'But they would like your country, so I just wondered.'

So Treebeard would chirp in that that may have been an entwife and he doesnt know if there are any up there.

 

[Ithrynluin]

Gil,you are asking why Sauron would destroy the Entwives and create the Olog-hai? I think that is self-explanatory really. Destroy a potential enemy and create more minions to serve your own cause. Simple as that.

This quote from "The Shadow of the Past" should clarify:

'Ever since Bilbo left I have been deeply concerned about you, and about all these charming, absurd, helpless hobbits. It would be a grievous blow to the world, if the Dark Power overcame the Shire; If all your kind, jolly, stupid Bolgers, Hornblowers, Boffins, Bracegirdles, and the rest, not to mention the ridiculous Bagginses, became enslaved.'
Frodo shuddered. 'But why should we be?' he asked. 'And why should he want such slaves?'
'To tell you the truth,' replied Gandalf, 'I believe that hitherto - hitherto, mark you - he has entirely overlooked the existence of hobbits. You should be thankful. But your safety has passed. He does not need you - he has many more useful servants - but he won't forget you again. And hobbits as miserable slaves would please him far more than hobbits happy and free. There is such a thing as malice and revenge.'

We can apply the same things for ents as well,and for any other people.
Sauron would much rather see the free,good peoples of ME enslaved or destroyed than roaming free and possibly resisting him.

 

[Gil-Galad]

But if he wanted to destroy them,he wouldn't destroy only the entwives but also the ents.So as you can see it is not so simple.

 

[Ithrynluin]

Originally posted by Gil-Galad
But if he wanted to destroy them,he wouldn't destroy only the entwives but also the ents.So as you can see it is not so simple.

The Ents lived in Fangorn and the Entwives lived in the Brown lands. These are different parts of Middle Earth. Who knows what strategies Sauron had in mind? Maybe he wanted to rid the closer vicinity of Mordor of enemies. Who can say?

 

[Gil-Galad]

Originally posted by ithrynluin
The Ents lived in Fangorn and the Entwives lived in the Brown lands. These are different parts of Middle Earth. Who knows what strategies Sauron had in mind? Maybe he wanted to rid the closer vicinity of Mordor of enemies. Who can say?

I think he wasn't so stupid do destroy only the entwives.No matter where they live I doubt he would do such thing.Ents have enough power to revenge Sauron if he destroy them.
Probably Sauron would take some entwives to mordor and create the trolls but he wouldn't dare to kill of them.
Well,I think I want this to be so,cause I really don't like the idea of the destruction of entwives by Sauron.

 

[Confusticated]

Originally posted by Gil-Galad
I think he wasn't so stupid do destroy only the entwives.No matter where they live I doubt he would do such thing. Ents have enough power to revenge Sauron if he destroy them. Probably Sauron would take some entwives to mordor and create the trolls but he wouldn't dare to kill of them.
Well,I think I want this to be so,cause I really don't like the idea of the destruction of entwives by Sauron.

So the ents would destroy Sauron if he killed some, but they would just leave Sauron alone if he took some captive and did evil things to them?
I know you really don't want it to be that Sauron destroyed entwives, but wouldn't turning them into trolls be destruction of entwives?

 

[Smokey]

Sauron would be destroying both ents and entwives if he destroyed one or the other. No entwives, no new ents. Eventually the ents would die out.

 

[Ithrynluin]

Originally posted by Smokey
Sauron would be destroying both ents and entwives if he destroyed one or the other. No entwives, no new ents. Eventually the ents would die out.

Hmm....Are Ents mortal?
And there is no definite answer that the Entwives' sole dwelling were the Brown Lands.

 

[Dáin Ironfoot I]

I've often thought that the trees in the Old Forest were the Entwives, excpet for the fact that there is Old Man Willow...

Anyway, is there any forms of evil that Sauron created in mockery of the Dwarves?

 

[Popqueen62]

I don't remember. Probably not. though, i wouldn't be surprised.

 

[aragil]

from letter 153 to Peter Hastings
Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord 'created' Trolls and Orcs. He says he 'made' them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing. There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements, so wide that Treebeard's statement could (in my world) have possibly been true. It is not true actually of the Orcs – who are fundamentally a race of 'rational incarnate' creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today. Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthy wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand. He does not know what 'wizards' are, or whence they came (though I do, even if exercising my subcreator's right I have thought it best in this Tale to leave the question a 'mystery', not without pointers to the solution).
Suffering and experience (and possibly the Ring itself) gave Frodo more insight; and you will read in Ch. I of Book VI the words to Sam. 'The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the Orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them.' In the legends of the Elder Days it is suggested that the Diabolus subjugated and corrupted some of the earliest Elves, before they had ever heard of the 'gods', let alone of God.
I am not sure about Trolls. I think they are mere 'counterfeits', and hence (though here I am of course only using elements of old barbarous mythmaking that had no 'aware' metaphysic) they return to mere stone images when not in the dark. But there are other sorts of Trolls beside these rather ridiculous, if brutal, Stone-trolls, for which other origins are suggested.

I think that the 'other origins' that are here alluded to are seen further in HoME v. 12 (which I don't have access to for quotes right now), where Tolkien implies they might be derived from primitive human-ish stock. My own private theory (viewable in U vs U-h) is that trolls and men could be cross-bred, producing both the Olog-hai and those enigmatic half-trolls of Far Harad.

As for the Entwives and Hal's vision, these have been discussed previously in this thread