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Love in the Trees - Page 10

© Michael Martinez

But now contrast Bombadil's relationship with Goldberry to that between the Ents and the Entwives. The Ents and Entwives grew apart perhaps because the Ents were too aloof and too disinterested in the Entwives' priorities. Whereas Bombadil and Goldberry share a home, equally attending to their guests' needs, dividing the labor and responsibilities carefully, the Entwives eventually lived apart from the Ents. Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin, in a somewhat wistful fashion, how he used to wander across hundreds of miles of trackless forest from Beleriand to the Anduin. He spent whole seasons in different parts of the northern lands. The Entwives, on the other hand, wanted to live settled, orderly lives. And that orderliness included dominating other things:

'It is rather a strange and sad story,' he went on after a pause. '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: the Ents gave their love to things that they met in the world, and the Entwives gave their thought to other things, for the Ents loved the great trees; and the wild woods, and the slopes of the high hills; and they drank of the mountain-streams, and ate only such fruit as the trees let fall in their path; and they learned of the Elves and spoke with the Trees. But the Entwives gave their minds to the lesser trees, and to the meads in the sunshine beyond the feet of the forests; and they saw the sloe in the thicket, and the wild apple and the cherry blossoming in spring, and the green herbs in the waterlands in summer, and the seeding grasses in the autumn fields. They did not desire to speak with these things; but they wished them to hear and obey what was said to them. The Entwives ordered them to grow according to their wishes, and bear leaf and fruit to their liking; for the Entwives desired order, and plenty, and peace (by which they meant that things should remain where they had set them). So the Entwives made gardens to live in. But we Ents went on wandering, and we only came to the gardens now and again. Then when the Darkness came in the North, the Entwives crossed the Great River, and made new gardens, and tilled new fields, and we saw them more seldom. After the Darkness was overthrown the land of the Entwives blossomed richly, and their fields were full of corn. Many men learned the crafts of the Entwives and honoured them greatly; but we were only a legend to them, a secret in the heart of the forest. Yet here we still are, while all the gardens of the Entwives are wasted: Men call them the Brown Lands now.

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