Have you ever come across a piece of fiction that just... clicks for you?
An idea so "right", so strangely familiar that you feel as though you've known it your
entire life?
For me, that's how pretty much all of Tolkien's work feels when I read it.
The Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion-it's all full of ideas crafted from a deep understanding
of classic literature, folklore, language.
These are part of the world I occupy.
Things that have already in some way inevitably touched me, long before I ever picked up the
books or watched the films.
Tolkien worked with some old magic.
And yes, he used it to write about great wars, develop languages, devise long histories-those
are all a part of this.
But for me, out of everything he put into his stories, the one singular element that
makes me feel this the most is... the ents, the guardians of the wood, the living trees.
A race who only feature for about one chapter in one book.
It may not be the most important part of the tale, but it's certainly one of the more interesting
bits.
A big thanks to Campfire writing and worldbuilding software for making this video possible!
And a big thanks to our patreon supporters as well.
We love you.
If you haven't read Tolkien's work or seen the movies, when you finally do, you'll probably
feel almost exactly how I did.
When the ents first appear, somehow, you are going to feel as though you recognize them.
Maybe it's because, at first glance, they're easy to mistake for trees.
They look exactly like the woods they watch over: skin like bark, beards and hair made
up of twigs and moss, many-toed feet like the bottoms of trunks where the roots delve
into the earth, limbs like strong boughs, fingers like splayed branches.
And they have as much variety as trees, too.
Among the ents, those who resemble the fir are the tallest.
The ones who take after ash have many more fingers than the rest, and a gray complexion.
Those of the chestnut lineage are dark and brown and stout.
Right down to their toes, through every leaf and limb, ents are trees-just trees given
a will and the ability to use it.
And what could possibly be more familiar... than a tree?
Of course we recognize this creature.
It's all around us.
...okay but if we're being honest, you might also just recognize it because it's all over
modern fantasy, too.
There's "treeants" in Dungeons and Dragons, "Treefolk" in Magic the Gathering and five-billion
other properties, literally countless examples "talking trees".
Like almost all of Tolkien's ideas, ents have become an archetype with a life of their own.
And it's easy to see why.
When I began research for this video, I thought I would figure out where ents came from-what
Tolkien's inspiration was.
I figured there would be some clear basis in folklore, but nope!
Nothing.
In his letters, he says that they were a spontaneous invention.
He knew Frodo would go on a "tree adventure" at some point, but that was about it.
He admits that maybe part of the ents' involvement in the story was inspired by Macbeth, when
Malcolm's men disguise themselves in the forest by holding up boughs, creating the illusion
that the forest is marching... but that... really doesn't tell us much.
How could Tolkien have devised something so natural-so evocative that it would be carried
this far throughout literature and media-on a random whim?
I suspect Tolkien didn't really come up with this idea at all.
Maybe the finer details, but I think what brought Tolkien to this concept is the same
thing that makes it feel so very familiar and resonant to us.
Again, the simple fact that these are trees, and trees mean something.
We know them.
We see this across the world, throughout history and mythology.
Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse myth, whose branches span the nine realms of creation.
Sacred oaks that whispered the wisdom of the ancient Greek oracles.
The leaves of the banyan tree, said by some to be the resting place for the Hindu god,
Krishna.
Across the British Isles, Hawthorne trees have been given as the home of faerie folk.
There is an undeniable affinity in mankind (and in me), for trees.
Not just a sense of awe and appreciation, but a sort of kinship, I feel.
They're the old life of the world.
Generations pass, and patiently, quietly, trees watch.
They shelter and Protect.
They nourish.
They remember.
Trees have always been thought of as wise, and beneficent; living beings connected to
the land in a way humans could never be.
And you can see all of these qualities borne out in Tolkien's vision.
"Do not be hasty", says Treebeard, perhaps the oldest of the ents.
It's his motto.
He, like all the other ents, moves with the slow deliberation of something which has grown
in the earth for ages, all the time in the world for asking the proper questions, thinking
hard about the correct solutions.
The very language they speak, Old Entish, is so accurate and true to the nature of things,
it takes a very long time indeed to say anything in it.
At one point one of the hobbits uses the word "hill", and Treebeard calls it a "hasty word
for a thing which has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped."
But he also says that they don't say anything in the language that isn't worth taking a
very long time to say.
Even Old Entish names are hopelessly long, as they're growing all the time.
I don't see this as a simple matter of patience or long-windedness, I see it as a depth of
respect for the world they occupy which we could scarcely ever hope to understand.
They even have an old Entish song that lists all the creatures and races of the land, which
Treebeard knows by heart.
Between their ancientness, their connection to the world, the kindness they treat the
protagonists of the story with, their willingness to offer help, protection, safety, I think
it's safe to say Tolkien nailed the general character of trees, here.
He tapped into something we've all been aware of, but lacked the language for, and made
it live, which is... incredible.
But he also wasn't the first.
Because of all the qualities we imbue trees with, it's a very natural thing to characterize
them.
They develop into a kind of Anima Loci-a Greek word that means "the soul of a place"-and
come to life in our minds.
Hamadryads in Ancient Greek myth were a type of nature spirit that lived within a tree,
bound to it that so that when one died, so would the other.
In the English county of Somerset, there's an old folksong which goes:
Ellum do grieve, Oak he do hate,
Willow do walk If yew travels late
Whether he knew it or not, in creating the ents, Tolkien was simply participating in
an old tradition.
Although this particular creature is his, the idea of the ensouled, living, feeling,
thinking tree is as old as time.
Of course, there's another side to this.
Trees are not just beings of deep time, reverence, beneficence.
They're also the ones who shroud the wood in darkness.
When the winds blow, it's the trees you hear howling and moaning over the hills, branches
creaking like old bones.
How many dried fingertips have come scrabbling at your window in the night?
How many strange faces have you found glaring out from the gnarled knots?
My mind goes to examples like the trees from the movie Poltergeist and... well... actually,
we won't talk about the tree from Evil Dead.
Just take my word, it's not very nice.
And why should it be?
Mankind has not made their existence particularly easy.
On the one hand, I think this is just a primordial fear.
Strange shapes in the dark; large, looming figures that obscure our vision and hide our
paths.
Simple enough.
On the other hand, if we can give trees souls-if we're so able to bestow upon them all these
empathetic traits-why shouldn't that include the bad ones, too?
If it had the faculties, might Elm mourn his fallen friends?
Might Oak grow a hatred over the long years of abuse?
Might Willow rise up out of the ground and stalk you, one of its few true predators,
if only it had legs?
In Ireland, there are solitary ash trees that are left alone, because they're believed to
be the home of faeries or witches, and to harm them is to call a grizzly revenge down
upon yourself.
Any sentient being treated the way humans treat trees would be... a little bitter.
And Tolkien's ents are no exception.
According to his extended lore, the reason ents exist at all is because the goddess who
created them and all of the natural flora and fauna of his world was afraid for her
children.
She knew that sentient beings, like humans and especially dwarves, would want to exploit
them for resources.
So she made a plea to a god of higher authority, who sent great spirits to live among and within
the plants and beasts she had created, where they would, quote "be held in reverence, and
their just anger feared."
Thus, we have ents... among other mighty wilderness spirits.
They are the tree-herds, standing watch over the woods.
They prefer to live their days in peace, roaming the wilderness, speaking with their good friends,
the trees.
But once in a great while, when their trees or their lives are threatened, the ents can
be roused to anger, and it is a terrifying sight.
When they march, thrumming and booming and singing in their ancient tree-ish tongue,
it appears as though an entire forest woke up and mustered for war.
Imagine that kind of power.
Something so docile, so ancient and mighty, coming down on you in a wave of fury.
As demonstrated in The Two Towers, their capacity for destruction is quite complete.
Although it's not just ents who do the protecting.
In Treebeard's words, "there are ents and ents, you know; or there are ents and things
that look like ents but ain't".
Over the long years, some ents grow tired and tree-ish, and some trees grow wakeful
and ent-ish, but in-between the two a new creature emerges, much closer to those grasping
figures in the dark wood we've all imagined before.
They are called huorns, and they can be quite a bit more malevolent than the difficult-to-rouse
ents.
They sit in the deepest parts of the wood, lost in their years of contemplation, many
of them fostering a slow, black, rotting hatred for men, and dwarves, and orcs, and all the
races that would exploit them.
They wrap themselves in shadow, and when angered, can move swift enough that they can barely
be seen before it's too late.
Between the ents and the huorns and the watchful trees, the forests of Tolkien's world are
full of eyes and emotions.
And after a fashion, that's how we view the forests of our world, too.
As a writer, I think the reason I was drawn to this idea-the reason I wanted to make a
video about it-is because it demonstrates such a deep understanding of a tradition that
I think we take for granted.
Yes, we just spent more than ten minutes talking about trees, but there's that much and more
to say about them.
We've been animating trees in our mind for so long, it's almost second nature to us,
now!
I think it's the same instinct that guided Tolkien to create the ents.
I think this is an example of a writers embracing the identity of their inspiration, rather
than trying to impose their own creative will onto it.
That is so powerful, and certainly something worth trying in your own worldbuilding.
Of course, it's one thing to tell you try something with your worldbuilding.
It's another to actually give you the means to do it.
Luckily, I know just the tool for the job.
Campfire Blaze will make this-and all the other worldbuilding you want to do-easy.
If you're not familiar, Campfire Blaze is a browser-based suite of tools to help you
keep your writing organized.
You can collaborate with friends in real-time or work by yourself to flesh out every facet
of your story.
Create characters, design your plot, and worldbuild every single piece of your setting, all in
one place.
When it comes time to turn your world into a story, you can also develop your entire
manuscript right there in Blaze's word processor.
When you're done, sharing your work with your friends and fans is incredibly easy-no more
sending out thirty different copies of your manuscript.
You also have a lot of freedom to customize how you pay for it.
Start with the free version, then expand by buying just the tools you need permanently,
or build a subscription by adding features for as little as fifty cents a piece, which
means to use everything you'd only be paying a few dollars a month!
And if you're on the fence, no risk-there's a 30-day return policy.
Follow the link in the description to learn more.
Write better stories faster with Campfire Blaze
Before we wrap up, I'd like to give a quick thanks to all the helpful humans who support
the show on Patreon.
All those words you see scrolling in the background of these videos?
Those are actually the names of our Patreon maintenance crew, without whom this show would
be impossible.
And a special word to all of our top patrons: Lord_Gatte, RPGgrenade and TheAutumnWriter
- thank you so much!
And... that's it for this video!
There's usually a few weeks between uploads, so if you want more Tale foundry in the mean-time,
come join our community!
We have a discord server that's basically like a big family of creatives-a lot of love,
there.
We also run writing groups on Twitch every week, if you want to get some practice in!
You can find links to all of it in the description.
Hope to see you there!
Until then, thanks for watching, and keep making stuff up!
I'll see you...
next time.
Bye!