Ents
Ents are a fictional race from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth.
The word Ent comes from Middle English, and means giant. The Elvish name for Ents is "Onodrim", singular "Onod".
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Ents are a very old race that appeared in Middle-earth when the Elves did. They were apparently created by Eru Ilúvatar at the behest of Yavanna, after she learned that Aulë's children, the Dwarves, were wont to fell trees. Ents were envisioned as Shepherds of the Trees, to protect the forests from Dwarves and other perils. The Elves have tales of teaching the trees to talk, and they also taught the Ents to talk: although the Ents were sentient beings at the time, they did not know how to speak until the Elves taught them. Treebeard said of the Elves "curing the Ents of their dumbness" that it was a great gift that could not be forgotten.
Ents are tree-like creatures, having become like the trees that they shepherd. They vary in traits, from everything to height and size, colouring, and the number of fingers and toes. In the Third Age of Middle-earth, the forest of Fangorn was apparently the only place Ents still lived, although the Ent-like Huorns may still have survived elsewhere, as in the Old Forest.
History
Almost nothing is known of the early history of the Ents — they apparently lived in and protected the large forests of Middle-Earth in previous ages, and they briefly appear near the end of the First Age, attacking a band of Dwarves, apparently summoned by Beren and Lúthien. Treebeard told of a time when apparently all of Eriador was one huge forest and part of his domain, but these immense forests were cut by the Númenóreans of the Second Age, or destroyed in the calamitous War of the Elves and Sauron of the 17th century of the Second Age. Treebeard's statement is also supported by remarks Elrond Half-elven made at the Council of Elrond. Elrond said that "Time was once when a squirrel could carry a nut from tree to tree from Rivendell to the Great Sea...", further indicating that all of Eriador was once a single vast primeval forest, of which Fangorn Forest was just "the Eastern End of it" according to Treebeard.
There used to be Entwives (literally "Ent-women"), but they started to move farther away from the Ents because they liked to plant and control things, so they moved away to the region that would later become the Brown Lands across the Great River Anduin. This area was destroyed by Sauron, and the Entwives disappeared. The Ents looked for them, but have never found them. It is sung by the Ents that one day they will find each other.
Language
Ents are not hasty creatures, they take their time; even their language is "unhasty". In fact, their language appears to be based on an ancient form of Common Eldarin, later enriched by Quenya and Sindarin, although it includes many unique 'tree-ish' additions. There are actually two different languages:
- Old Entish. Originally, the Ents had a language of their own, described as long and sonorous; it was a tonal language (like Chinese). It is unknown if a non-Ent could even pronounce Old Entish correctly: it was filled with many subtle vowel shades, and was very longwinded. Only Ents spoke Old Entish; not because they kept their language a secret, as the Dwarves did with Khuzdul, but because no others could master it. It was quite an alien language to all others, but what else could be expected from a race of walking Tree-herders. The Huorns and trees of Fangorn forest could understand Old Entish and converse with the Ents and each other with it. The only extant sample, "a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúme", the word for "hill" was described as a very inaccurate sampling. Even the Elves, master linguists, could not learn Old Entish, nor did they attempt to record it due to its complex sound structure. The grammar structure of Old Entish was also quite bizarre, often described as a lengthy, long-winded discussion of a topic. There may not even have been a word for "yes" and "no": such questions would be answered by a long monologue on why the Ent in question did or did not agree with the Ent who asked the question. The Ent Quickbeam was regarded as a very "hasty" Ent for answering a question before another Ent had finished: the end may only have been another hour away. Ents as a rule would say nothing in Old Entish unless it was worth taking a long time to say. For everyday language function, they usually resorted to "New" Entish.
- "New" Entish (Never named as such in the text). Due to contact with the Elves, the Ents learned much from them. The Ents found the Elvish language Quenya to be a lovely language, and adapted it after their fashion to everyday use. However, they basically adapted Quenya vocabulary to Old Entish grammatical structure. Thus, unlike Old Entish, the individual words of "New Entish" that characters such as Treebeard spoke were easily translatable. However, in context they formed lengthy run-on sentences of redundant adjectives that could still stretch well over an hour in length. For example, when Treebeard essentially wanted to tell Merry and Pippin, "There is a shadow of the Great Darkness in the deep dales of the forest", he literally said in New Entish "Forest-golden-leaves, deep-dales-winter, forest-many-shadowed, deep-valley-black". Unlike Old Entish, a non-Ent conceivably could speak "New" Entish. Even when speaking the Common Speech, Westron, Ents fell into the habit of adapting it into their grammatical structure of repeating compound adjectives used to express fine shades of meaning.
It is hypothesised that Trolls are corrupted versions of Ents in much the same way that Orcs are corrupted versions of Elves, but the text leaves the facts of the matter ambiguous. Certain is that Treebeard saw Trolls as mockeries of Ents.
Last March of the Ents
In The Two Towers, Part 2 of Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings, the Ents do become angry. They become mad at Saruman because he is getting out of control with power and chopping down their trees. So the Ents have a meeting, or an Entmoot. They decide to capture Saruman, or die trying. They are led by Treebeard, the oldest Ent, and Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took, two Hobbits who came across Treebeard while trying to escape Saruman's Orcs. They capture Isengard in an all-out assault and trap Saruman in the tower of Orthanc.
Ents in non-Tolkien fiction
In fantasy games such as Dungeons & Dragons, EverQuest, Magic: The Gathering, and the Warcraft PC game, Ents are known as Treants, for copyright reasons. (Just like Hobbits are only referred to as Halflings in D&D and EverQuest)
