They did not desire to speak with these things but they wished them to hear and obey what was said to them. 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. 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. ‘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. First, let us honor Treebeard’s wish for the tale of the Ents and Entwives to be remembered: What happened to them? And perhaps more importantly, what lessons can we glean from their sad story? I believe I can answer both of these questions.

The ‘loss’ of the Entwives is one of the great mysteries of the Tolkien mythology. There were songs about the hunt of the Ents for the Entwives sung among Elves and Men from Mirkwood to Gondor. We lost them and we cannot find them.’ He sighed. ‘There have been no Entings – no children, you would say, not for a terrible long count of years. But the Ents were, perhaps even more so than the Elves of Middle-Earth, a dying race: Their main role in the War of the Ring was their assault on and subsequent capture of the rogue wizard Saruman’s fortress of Isengard.

The Ents are one of the more memorable of the creatures of the Tolkien universe: the Shepherds of the Forest, these mighty tree-like beings were even larger and stronger than trolls.

The ents are going to war