Ents – Entwives

When the world was young, and the woods were wide and wild, the Ents and the Entwives walked together and they housed together. But their 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. But the Entwives gave their minds to the lesser trees. They did not desire to speak with these things; but they wished them to hear and obey what was said to them. So the Entwives made gardens to live in.

How did they disappear?

Then when the Darkness came in the North, the Entwives crossed the Great River, and made new gardens, and tilled new fields, and the Ents 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. Once the Ents crossed over Anduin and came to their land: but they found a desert: it was all burned and uprooted, for war had passed over it. But the Entwives were not there. Long they called, and long they searched; and they asked all folk that they met which way the Entwives had gone. Some said they had never seen them; and some said that they had seen them walking away west, and some said east, and others south. But nowhere that they went could they find them. Then they returned to the wood and slowly the Entwives became only a memory to them. The Elves made many songs concerning the Search of the Ents, and some of the songs passed into the tongues of Men.

Will they be found?

The Ents believed that they may met again in a time to come, and perhaps they would find somewhere a land where they could live together and both be content. But it was foreboded that that would only be when they had both lost all that they once had.

Tolkien in two of his letters discussed the question of whether the Entwives will even be found:

And for the end, let’s hear what Sam and Rosie are discussing about the Entwives one evening of March, some years after the fall of Sauron:

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