Melian

“This is a Strange Friendship.” Treebeard Ponders The Friendship of Legolas and Gimli. An Elf And a Dwarf.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 763-766

Treebeard’s memory is very long indeed. In the very first making of Arda, the earth, Yavanna, the Vala who most loves things that grow, feared for the welfare of trees, seeing how vulnerable they were, how easily cut down. And the creatures that she most feared were Dwarves, the wielders of axes. She desired some kind of protection for her trees and so certain spirits entered some of the trees and Ents were born.

And the oldest of Ents was Treebeard.

After Gandalf has completed his business with Saruman and cast him from the order of wizards he returns with the young hobbits and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to find Treebeard who has remained hidden during the debate. Treebeard welcomes Legolas warmly and looks forward to welcoming him as a guest to Fangorn. But then comes a moment of doubt and uncertainty. Legolas asks leave of Treebeard that he might bring Gimli with him.

“Hoom, hm! Ah now,” said Treebeard, looking dark-eyed at him. “A dwarf and an axe-bearer! Hoom! I have good will to Elves; but you ask much. This is a strange friendship!”

It was no mere coincidence in Tolkien’s mind that as Gimli bowed low, in Dwarf fashion, to greet Treebeard, his axe fell from his belt. It is almost as if the axe were speaking for itself, reminding Treebeard of Aulë’s words to Yavanna that the dwarves, his children, would have need of wood.

Although it was largely the Númenorians that destroyed the forests of Eriador there is only one recorded battle in Tolkien’s work in which it is known for certain that Ents took part and that is the Battle of Sarn Athrad in Beleriand during the First Age of Arda. A Dwarf army was returning from the destruction of the hidden Elven kingdom of Doriath and the killing of Thingol, its king, when they were assailed by a force commanded by Beren who had married Lúthien, Thingol’s daughter. Thingol was avenged by Beren and the trees of Doriath, a forest kingdom, were avenged by Ents. It is almost certain that Treebeard took part in that battle and he has not forgotten.

The friendship between Legolas and Gimli is very strange for they too have memories of a time when things were very different. For Gimli remembers how Glóin, his father, was once a prisoner in Mirkwood of Thranduil, king of that land and Legolas’s father. If Treebeard’s memory is long so is the memory of Dwarves, and in their case that memory is held within families. There may have been a kind of reconciliation between Thranduil’s people and the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain due to their sharing in the Battle of the Five Armies as allies against the orcs of the Misty Mountains but suspicion and dislike remained.

The strange friendship of old foes.

It was Galadriel who created the conditions in which the strange friendship between Legolas and Gimli could be forged. Although Galadriel was of the Noldor, the people of Fëanor who first came to Middle-earth to avenge the theft of the Silmarillion by Morgoth, she came to have a deep love for Melian, the wife of Thingol, who was a healer in the deepest sense of that word, a healer of the earth and of its peoples. And while the Noldor were the makers of fortress cities like Gondolin and Nargothrond, the kingdom that Galadriel was to make was a forest land in Lothlórien, a kingdom like Doriath of old, and the king with whom she ruled it was Celeborn who was himself a son of Doriath. Galadriel too remembered the destruction by the Dwarves of that hidden kingdom and how Melian had departed, broken-hearted, from Middle-earth after Thingol’s death.

Perhaps it is a grace that works in the world during that part of its history that is recorded in The Lord of the Rings that love is awakened in so many hearts and strange friendships are forged. Galadriel’s heart goes out to Gimli when he stands before her grief-stricken by the death of Balin and the fall of Gandalf in Moria and love is awakened in Gimli because of this. Legolas becomes aware both of the compassion shown by Galadriel and by Gimli’s response to it and he enters into what is taking place. If Boromir brought his peril into Lothlórien Gimli brought his capacity to love and to be loved there. So was forged this strange friendship before which even the oldest of all the Ents now stands in wonder.

Galadriel awakens love in the heart of an angry dwarf.

“We Are Tree-herds, We Old Ents.” Treebeard Teaches Merry and Pippin About His People.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 607-611

Ents are shepherds of trees, tree-herds as Treebeard puts it, and it is in the nature of shepherds to live so closely to the creatures they care for that they can anticipate any action that those creatures might perform. Of course, sometimes a sheep, or perhaps a tree, might do something that takes the shepherd by surprise and if that happens then they will do all that they can to put things right. As that ancient source of wisdom, the Bible, puts it, “the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”. This does not just mean that the shepherd will die for the sheep although they are always prepared to do so if required but that they give their lives for their welfare from day to day and Treebeard has been doing this for a very long time indeed.

His long life of service to the trees began with a prayer of Yavanna, the member of the Valar for whom the care of things that live and grow upon the earth was most dear. She prayed to Eru to provide for the care of trees. Her main concern then was with Dwarves and their axes, which rather puts into context the advice that Aragorn gave to Gimli about being careful how he used his. Indeed the only other recorded occasion apart from these events at the end of the Third Age in which Ents became involved in the affairs of the wider world was when the Dwarves of Nogrod went to war with the Elves of Doriath and sacked their stronghold of Menegroth.

Menegroth lay at the heart of Doriath, a forest kingdom ruled over for long years by Thingol and by his wife, Melian the Maiar. It was Melian who through her magic arts made Doriath a secret place and it was in that land that Luthien was born and nurtured and where Galadriel learned much from Melian so that the land of Lothlórien in many ways resembled Doriath. It was through the tragic greed of Thingol that led to his death and war with the Dwarves of Nogrod and led to so much destruction of that which had been so beautiful. The Ents fought alongside the Elves in this war and it is quite possible that Treebeard was one of those who fought. His motto of “Do not be hasty” may have been made in those unhappy days and he has kept it. He has not gone to war for thousands of years until the arrival of two young hobbits who come among the Ents as they seek to escape from orcs.

Like trees themselves Ents are patient creatures. Treebeard is able to look back to a time when “there was all one wood… from here to the Mountains of Lune, and this was just the East End.” He ponders the sense of spaciousness that he enjoyed in former days. “Broad days,” he calls them when there was room and time just for breathing. “The woods were like the woods of Lothlórien, only thicker, stronger, younger. And the smell of the air! I used to spend a week just breathing.”

Although he regards the decline of the forests of Middle-earth with sadness we do not get the sense that he does so with resentment or bitterness. As Gandalf will say to him later on he has not plotted to cover the lands with his trees. But at the last he will become angry at the wanton destruction of trees by Saruman who does so simply for the sake of his own self-aggrandizement. His choice not to act hastily has guided him for many long years. He has not been passive in the face of evil but has devoted himself to the care of his Forest of Dark Night, his tauremornalómë, protecting unwary travellers from the worst of that dark and teaching those parts of the forest that have embraced darkness in hatred of the light to rest in darkness as a part of the natural rhythm of things, a time in which the forest can breathe in before exhaling once more in glad welcome of every dawn.

There are almost too many examples of the wanton destruction of trees in the world to name just one.

“Your Quest Stands Upon The Edge of a Knife.” Galadriel’s Silent Interrogation of Each Member of The Fellowship.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 346-349

At one time in her life Galadriel was made to endure an interrogation about events for which she was not responsible but in which she played a part. Melian, Queen of Doriath, and the mother of Lúthien Tinúviel, questioned her long about the reason why the Noldor had returned to Middle-earth from Valinor; long and searchingly until at last she learned the truth, or at least enough of the truth for her to be able fit more of the missing pieces into the puzzle and so make sense of it. Now Galadriel undertakes her own interrogation, in this case of the members of the Fellowship. She has good reason to do this and she declares her reason to them all.

“Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.”

And so she begins to hold each one with her eyes. It is the truth of their hearts that she seeks to discern. Her long years of wise perception and her gift of discernment are brought to bear upon each member of the Fellowship. For most of them the experience is excruciating and for some of them it is not so much the motives that they own that are brought into the open but those that they hide from themselves or justify to themselves.

Only Aragorn and Legolas are able to endure her gaze for very long. As we saw when we thought about the words that Aragorn spoke aloud to Arwen at Cerin Amroth, Aragorn no longer has hope beyond the ending of the Quest itself. He no longer has hope that he will win Arwen’s hand. That hope fell into the depths of Moria as Gandalf fell with the Balrog. He said to his fellows, “We must do without hope.” His life has been reduced to a pure simplicity. To take the next step and then the next until the end, doing whatever good he can do at each moment until there is no more that he can do. Legolas has no personal interest to declare in this matter for he has none. Elrond chose him to represent the Elves in the Quest and he will stay true to his calling.

As for the others the search of Galadriel’s eyes is much more disturbing. Sam finds that the possibility of returning to the Shire, to a home and garden, is laid out before him. It is what he will receive eventually but he has the choice, whether to try to grasp it now or to take the long road with Frodo. Later he will receive the same temptation to abandon Frodo but in another form. In the Mirror of Galadriel he will see his father in distress and the temptation will come, not in the form of his desire, which is always present, but as a cry for help. Poor Sam will hear this cry often, just as he did with Bill the pony, and each time with a breaking heart he will have to repeat the same words in his heart. “I had to choose, Mr Frodo. I had to come with you.” Sam’s loyalty to Frodo always comes at a cost.

Sam always has to choose.

That Merry also has a similar temptation is perhaps more of a surprise although we note throughout the story that once the four hobbits left the Shire Merry, who until that point had been the competent organiser until the moment that he fell into the clutches of Old Man Willow in the Old Forest, always and increasingly feels out of his depth, like a piece of luggage that others have to bear.

No-one asks Pippin what he experienced. Pippin is the little boy of the Company. The one that the others do not take with much seriousness. Gimli, and Frodo too, do not speak of what they are offered, or seem to be offered, which leaves us with Boromir.

“Almost I should have said that she was tempting us, and offering what she pretended to have the power to give. It need not be said that I refused to listen. The Men of Minas Tirith are true to their word.”

We do not learn at this point what it was that tempted Boromir. We probably find out at the time that he tries to take the Ring from Frodo and we will think about it then. At this stage it is enough for us to know that while each member of the Fellowship has reason not to be true to the Quest it is not so much the knowledge of that reason that they need to fear but the reasons that they try to hide from themselves. These are the temptations that have real danger both for them and the Quest.