Wið or mid? A glimpse into Treebeard’s diachronic perspective
5 October 2021 | Tolkien Studies, XVIII, 235
There are Ents and Ents, you know; or there are Ents and things that look like Ents but ain’t, as you might say. LotR LRC §3.04.042
Thus comments Treebeard — the enormous, troll-like, tree-like creature whom Merry and Pippin have just met — regarding the hobbits’ unusual (to him) haste in revealing their “name,” Hobbit, to a stranger: which, at this point in the story, he certainly is. Names are powerful things, he suggests, and one should not be too quick to give others access to them. There are Ents and Ents, after all. “You’ll be letting out your own right names if you’re not careful” LotR LRC §3.04.039. Notable, in this exchange, is the ent’s already emerging preoccupation with words, one which matches that of J.R.R. Tolkien, his (sub)creator.…
❧