Huorns & Ents

[Niffiwan]

Personally, I prefer Huorns over Ents.
(sorry, Ben :) )
Why? Well, I just like their fighting style more; they don't let themselves be seen and might paralize the enemy with fear if the enemy does see them.

Does anybody agree with my point of view?

[bmilder]

Hey ;)

Well, Ents are a lot more intelligent, and the Huorns have too much anger built up in them.

[Michael Martinez]

But do you know what distinguishes an Ent from a Huorn? :)

And I don't think the Huorns were always angry. The anger they express in LOTR is directed at Saruman's Orcs.

[anduin]

The Ents were more like a race of giant tree-like people. Huorns were actual trees.

Is that right?

[IronParrot]

(*slaps himself*)

Time to read Chapter 4 of Two Towers again...

[Darth Tater]

Us ents are far superior because we're older and wiser ;)

[Michael Martinez]

All Ents are trees. All Huorns are trees. Not all trees are Ents or Huorns. What's the difference between an Ent and a Huorn? Treebeard doesn't say, exactly.

Tolkien tries to give the impression that Ents are becoming more like the trees and trees are becoming more like the Ents. Recall how Ents were "created". The thought of Yavanna summoned spirits from afar which entered into trees. There they slept until the Elves awoke them. My guess is the Elves didn't wake all the trees with spirits in them, and the Huorns that were becoming more Ent-like were in fact primitive Ent spirits which had passed from tree to tree until they finally started to wake up.

The Ents are a marriage of the mythological tree-spirit and the giants of Germanic/Norse myth. Tree-spirits were found in many mythologies, of course, but the best-known were the Dryads of Greek mythology.

[Niffiwan]

Huorns are darker and more primitive than Ents. Most Huorns resemble trees more than Ents do.
Old Man Willow, for instance, was a Huorn. Treebeard was an Ent. Can you see any difference between them? I sure can. Although not all Ents are like Treebeard and not all Huorns are like Old Man Willow, those two characters give the basic outline of the two species.

[bmilder]

Where does it say that Old Man Willow was a Huorn?

[Niffiwan]

In the wonderfull gift that Brewhaha gave me; Illustrated Tolkien Encyclopedia.
And if you (refering to all of you, not neccessarily Ben), for some reason, don't trust it, then doesn't that seem the only thing that fits anyway?
All those trees in Old Forest were Huorns (what else?), and Old Man Willow was the most twisted (characteristic term) and powerfull of them.

[Michael Martinez]

Old Man Willow could not have been a Huorn. He acted with purpose and controlled many other trees in the Old Forest, but he was not mobile as the Huorns (and Ents) were. The word "Huorn" means "hound-tree" or "tree hound", as in a dog-like companion for the Ents. Old Man Willow was probably "related" in some sense, but not quite the same kind of thing.

We do not have, by any means, a complete catalogue of all the creatures in Middle-earth. It is not really a good idea to try and pidgeon-hole everything in the books. Someone can always counter such arguments for truly vague stuff. That's why I don't try to explain what Willow really was, other than to offer a vague guess like above. And I have no Bombadil theory, except to say that All Theories About Bombadil Are Inevitably Wrong (but then, I could never prove this theory).

[arynetrek]

here's the only real explanation of Bombadil...

Frodo: "tell me, if my asking does not seem foolish, who is Tom Bombadil?"
Goldberry: "he is"..."he is as you have seen him, he is the Master of wood, water, and hill."
Frodo: "Then all this strange land belongs to him?"
Goldberry: "No indeed! That would be a burden"..."the trees and the grasses and all things growing in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hilltops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is Master."

...

Frodo: "Who are you, Master?"
Tom: "Don't you know my name yet? That's teh onyl answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself, & nameless? But you are young and i am old. Eldest, that's what i am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees, Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-Wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before th Dark Lord came from Outside."

- both from Fellowship, In the House of Tom Bombadil

who better than the author to describe his characters? if Tolkien wants Tom vague, then Tom should stay vague.

aryne *

[Niffiwan]

According to that encyclopedia,
Old Man Willow was a Huorn who's heart was blackened. Old Forest was the last remaining portion of a once great forest where many Huorns & Ents used to live. Old Man Willow didn't want this last portion of the forest being destoyed too, and so held the entire forest in enchantment, drawing all travelers to come to him where he would either drown them or crush them.
My guess is that he could move, but was just too ancient and tired to do so (like some Ents where).
If he couldn't move, then how could he drown his victims?
And besides, in the part of his life that we actually see, he moves his branches. No ordinary tree can do that. So, yes, he proves that he can move; if he can move his branches then why not his roots/legs?

[IronParrot]

I always saw Old Man Willow as a completely separate kind of creature all on its own...

Also, anything that's not directly in The Hobbit, LOTR, or Sil I take with a grain of salt. (And even Sil I don't take as seriously)

[Darth Tater]

Never trust a so called Tolkien Atlas or Encyclopedia, that's what i always say. They're full of crazy opinions that are not based on all of Tolkien's writtings as well as assumptions that are just not true because they aren't made by very educated authors. Crazy as it sounds he authors of these things tend not to really understand Tolkien's works.

[Michael Martinez]

So far as we know, this tree never went walking through the woods as an Ent or Huorn could do. If you want to believe he was a Huorn, feel free, but don't expect to persuade many people to that point of view.

As for the David Day book: it's a David Day book. I never take any of his nonsense seriously.

[arynetrek]

i know this is a really stupid thing to ask, but where does Tolkein call them "huorns?" i don't remember it, & i just recently re-read the Fangorn section of TT. If it's in Sil or History of Middle-Earth, forgive me - i haven't read them yet.

aryne *

[IronParrot]

Um, it's in TT alright. I'll dig up an exact quote soon, if I don't get too lazy about it. It's in Chapter 4, "Treebeard" I believe. Hold on...

[IronParrot]

You know what? I'm sure it's in here - I've seen it before - but now that I look, I can't find it! And "Huorn" isn't listed in the index either...

This can't be right...

[IronParrot]

Hmm, it's not even in Appendix F... this cannot be right...

Michael Martinez, we need your help! :p

[IronParrot]

Silly me, looking in the wrong section of the index.

Page 211 in the Unwin edition of TT. It's in the chapter "Flotsam and Jetsam".

""It was the Huorns, or so the Ents call them in "short language". Treebeard won't say much about them, but I think they are Ents that have become almost like trees, at least to look at. They stand here and there in the wood or under its eaves, silent, watching endlessly over the trees; but deep in the darkest dales there are hundreds and hundreds of them, I believe.""
Too lazy to quote the whole passage... the whole page talks about Huorns...

[olorin7]

don't forget that it is said in the lotr that the old forest and fangorn are very alike in many aspects, very similar. I believe that it was treebeard that said this. both forests were from the older forest that spread across the land. it was said that both forest still had the darkness of old resting in some of its deeper parts. also just because old man willow did not move does not mean that he can't. the huorns of fangorn did not walk untile it was time for battle. also the arguement that old man willow had control of the other trees is not valid. while it is not said that ents controlled huorns it is said that they are their shepards and shepards of the trees.