Of Wild Woods, Wild Hobbits, and the Withywindle
- Miriam Ellis
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
We have heard tell of the adventurous spirit of the Tooks, but it's the Bucklanders' capacity for wildness which has earned my special admiration. In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a Faërian thrill awaits any reader who pauses to fully absorb Merry's stray remark about the Brandybucks willingly going into the Old Forest - even at night - "when the fit takes them."
The fit? It is curious folk who take fits in mythology, like the ancient Celts, who went into a warp before battle. For a moment, the jolly Meriadoc whom we think we know so well appears almost fey in this recital. After all, what respectable hobbit would create a private entrance into a domain inhabited by perilous leafy giants?
Our wonderment increases further when we hear of long ago Bucklanders perceiving the trees as a menace encroaching on the High Hay. Hobbit wildness reaches its crescendo when the Little Folk respond to this threat with fierce clear-cutting and a great bonfire of felled foes. The idea of hordes of tiny hobbits running about the forest with torches and axes is chaotic. It is even more ferocious-sounding than the rebellion we witness in "The Scouring of the Shire". It's one of the best reminders we receive that, however charming and comfortable these Third Age halflings may seem, they lie squarely within the tradition of the fierce Little Folk who are still respected in parts of Europe to this day. When faced with aggressors, they will fight back.
In this, the hobbits might be said to resemble the trees - defying oversimplification and too much familiarity. Tolkien's trees can sometimes light up the world, sometimes be viewed as pinnacles of natural beauty, but they can also be wild. There is no better lecture on this complex portrayal of trees than Professor Tom Shippey's "Trees, Chainsaws, and the Visions of Paradise in J.R.R. Tolkien", given in 2002, which I highly recommend. And I think there is no weirder wood on the map of Middle-earth than the Old Forest.
It contains an odd resonance, I think, for modern readers, in the scene in which the whispering trees lull the hobbits into a sinister slumber. We, too, must be wary of messaging designed to make us a sluggish and stupefied people for bad aims. We encounter this kind of marketing every day on the internet, none of it intended to validate human dignity or promote longed-for peace.
And, at least to my own sensibilities, the Old Forest contains another, different warning. Tolkien's dangerous trees may be the Middle-earth villains with the best claims on our sympathies. Nature has its rights. The trees may have tried to expand into Buckland because they needed more room. With the ents (perhaps) largely absent from Eriador, there is no one to defend the trees from hatchet-bearing, two-legged beings of all sizes. The forest may have just cause to mistrust the hobbits and want to put them to sleep. Of course, the terrifying Old Man Willow should not have gobbled up Merry and Pippin! Yet, as Professor Shippey relates in his lecture, Tolkien had decided views about what ought to be done to people who do things to trees.
Nevertheless, it is a great relief when old Tom Bombadil comes hopping to the rescue. He restores alertness, while at the same time depicting freedom from tree-tangled Middle-earth. Any figure who builds his home between the Old Forest and the Barrow-downs with a light heart has clearly escaped beyond the walls of this world in a mysterious way that defies all attempts to solve it.
What a joy it is to escape with him for a time, along with the hobbits and the little ponies, away from the trees. Yet, our minds are indelibly imprinted with the memory of millions of falling willow leaves, and the slow ripple of the Withywindle, which is, "...the centre from which all the queerness comes, as it were."
I stand in awe of Tolkien's weaving of this soporific valley, and how he makes us feel the dreamy drowsiness of it all while the spell lasts. I have attempted to capture those feelings in this painting. I hope you'll enjoy this video short in which we see Tom break that spell and speed the hobbits on to the comforts of his house.
