Etymology manuscript, seems to have inspired Tolkien. which describes
Roman ruins. In
Sindarin, one of Tolkien's invented
Elvish languages, the word for Ent is
Onod (plural
Enyd). The Sindarin word
Onodrim means the Ents as a race.
Improving on Shakespeare Tolkien noted in a letter that he had created Ents in response to his "bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in
Shakespeare's
Macbeth of the coming of 'Great
Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war". The Ents ensured victory at the
Battle of Helm's Deep by herding a forest of angry, tree-like Huorns there, to destroy Saruman's army of
Orcs.
Other sources Nick Groom suggests some other possible sources, besides Shakespeare. The
Gospel of Mark has the speech by a man cured of blindness "I see men as trees, walking."(Mark 8:24)
Algernon Blackwood's 1912 story "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" suggests that "trees had once been moving things, animal organisms of some sort, that had stood so long feeding, sleeping, dreaming, or something, in the same place, that they had lost the power to get away", which Groom remarks sounds just like Treebeard's account of Ents going "sleepy and 'tree-ish'". He notes, too,
Arthur Rackham's drawings with "bristly, twisted, anthropomorphic trees that appear as the guises of Elves and other supernatural beings", while
Disney's 1932
Silly Symphony episode
Flowers and Trees features trees that walk. Edward Pettit, writing in
Mallorn, notes that the Tolkien scholar
Verlyn Flieger linked Treebeard to the Green Knight in the medieval romance
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Both figures have, Pettit writes, been suspected of being versions of the medieval
Green Man, the leafy figure often depicted in sculptures in churches. Old English in addition has trees that speak in the alliterative poem
The Dream of the Rood. File:04 -Wils and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her plains and forests-.jpg|
Arthur Rackham's drawings feature twisted trees that suggest supernatural beings. File:Ludlow Green Man misericord.jpg|The Ent Treebeard has been thought to be a version of the
Green Man, In their book
Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien,
Matthew T. Dickerson and
Jonathan Evans see Treebeard as vocalizing a vital part of
Tolkien's environmental ethic, the need to preserve and look after every kind of wild place, especially forests.
Corey Olsen however criticises Dickerson and Evans's use of the Ents as "mere symbols".
Mythic value: song of the Ents and the Entwives C. S. Lewis described Tolkien's tale of the Ents as a myth, "a story which has a value in itself". Ruth Noel likened the Ents to
Germanic legends of "huge, wild, hairy
woodsprites". Olsen sees in Tolkien's song of the Ents and the Entwives, supposedly written by Elves, "compelling insights on the complexities and conflicts of life in a fallen world." == Adaptations ==