May 8, 2002

Tree-man in the Shire
Brett C.

Yes, Tomas, I picked up on that reference to, though of course not the first time I read the book. My opinion was that it was not an Ent-wife, since if he had it in mind to make it so I would have thought Tolkien would have expanded on it with Merry and Pippin when they met Treebeard, or during the Scouring of the Shire [can you imagine Saruman freaking out as he finds one of the 'wild wood demons' has 'pursued' him from Isengard?] Tolkien himself in the prologue for FOTR said that once completed he basically revised the entire story by rewriting it backwards from finish to start, and I've supected for a long time the treeman reference was one such rewrite, put in to add a continuity thread for the events later in Fangorn. Any other info?