Old Man Willow
Encyclopedia
In J. R. R. Tolkien
's legendarium
, Old Man Willow is a fictional character
, appearing in The Lord of the Rings
. He was a willow
tree in the Old Forest
from which much of the Forest's hatred of walking
things came. He is portrayed in the story as a tree, though a sentient and evil one with various powers including irresistible hypnosis and the ability to move his roots and trunk. Some characters of the story speculate that he may have been related to the Ent
s, or possibly the Huorn
s, as the Old Forest was originally part of the same primordial forest as Fangorn. However, unlike Ents or Huorns, Old Man Willow is portrayed more like a tree, with roots in the ground, and without the ability to uproot himself and move from place to place.
Tom Bombadil
had power over Old Man Willow, and checked the evil as much as he could, or was willing.
s (Frodo
, Sam
, Merry
and Pippin
), causing them to feel sleepy. Merry and Pippin leaned against the trunk of the willow and fell asleep, while Frodo sat on a root to dangle his feet in the water, before he also fell asleep. The willow then trapped Merry and Pippin in the cracks of its trunk and tipped Frodo into the stream, but the latter was saved by Sam, who, suspicious of Old Man Willow, managed to remain awake. After Frodo and Sam started a fire out of dry leaves, grass, and bits of bark in an attempt to frighten the tree, Merry yelled from the inside to put the fire out because the tree said it was going to squeeze them to death. They were saved by the timely arrival of Tom Bombadil
who 'sang' to the ancient tree to release Merry and Pippin. The tree then ejected the two hobbits.
, long before even the Awakening of the Elves, trees were the only inhabitants of vast stretches of the world. Because the Elves awoke far in the East, it was still a considerable time before any other beings spread into the vast primeval forests of western Middle-earth. A handful of trees survived from this time until the present day, who are angered at the encroachment of Elves and Men and their dominion over the earth; trees who bitterly remember a time long ago when they were as Lords of vast regions of the world. Bombadil relates that of the corrupted trees of the Old Forest, "none were more dangerous than the Great Willow; his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs."
This description and its context make it clear that the Great Willow was originally a tree, despite its evident malicious sentience and power.
Old Man Willow is also shown as trapping Bombadil himself briefly, in Tolkien's narrative poem The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
.
edition of the second film where Merry and Pippin are attacked by a Huorn
in Fangorn forest. In this interpretation Tom Bombadil's lines are spoken by Treebeard
.
Old Man Willow is a featured boss in the 2002 game The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
. Here, playing as Frodo, the player must hit Old Man Willow's trunk with rocks from a distance while avoiding his swinging willow switches until Tom Bombadil arrives.
In the MMORPG
Lord of the Rings Online, a quest to gather lilies for Goldberry
at the foot of Old Man Willow is given to the player by Bombadil, who warns that the tree will "sing you right to sleep".
describes the anger, frustration, and resentment resulting from the curse of having to live an entire lifetime rooted in one spot while the world goes on all around. It appears in the soundtrack of the critically acclaimed film Midnight Cowboy
.
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
's legendarium
Legendarium
Legendary may refer to:*A hagiography, or study of the lives of saints and other religious figures**The South English Legendary, a Middle English legendary*A legend-Entertainment:*Legendary, an album by Kaysha*Legendary...
, Old Man Willow is a fictional character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
, appearing in The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
. He was a willow
Willow
Willows, sallows, and osiers form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere...
tree in the Old Forest
Old Forest
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Old Forest is a small forested area which lies east of the Shire in Buckland....
from which much of the Forest's hatred of walking
Walking
Walking is one of the main gaits of locomotion among legged animals, and is typically slower than running and other gaits. Walking is defined by an 'inverted pendulum' gait in which the body vaults over the stiff limb or limbs with each step...
things came. He is portrayed in the story as a tree, though a sentient and evil one with various powers including irresistible hypnosis and the ability to move his roots and trunk. Some characters of the story speculate that he may have been related to the Ent
Ent
Ents are a race of beings in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world Middle-earth who closely resemble trees. They are similar to the talking trees in folklore around the world. Their name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for giant....
s, or possibly the Huorn
Huorn
The Huorns are fictional characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. They are described as "trees" that can speak to Ents and are capable of locomotion.- Description :...
s, as the Old Forest was originally part of the same primordial forest as Fangorn. However, unlike Ents or Huorns, Old Man Willow is portrayed more like a tree, with roots in the ground, and without the ability to uproot himself and move from place to place.
Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil is a supporting character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He appears in Tolkien's high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954 and 1955. In the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo Baggins and company meet Bombadil in the Old Forest...
had power over Old Man Willow, and checked the evil as much as he could, or was willing.
The Fellowship of the Ring
Old Man Willow casts a spell on the hobbitHobbit
Hobbits are a fictional diminutive race who inhabit the lands of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction.Hobbits first appeared in the novel The Hobbit, in which the main protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is the titular hobbit...
s (Frodo
Frodo Baggins
Frodo Baggins is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium.He is the main protagonist of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He was a hobbit of the Shire who inherited Sauron's Ring from Bilbo Baggins and undertook the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom...
, Sam
Samwise Gamgee
Samwise Gamgee, later known as Samwise Gardner and commonly as Sam, is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. Samwise is one of the chief characters in Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings, in which he fills an archetypical role as the sidekick of the protagonist, Frodo...
, Merry
Meriadoc Brandybuck
Meriadoc Brandybuck, usually referred to as Merry, is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, featured throughout his most famous work, The Lord of the Rings....
and Pippin
Peregrin Took
Peregrin Took, more commonly known as Pippin, is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. Pippin is introduced as a Hobbit who plays a major role as one of the companions of Frodo Baggins, in his quest to destroy the One Ring.Peregrin was the only son of...
), causing them to feel sleepy. Merry and Pippin leaned against the trunk of the willow and fell asleep, while Frodo sat on a root to dangle his feet in the water, before he also fell asleep. The willow then trapped Merry and Pippin in the cracks of its trunk and tipped Frodo into the stream, but the latter was saved by Sam, who, suspicious of Old Man Willow, managed to remain awake. After Frodo and Sam started a fire out of dry leaves, grass, and bits of bark in an attempt to frighten the tree, Merry yelled from the inside to put the fire out because the tree said it was going to squeeze them to death. They were saved by the timely arrival of Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil is a supporting character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He appears in Tolkien's high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954 and 1955. In the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo Baggins and company meet Bombadil in the Old Forest...
who 'sang' to the ancient tree to release Merry and Pippin. The tree then ejected the two hobbits.
Background
According to Tom Bombadil, long ago at the dawn of time in Middle-earthMiddle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....
, long before even the Awakening of the Elves, trees were the only inhabitants of vast stretches of the world. Because the Elves awoke far in the East, it was still a considerable time before any other beings spread into the vast primeval forests of western Middle-earth. A handful of trees survived from this time until the present day, who are angered at the encroachment of Elves and Men and their dominion over the earth; trees who bitterly remember a time long ago when they were as Lords of vast regions of the world. Bombadil relates that of the corrupted trees of the Old Forest, "none were more dangerous than the Great Willow; his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs."
This description and its context make it clear that the Great Willow was originally a tree, despite its evident malicious sentience and power.
Old Man Willow is also shown as trapping Bombadil himself briefly, in Tolkien's narrative poem The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a collection of poetry written by J. R. R. Tolkien and published in 1962. The book contains 16 poems, only two of which deal with Tom Bombadil, a character who is most famous for his encounter with Frodo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring...
.
Portrayal in adaptations
Although this scene did not appear in the 2001 movie adaptation, a very similar episode with hobbits being swallowed by a tree was included in the extended DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
edition of the second film where Merry and Pippin are attacked by a Huorn
Huorn
The Huorns are fictional characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. They are described as "trees" that can speak to Ents and are capable of locomotion.- Description :...
in Fangorn forest. In this interpretation Tom Bombadil's lines are spoken by Treebeard
Treebeard
Treebeard is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings. The eldest of the species of Ents, he is said to live in the ancient Forest of Fangorn and stands fourteen feet in height and is tree-like in appearance, with leafy hair and a rigid structure. Fangorn Forest...
.
Old Man Willow is a featured boss in the 2002 game The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (video game)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is a 2002 cross-platform video game developed based on the first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. WXP developed the game for Xbox, while Surreal developed the PC and PlayStation 2 version, and Pocket Studios delevoped the game for...
. Here, playing as Frodo, the player must hit Old Man Willow's trunk with rocks from a distance while avoiding his swinging willow switches until Tom Bombadil arrives.
In the MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
Lord of the Rings Online, a quest to gather lilies for Goldberry
Goldberry
Goldberry is a supporting character from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Also known as the "River-woman's daughter," she is the wife of Tom Bombadil...
at the foot of Old Man Willow is given to the player by Bombadil, who warns that the tree will "sing you right to sleep".
Song inspiration
A song called "Old Man Willow" by the band Elephant's MemoryElephant's Memory
Elephant's Memory was a New York band, most notable for backing John Lennon and Yoko Ono during 1972 on a pair of albums, and a handful of TV and live appearances, including the John Lennon "One To One Concert", with two performances the 30th of August 1972 to benefit the Willowbrook School for...
describes the anger, frustration, and resentment resulting from the curse of having to live an entire lifetime rooted in one spot while the world goes on all around. It appears in the soundtrack of the critically acclaimed film Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. Notable smaller roles are filled by Sylvia Miles, John...
.