# Tolkien Fan Entmoot **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** middle-earth\ **Created:** [February 12, 2008, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328 "2008-02-12T20:38:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/221 "2020-12-29T14:09:48Z")
So clicking on the middle-earth tag or this link [Topics tagged middle-earth](https://boards.straightdope.com/tag/middle-earth) will now lead to 62 threads on Middle Earth. I reread [a very good one last night.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-question-s/424287) ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2021, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/222 "2021-01-06T05:35:47Z")
Has everyone heard the 39-minute interview Denys Geroult did with him (from 1964)? Clips have been floating around, but this seems to be as complete as we’ll ever get. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/bzDtmMXJ1B4/hqdefault.jpg "J.R.R. Tolkien 1964 interview (Subtitles)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzDtmMXJ1B4) ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2021, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/223 "2021-01-28T23:27:39Z")
FYI, a local weatherman has been broadcasting from home – a Middle Earth map is visible on a side wall 🙂 > **[Dan Breeden, Chief Meteorologist](https://www.wxow.com/contact/meet-the-team/dan-breeden-chief-meteorologist/article_36475779-a9e0-5a20-a392-b873255ac803.html)** > > Dan Breeden Chief Meteorologist Chief Meteorologist Dan Breeden has been forecasting Wisconsin weather his entire professional career. Born and raised in northern Wisconsin, Dan attended the University of Wisconsin – Brian ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2021, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/224 "2021-01-28T23:39:36Z")
I don’t see it, maybe the picture was pulled down already? ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2021, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/225 "2021-01-28T23:52:12Z")
It isn’t in that picture. I just wanted to link to the guy in question. It is shown during live broadcasts (you could try at the 6 o’clock report) [https://wxow.com/news/wxow-live-stream/](https://wxow.com/news/wxow-live-stream/) Brian ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2022, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/226 "2022-03-19T05:29:14Z")
Bumped. For some strange reason, I woke up this morning with the song _ **Linden Lea** _ playing in my head. I haven’t thought about it for years, but I feel sure it was part of the inspiration for Tolkien’s Ents. I thought I’d ask if this has ever been suggested before. @Wendell_Wagner is a serious Tolkien expert, and a member of the Mythopoeic Society and Tolkien Society, and may know. It’s notable that the song uses the unusual word ‘moot’ in connection with oak trees. Treebeard may be an oak tree, and the apple tree mentioned in the same verse reminds me of the Entwives. It’s likely that Tolkien knew the song, and it seems to me that it was a conscious or unconscious inspiration. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/plzT7sEekWU/maxresdefault.jpg "Vaughan Williams: Linden Lea") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plzT7sEekWU) First verse: _Within the woodlands, flow’ry gladed,_ _By the oak trees’ mossy moot,_ _The shining grass blades, timber shaded,_ _Now do quiver underfoot;_ _And birds do whistle overhead,_ _And water’s bubbling in its bed;_ _And there for me, the apple tree_ _Do lean down low in Linden Lea._ Poem by William Barnes, 1859. Setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1901. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2022, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/227 "2022-03-19T10:29:23Z")
It’s hard to tell. Some searching came up with the website https:// m.face book. com/ permalink.php?id=225978247416220& story\_fbid=5457094790971180. (Sorry, but if I didn’t split up the link into pieces, it wouldn’t show it.) The person who wrote that webpage also thinks there are similarities between Tolkien and Barnes. I think Tolkien and Barnes just read the same books. I’m not really a Tolkien expert. I just go to Tolkien meetings (and, more generally, Inklings meetings). I’m a little bit of a C. S. Lewis expert. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2022, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/228 "2022-03-19T11:35:29Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I think Tolkien and Barnes just read the same books. Well, Barnes _wrote_ the books. > **[A Catalogue Of The Works By And About William Barnes](https://www.williambarnessociety.org.uk/bibliography/)** > > A selection of related works by and about William Barnes He was a philologist and linguist who lived in Dorset a few generations before Tolkien, and died before Tolkien was born. He was particularly interested in recording and writing about the Dorset dialect and its Anglo-Saxon roots. His first published work was a Lapland narrative poem. So his interests were similar in many ways to those of Tolkien. I’d be surprised if Tolkien _wasn’t_ familiar with his linguistic work and his poems in the Dorset dialect, and wasn’t influenced by them. Barnes’ poems have a similar style and feel to Tolkien’s. As far as I know, Barnes’ idea of ‘a moot of trees’ is found nowhere else outside Tolkien. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2022, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/229 "2022-03-19T11:47:08Z")
Perhaps a better version of this beautiful song, along with the music. You can see how similar it is in tone and feeling to Tolkien’s ‘songs’. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/57naDqCxG2Q/maxresdefault.jpg "Linden Lea - A Dorset Song") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57naDqCxG2Q) ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2022, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/230 "2022-03-19T12:20:07Z")
I can’t answer the question but Tolkien did say in a letter that he was inspired by the line in Macbeth about Birnam Wood Marching. He thought what if the woods could march. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2022, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/231 "2022-03-19T12:40:22Z")
Why did i not see this thread when it was new?! Oh, because it starts from before i joined the forum. And it hasn’t been very active since then. > [@robby](#): > > I read The Hobbit and LOTR for the first time when I was only 10 years old. (I was inspired to read it by the 1978 film.) LOTR was over the head of even a precocious 10-year old reader like I was, but I was hooked. I then reread them every couple of years through the rest of my school years. This is close to my experience. My father read “the Hobbit” to me after my grandmother took me to a play. Yes, there was a live “Hobbit” play. It was only okay. I loved it, so he gave me his copy of “the Lord of the Rings”. I was in second grade, and i learned reading fluency from that book. I also learned what a paragraph is. (I tried to send a night of reading at the end of a sentence, but some sentences aren’t good ending points.) I read it every year from then until I went to college. But i don’t know the details nearly as well as some of the other posters here, so i mostly lurk in the Tolkien threads. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2022, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/232 "2022-03-19T17:00:56Z")
Ditto on the sourcebook love. I’m attempting the daunting task of creating. D&D campaign but it’s the reference books I’m rally salivating over reading. As for Tolkien-I could talk about the books all day, but I’m a in no way an authority. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/233 "2022-03-21T04:05:55Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > It’s notable that the song uses the unusual word ‘moot’ in connection with oak trees. Treebeard may be an oak tree […] > > As far as I know, Barnes’ idea of ‘a moot of trees’ is found nowhere else outside Tolkien. Except that [the word “moot” in Dorset dialect doesn’t mean a meeting-place, but rather the stump and roots of a felled tree.](https://about.lyndenlea.info/poem.php) That’s not Treebeard, that’s Treebeard’s mutilated corpse. I think Tolkien was probably far too linguistically savvy to get this meaning/etymology of the term “moot” confused with the Middle English word “moot” and its Old English root “gemot”, meaning “meeting” or “assembly”. So I definitely don’t think Tolkien was trying to evoke imagery from Barnes’ poem or Vaughan Williams’ song in the minds of his readers by using the term “Entmoot”. Whether Tolkien himself knew “Linden Lea” and whether it influenced his terminology unconsciously seems impossible to say. Probably his use of “moot” in the sense of “meeting” or “assembly” simply came from his study of archaic English. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/234 "2022-03-21T04:34:19Z")
Tolkien was influenced by a huge number of things: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.\_R.\_R.\_Tolkien’s\_influences#:~:text=Tolkien’s%20influences%20in%20creating,in%20the%20First%20World%20War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien%27s_influences#:~:text=Tolkien's%20influences%20in%20creating,in%20the%20First%20World%20War) If that doesn’t work for you, just look for the entry J. R. R. Tolkien’s influences in Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/235 "2022-03-21T06:16:51Z")
Thanks for that! I hadn’t realised that ‘moot’ had a different meaning in the Dorset dialect. (The OED also agrees.) So if there is a connection, it would be more complicated. Tolkien was no doubt aware of both meanings, but the song may still have suggested to him the Entmoot, by a play on words. There’s no way of knowing Tolkien’s mind on this. I have always thought that the Hobbits’ hairy feet were suggested by the name [Harold Harefoot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Harefoot) (King of England 1035-1040), again by a play on words. Again it’s impossible to say, but there’s certainly no question that Tolkien was familiar with Harold Harefoot. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Whether Tolkien himself knew “Linden Lea” and whether it influenced his terminology unconsciously seems impossible to say. It’s very likely that Tolkien knew the song, as it was one of the most popular pieces that Vaughan Williams ever wrote, and widely known in the early 20th century, especially in ‘refined circles’. If the tree moot (in the two meanings of the word) and Hare-foot / hair-foot were the origins of the concepts, they would have been conscious little linguistic jokes, which inspired something completely different from the originals. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/236 "2022-03-21T13:03:22Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Tolkien was influenced by a huge number of things: “No one ever influenced Tolkien—you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch.” -C. S. Lewis (Actually, Lewis was talking about a different kind of influence. He went on to say: “We listened to his work, but could affect it only by encouragement. He has only two reactions to criticism: either he begins the whole work over again from the beginning or else takes no notice at all.”) ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/237 "2022-03-21T13:32:06Z")
I’ve been rereading LOTR and came upon the fact that Glorfindel was sent back to Middle-earth as himself after death, which apparently was pretty rare. Was this planned by Tolkien from the start? Or was he clearing up something from the Simarillion (which I have not yet read)? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/238 "2022-03-21T14:06:26Z")
Tolkien didn’t tend to listen closely to criticism by people who listened when he read his unpublished works to them (except in a few cases where he quit and started over). That’s not what is meant in the Wikipedia article that I linked to by influences. He had read an enormous number of things. Many of them were conscious or unconscious influences on his works. The friends who listened to his works often influenced him consciously or unconsciously in their general conversations, not in their specific criticisms. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/239 "2022-03-21T15:32:50Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > I’ve been rereading LOTR and came upon the fact that Glorfindel was sent back to Middle-earth as himself after death, which apparently was pretty rare. Was this planned by Tolkien from the start? Or was he clearing up something from the Simarillion (which I have not yet read)? The story I heard is that Tolkien was addressing a group of fans, and stated that each Elf name is unique. One of the fans pointed out that an Elf named Glorfindel had died fighting a Balrog in the sack of Gondolin, yet here, thousands of years later, an Elf named Glorfindel saved Frodo’s bacon. Tolkien hemmed and hawed, and fretted, and thought about it, and finally said that it might be a case of reincarnation. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328/240 "2022-03-21T15:34:22Z")
That story pleases me more than I should. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-fan-entmoot/437328.md?page=13)