Old Man Willow

The heart of the Old Forest

Old Man Willow grows on the bank of the Withywindle, the river that winds through the middle of the Old Forest east of Buckland. He is an enormous grey willow, hoary and cracked, with a trunk split into gaping openings, and he is far more than a tree. His roots and his thought spread through the forest like a web, and the malice of the whole wood, which has hated walking creatures since the days when Men and Hobbits first began felling it, gathers in him. Tom Bombadil described him to the Hobbits as the greatest of the trees of the Old Forest, old beyond reckoning, his heart rotten with pride and long resentment, his song able to draw wanderers toward the river and lull them to sleep.

Nature

In the classification of this atlas he is placed among the Huorns, the tree-like beings of Fangorn that Treebeard said could move and could grow dangerous in the dark of the woods; Treebeard himself remarked that the Old Forest was once part of the same great wood that stretched across Eriador, and that its trees had turned bad. Whether Old Man Willow was ever an Ent, or a tree that had grown Entish, the texts do not say. What is clear is that he can move his branches at will, open and close his trunk, and reach out with his thought over the paths, so that every track in the forest tends toward him.

The Hobbits in the Old Forest

On 26 September T.A. 3018 Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin crossed the Hedge into the Old Forest to avoid the road, and found the trees herding them, path by path, down toward the Withywindle. In the afternoon heat they came to the great willow and were overcome with drowsiness. Frodo dozed against its roots and was tipped into the river and held under by a root; Merry and Pippin, leaning against the trunk, were swallowed by cracks that closed on them. Sam pulled Frodo out, and when the two tried fire against the tree, the willow tightened on Merry and threatened to crush him. Their cries for help were answered by Tom Bombadil, who came singing along the river, spoke sternly to the tree, and sang the Hobbits free. Old Man Willow let them go and subsided.

Legacy

Old Man Willow was still standing in the Old Forest at the end of the Third Age, and there is no record that anyone dealt with him. He is the closest thing in the histories to a picture of what the trees of Middle-earth think of the walking peoples, and the Hobbits of Buckland, who once burned a great swathe of the forest after the trees attacked the Hedge, understood the feeling well.

Old Man Willow remains on the banks of the Withywindle, put to sleep but not destroyed.