Welcome to Ent Work

Photo by Delon Newman on Unsplash

The name for this Substack comes from an Old English poetic expression: enta geweorc, often translated “the work of giants”. Even for those to whom ents are unknown outside Tolkien, this expression might be familiar: In Beowulf variants of the phrase occur three times, in reference to stone- or metalwork. And in other Old English poems – The Ruin, The Wanderer, Andreas, and Maxims II – versions of “enta geweorc” also appear, in reference to old stonework.

Entish things are notable for their quality. They serve as a shorthand for the achievements of a former world. An imagined traveler might encounter an ancient line of wall, or a fallen tower, and attribute the impressive work to the entas:

Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon;

burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc.

Curious this stone-craft created for ruin;

the courts and walls crumbled, the giants’-work decays.

-The Ruin, ll. 1-2 [1]

Who are these beings? Some sense of their antiquity can be had from the fact that, in Old English prose, the word “ent” can refer to Nimrod, purported builder of the Tower of Babel, or to heroes and champions like Hercules and Goliath. There is also a sense of moral ambiguity to these figures and their works. When entas operate on the side of human endeavor, it is often explicitly against divine authority. This entish opposition to the divine may explain why their works are so often depicted in a state of ruin.

“Ent” as a word for “giant” evidently had a brief life in English, probably dying out at or around the time of the Norman invasion. [2] For modern readers, if the word is familiar at all it is almost certainly due to the Ents of The Lord of the Rings, who are somehow related to Trolls yet have an ambivalent relationship to the projects of Men. In a letter to W. H. Auden (Letter 163), Tolkien affirms the link between Ents and “the eald enta geweorc of Anglo-Saxon” – as well as their “connexion with stone”. [3]

Tolkien’s Ents depart from the entas of Old English in some fascinating ways. His Ents do not, of course, have a Biblical history. Far from building up an urban landscape that would become the focus for human activity, the Ents of Middle-earth are not craftsmen and leave no monuments as a record of their pride or skill.

What, then – if anything – is the work of Tolkien’s Ents? Treebeard is not specific as to the details of his vocation. Whatever they are up to, it seems to involve a good deal of stillness and looking. For unlike the Entwives, the Ents were not planners or organizers. They did not create gardens. Their haunts were wilder:

“…there are hollow dales in this land where the Darkness has never been lifted, and the trees are older than I am. Still, we do what we can. We keep off strangers and the foolhardy; and we train and we teach, we walk and we weed.

“We are tree-herds, we old Ents.”

-The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter IV, “Treebeard” [4]

Walking and weeding, training and teaching, keeping of boundaries – these are the practices and fruits of Ent work in Middle-earth. To judge from Treebeard’s talk, observation and praise of living (and nonliving) things is part of that work, too – a very different type of work from the productions of the giant entas of Anglo-Saxon legend.

Yet both Tolkien’s Ents and the entas of Old English poetry are strongly associated - albeit in different ways - with destruction. Anglo-Saxon entas and their works are almost entirely passive recipients of violent change (the exceptions to this rule will be the subject of future posts). But Tolkien’s Ents are, at Isengard, the agents of a destruction almost as apocalyptic as that imagined in The Wanderer or Andreas.

Photo by Hao Taing on Unsplash

A primary focus of the writings done here will be ruins – either of the variety contemplated by imagined Anglo-Saxon travelers, or, more broadly, of those fragments of stories that often form the bedrock of a sense of fictional reality.

Ent Work is about looking at old things and strange things, things that are no longer intact (or maybe never were). It is about taking the pieces that we have and seeing what we can know about them, or what they can tell us, whether those pieces are from medieval poetry or elsewhere. The same uncertainty that might arise in a traveler encountering mysterious, ancient ruins animates our own curiosity about the little-known Wainriders of Rhun, of barely-drawn characters like Wulf son of Freca or Fram of the Eotheod, or of the unguessed tales of the peoples of Harondor or the Hillmen of Rhudaur. These Middle-earth marginalia, lurking in appendices yet essential to the overall effect of the world, are in their way as foundational as are the enta geweorc of the Old English Maxims II, which loom upon hillsides and serve as the visible indication of a king’s authority. In both cases, the power of the thing – the fictional world or the ruler – is built upon structures of partiality, fragments of a fragmentary past.

For ruined, broken things – like the sword-hilt that is all that remains of the weapon Beowulf used to behead Grendel, and which itself is called an enta geweorc – have ways of affecting us:

Đa wæs gylden hilt gamelum rince,

harum hildfruman on hand gyfen,

enta ærgeweorc; hit on æht gehwearf

æfter deofla hryre Denigea frean,

wundorsmiþa geweorc; ond þa þas worold ofgeaf

gromheort guma, Godes andsaca,

morðres scyldig, ond his modor eac,

on geweald gehwearf woroldcyninga

ðæm selestan be sæm tweonum

ðara þe on Scedenigge sceattas dælde.

Hroðgar maðelode; hylt sceawode,

ealde lafe. On ðæm wæs or writen

fyrngewinnes; syðþan flod ofsloh,

gifen geotende giganta cyn,

frecne geferdon; þæt wæs fremde þeod

ecean dryhtne; him þæs endelean

þurh wæteres wylm waldend sealde.

Swa wæs on ðæm scennum sciran goldes

þurh runstafas rihte gemearcod,

geseted ond gesæd, hwam þæt sweord geworht,

irena cyst ærest wære,

wreoþenhilt ond wyrmfah. Đa se wisa spræc

sunu Healfdenes; swigedon ealle:

Graybeard war-chief grasped the gold hilt:

ancient ent-work wondrous smith-craft

devils’ doom now Dane-king’s prize.

God’s hate-hearted foeman Grendel

murderous spirit and his mother

suffered strength of greatest sea-king’s —

rich ring-giver’s — greatest champion.

Hrothgar musing making speech saw

graven runes, the beginning telling

of ancient struggle -- sky-thrown sea-waves

crashed on giants justice final

God’s great fury foe-kin whelming.

Marked it firmly former sword-smith

whom the weapon had been made for

iron choicest handle gold-chased

twining serpents --- spoke then Hrothgar

son of Healfdene hall-hush falling.

-Beowulf, ll. 1677-99 [5]

Between the word “maðelode” (“spoke, made speech”) in l. 1687 and the beginning of Hrothgar’s direct speech in l. 1700, there is a gap of 13 lines – greater than any other such gap in the poem. We might interpret this distance as a silence imposed by the enta geweorc hilt and thus an arresting irruption of the entish into the social world. Alternatively, we may see these lines as reporting the old king’s thoughts as he peers at this object and prepares to integrate the lessons it suggests into his speech to the young hero – a speech which will warn about the dangers of pride and the certainty of age and death. [6] In either case, here the entish, in its partial, destroyed state, paradoxically imposes itself upon the world.

It is the exploration of these paradoxes that will constitute the work found here.

Sources

[1] Old English version of The Ruin: Krapp, George P. and Elliot van kirk Dobbie, eds.. The Exeter Book. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. 3. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936. Translation mine.

[2] Frankis, P. J. “The thematic significance of ‘enta geweorc’ and related imagery in ‘The Wanderer’.” Anglo-Saxon England 2, 1973.

[3] Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981. Letter 163, p. 212.

[4] Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. London, Harper Collins, 1999.

[5] Old English version of Beowulf: Fulk, R. D.; Robert E. Bjork; and John D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4^th edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Translation mine.

[6] Annina Seiler in, “The Function of the Sword-Hilt Inscription in Beowulf” (Words, Words, Words: Philology and Beyond. Festschrift for Andreas Fischer on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. by S. Chevalier & T. Honegger, 2012) points out that, while most scholars identify a silence on the part of Hrothgar following l. 1687, not all do. Michael Near (“Anticipating Alienation: Beowulf and the Intrusion of Literacy”, PMLA 108, 1993) argues for simultaneous speech and viewing of the hilt. Still, if we see Hrothgar’s direct speech beginning at l. 1700, the point remains that the hilt itself demands reflection, the sheer volume of which is uncommon following a form of the verb “maþelian”.

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