Old Forest
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In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Old Forest was a daunting and ancient woodland just beyond the eastern borders of the Shire. Its first and main appearance in print was in
An old oak in Savernake Forest, Wiltshire, England. English oak woods provided the inspiration for the Old Forest
Old Man Willow, drawn by Tolkien while he was writing the chapter on the Old Forest. A face can just be made out on the right-hand side of the tree above the arm-like branch.
Old Man Willow
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Old Man Willow is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic novel The Lord of the Rings, appearing in the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring. He is a malign tree-spirit of great a
Old Forest
…and dangerous; the nearest, the Bucklanders, planted a great hedge to border the forest and cleared a strip of land next to it. A malign tree-spirit, Old Man Willow, grew beside the River Withywindle in the centre of the forest, controlling most of it, though Tom Bombadil presides over the forest. The scholar Verlyn…
Tom Bombadil frees the Hobbits from Old Man Willow. Scraperboard illustration by Alexander Korotich, 1981
Tolkien may have based his drawing of Old Man Willow on a tree beside the River Cherwell in Oxford, like this one in the University Parks there.
Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, believed that living things such as trees had been affected by the Fall of Man. Medieval statuary of the Fall at Notre Dame de Paris