Talk:Old Man Willow

Huorn

From Karo6 RE: BACKGROUND -- Is Old Man Willow a Huorn?

Tom tells the tale in Chapter 7 "In the House of Tom Bombadil":

Tom's words laid bare the hearts of trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, and filled with hatered of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason ... and in it there yet lived, aging no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. The countless years had filled them with pride and rooted wisdom, and with malice. But 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." (FotR, chpt 7 "In the Houe of Tom Bombadil," hb ver, p. 141)

But, in an earlier version, we have the same general quote which has some significant data that was cut from the final, published LotR.

In a note from Chris Tolkien: "The passage concerning Old Man Willow was first written thus: 'Amongst his talk there was here and there much said of Old Man Willow, and Merry learned enough to content him (more than enough, for it was not comfortable lore), though not enough for him to understand how that grey thirty earth-bound spirit had become imprisoned in the greatest Willow of the Forest. The tree did not die, though its heart went rotten, while the malice of the Old Man drew power out of earth and water, and spread like a net, like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had infected or subjugated nearly all the trees on both sides of the valley.'" (History of the Lord of the Rings, part 1, "The Return of the Shadow," pp 120-21)

Apparently Old Man Willow was originally a composite creature, part evil "disembodied" spirit, and part a simple willow tree. No mention is made here of either Ents or their lesser sidekicks, the Huorns. From a note by CT, on p. 110, RotS, a general date for this early version is given as the summer of 1938, significantly before JRRT developed the vegetable-style Ents, and at a time when he was still playing around with the more traditional "anthropomorphic" Stone Giants, such as those found in The Hobbit.

If we accept JRRT at his word, I find it difficult to view Old Man Willow as even a potential Huorn.

Film version

It's been a number of years since I saw the cinematic cut, but I thought the scene with the willow took place only in the extended edition on DVD. If I'm right, this should be noted in the article. - Hayter 11:52, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Folklore

Is any of the folklore that was listed under the title "trivia" actually relevant to the character? I added the English folklore because it could actually be a source. Goldfritha 04:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

moved to willow87.102.114.215 (talk) 23:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

removed original research

Sorry - the title says it all, also tidied a bit. (see above)87.102.114.215 (talk) 23:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

removed copyrighted image and infobox

Infobox contains specualtion and original research, image is copyright. Don't accept fair-use criteria here.87.102.114.215 (talk) 23:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Background

"This description and its context make it clear that the Great Willow was originally a tree, despite its evident malicious sentience and power."

This statement is an opinion presented as a fact. Its apparent purpose is to influence the reader's formation of their own opinion about the facts presented.

The fact that Bombadil referred to old man willow as a "powerful singer" (a possible reference the Valar who sang the cosmos into existence) is conspicuously left out of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.105.130.132 (talk) 01:49, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

SUSPICIOUS EDIT

@Bless the lord oh my soul: has deleted images from this and at least 2 other Tolkien-related articles via mobile edits as of the time I write this comment. The edit comments don't provide any explanation for why the images have been removed from the articles. The other articles are Decline_and_fall_in_Middle-earth and Númenor. I'm not sure these edits should be reverted. I will leave similar comments on the other 2 articles. The edits should be reviewed by the community, in my opinion. Michael Martinez (talk) 00:30, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

They're unambiguously "unexplained deletion of content". I've reverted them and warned the editor. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:59, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Noted. Thanks for the quick response. Michael Martinez (talk) 14:14, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Old Man Willow/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: LunaEatsTuna (talk · contribs) 17:15, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

LunaEatsTuna: Many thanks for the review. I've responded to all the comments. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:18, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I always appreciate the hasty response! Per your changes implemented I am now happy to pass yet another great Tolkien article for GA status. Congrats! ツLunaEatsTuna (💬)— 20:11, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Copyvio check

Earwig says good to go. Quotations are used in-line with WP:COPYQUOTE.

• Noted.

Files

All images used are appropriate, relevant, of good quality and copyright-free:

File:Old Man Willow.jpg: valid non-free use rationale;

File:Sketch Map of The Shire.svg: CC-BY-SA 4.0;

File:Willow view - Flickr - Orchids love rainwater.jpg: CC-BY-SA 2.0;

File:Temptation Adam Eva.jpg: valid public domain rationale (via CC0 1.0 dedication);

File:Scene from Virgil's Aeneid; the Cumaean Sibyl leads Aeneas t Wellcome V0042049.jpg: CC-BY-SA 4.0;

File:Khraniteli Old Man Willow.jpg: valid non-free use rationale.

• Noted.

Prose

• I would wikilink the first mentions of Oxford in the lead and body for the benefit of non-British readers.
  • Done.

• I am slightly unsure about § Context. The article has a lot of article sections with only a few sentences. Would it look strange if it were merged into § Narrative somewhere? Perhaps Old Man Willow's appearance in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil could be merged to its already existing mention in § Interpretations.
  • It's purely Tolkien context, not interpretation, and I've kept it as brief as possible.
    • Fair enough, perhaps I am too familiar with Tolkien at this point!

• Does the image of the sketch map have to be so large?
  • For many plausible settings of how users view thumbnail images, yes, or the text labels will be sub-pixel in size.
    • Noted.

• "As Tolkien explains in the narrative of The Lord of the Rings" – would wikilinking narrative to Narrative structure of The Lord of the Rings be a stretch?
  • Probably, this isn't about the structure.
    • Agreed.

• May be personal taste, but should § Narrative be written in past tense? I am not sure if you wrote this one, but all of your other nominated Middle-earth GAs are written in present tense. I am not familiar with our literature nor fiction policies; are both tenses acceptable? (If so, than ignore this rant!)
  • Present it is.

• "who 'sang' to the" – what do the apostrophes indicate?
  • Removed.

• "Once safely in Tom Bombadil's house, Bombadil explained" – change to "Once safely in Bombadil's house, he explained"
  • Fixed.

• "They write that trees (like other creatures) are in Tolkien's world subject to the corruption" – recommend "They write that trees (like other creatures in Tolkien's world) are subject to the corruption" for better flow IMO.
  • Done.

• The sentence starting "They state that while Tolkien's writings" is really long and jaded, especially with several different punctuation marks. I would split "and that Tolkien succeeds" into its own sentence.
  • Done.

• "in Genesis, the Cross, the tree of death in the Gospels" – cross does not have to be capitalised.
  • Fixed.

• "Revelation (22:2)" – none of the other books are wikilinked nor do they have verses.
  • Linked Book of Genesis. This verse is both much less familiar than the Genesis story, and significant for mentioning a tree.
    • Oh, I see! That does make sense.

• "Old Man Willow, along with the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil, was not included" – recommend "Old Man Willow, along with the Old Forest and Tom Bombadil, are not included"
  • Reworded.

• Is there a more reliable source for Old Man Willow in Khraniteli?
  • It's just the TV play itself. I can't find anything better on this small point.
    • Sad how Old Man Willow is forgotten by the media ):

Refs

Passes spotcheck—no concerns with any of the Primary citations nor refs 1, 3, 4 or 7. No formatting issues either. Nice work!

• Noted.

Other

Short desc, Notes, nav, other templates and cats all good.

• Noted.

• Just needs WP:ALT text.
  • Added.
    • Thank you!

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Sketch Map of The Shire.svg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:15, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced content

Hi Chiswick Chap I noticed there is some unsourced content in this Good Article, specifically in the Adaptations section. Fieryninja (talk) 23:17, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. One bit of IP-accretion removed; the rest is actually all Rateliff, but the same IP helpfully split the cited text into mini-paragraphs without repeating the ref ... fixed now. You only have to turn your back... Really the problem is that Wikipedia uses plain text and *separate* citations. In a well-designed system, there would be database objects which consisted of text, source, and other attributes indissolubly welded together. Then the addition of an unsourced object would be difficult and instantly flagged, and the splitting of an object, as here, would simply repeat the source. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:05, 14 February 2024 (UTC)