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Old Forest
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===Overview=== [[File:Sketch Map of The Shire.svg|thumb|upright=2.25|Sketch map of [[the Shire]], with the Old Forest on the right. The forest's river, the Withywindle, flows into the River Brandywine.]] The Old Forest lay near the centre of [[Eriador]], a large region of north-west Middle-earth. It was one of the few survivors of the primordial forests which had covered much of Eriador before the [[Second Age]]. Indeed, it had once been but the northern edge of one immense forest which reached all the way to [[Fangorn]] forest, hundreds of miles to the south-east.<ref group=T name="Council of Elrond">{{harvnb|Tolkien|1954a|loc=book 2, ch. 2 "[[The Council of Elrond]]"}}</ref> The vicinity of the Old Forest was the domain of three nature-spirits: [[Tom Bombadil]], [[Goldberry]], and [[Old Man Willow]]. The powers of these beings doubtless contributed to its survival when other forests were destroyed.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dickerson |first1=Matthew |author1-link=Matthew T. Dickerson |last2=Evans |first2=Jonathan |author2-link=Jonathan Evans (scholar) |year=2006 |title=Ents, Elves and Eriador |publisher=[[University Press of Kentucky]] |at=ch. 5, p. 133 |isbn=0-8131-2418-2}}</ref> Old Man Willow, along with the [[Barrow-wight]] and Tom Bombadil himself, first appeared in Tolkien's narrative poem ''The Adventures of Tom Bombadil'', where Old Man Willow trapped Bombadil himself briefly.<ref group=T>''The Adventures of Tom Bombadil'', ''[[The Oxford Magazine]]'', 15 February 1934</ref> Willow is portrayed as a sentient and evil willow tree with powers including [[hypnosis]] and the ability to move his roots and trunk. Some characters of the story speculate that he may have been related to the [[Ent]]s, or possibly the [[Huorn]]s. However, unlike Ents or Huorns, he is portrayed more like a tree, with roots in the ground, and without the ability to move from place to place. [[Tom Bombadil]] had power over Old Man Willow, and checked the evil as much as he could, or was willing.<ref name="House of Tom Bombadil" group=T/> According to Tom Bombadil, at the dawn of time, long before even the [[Elf (Middle-earth)#Awakening|Awakening of the Elves]], trees were the only inhabitants of vast stretches of the world. Because the Elves awoke far in the East, it was still a considerable time before any other beings spread into the vast primeval forests of western Middle-earth. A handful of trees survived from this time until the present day, who are angered at the encroachment of Elves and Men and their dominion over the earth; trees who bitterly remember a time long ago when they were as Lords of vast regions of the world. Bombadil relates that of the corrupted trees of the Old Forest, "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."<ref name="House of Tom Bombadil" group=T/> In the [[First Age]], [[Tom Bombadil]] "was here before [[Withywindle|the river]] and the trees".<ref name="House of Tom Bombadil" group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1954a}}, book 1, ch. 7 "In the House of Tom Bombadil"</ref> In the [[Years of the Lamps|Spring of Arda]], plants emerge,<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1977}}, ch. 1 "Of the Beginning of Days"</ref> possibly including Old Man Willow.<ref name="House of Tom Bombadil" group=T/> In the [[Years of the Trees]], [[Elf (Middle-earth)|Elves]] skirted the forest on their primeval migration to [[Beleriand]] and [[Valinor|the West]]; they were observed by Bombadil.<ref name="House of Tom Bombadil" group=T/> By the time Sauron had been defeated and driven from Eriador, most of its old forests had already been destroyed,<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1980}}, part 2, ch 4. Appendix D</ref> leaving remnants such as the Old Forest. (Other vestiges included Woody End in the Shire, Chetwood in [[Bree (Middle-earth)|Bree-land]], and Eryn Vorn in Minhiriath.) The Old Forest was now "hostile to two legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries."<ref name="Letter 339" group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=#339 to the editor of ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', 30 June 1972 }}</ref>
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