I’m sure I read somewhere that there was a prophecy that Isengard would stand until the forest moved against it, or something to that effect. However, I cannot figure out where I got that from.

I thought it was actually the reason why he intentionally destroyed the forest. He was trying to prevent the prophecy while actually causing it.

Yet, I cannot find any proof of this. Did I just imagine this?

The image came from here.

  • @GandalfOPMAEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    That’s amazing! You’re right, I must have read something like the following and combined the two in my mind.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare's_influence_on_Tolkien

    In a letter, he wrote of his “bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays of the shabby use made in Shakespeare [in Macbeth] of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’”. He attributed his creation of a world containing tree-giants or Ents to this reaction, writing “I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war.”

    • Pons_Aelius
      3•1 year ago

      Thanks for this. I was not aware of the direct attribution by JRR, but it doesn’t surprise me.

      So much of English lit is inspired by Shakespeare.