OK, good point about the historical accuracy of druid rituals. Although if JRR
Tolkien could create a mythical history, why shouldn't Graves create a similar
poetic world?
And the Ents were for all trees, not only sacred oaks. Found some scathing
early Christian comments telling new Christians how blasphemous it was of them
to worship at sacred oak groves; because what would happen to them if they were
cut down? Roman legions did cut them down to demonstrate their ascendancy. Not
very Ent-friendly!
But what interested me about that was that while Frodo seems very passive, and
all you hear of him is from others, internally he has a lot going on, and that
his journey is more spiritual than real in many senses. And this shows much
more in the book than in the films. His visionary dreams, his writing, his
travelling from the Grey Havens in the end; these all seem to indicate his
awareness of another level beyond Middle-earth. Summoned, as with Bombadil, by
incantations, evoked by Elvish song, and this seemed to have a bardic element,
as does his indifference to his own worldly safety.
Michael Swanwick speculated that Gollum & Sam were in fact two aspects of
Frodo, the Good & the Bad, & that seems a valid reading to me.
"Cicero remarks on the existence among the Gauls of augurs or soothsayers,
known by the name of Druids; he had made the acquaintance of one Divitiacus, an
Aeduan. Diodorus informs us that a sacrifice acceptable to the gods must be
attended by a Druid, for they are the intermediaries. Before a battle they
often throw themselves between two armies to bring about
peace."
