SPice for the Balrog-Wings Soup...(not seen this anywhere before)

[Olorin_TLA]

So since I've never seen anyone mention this, I hope nobody minds me saying this "brainwave". [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]


In the Books of Lost Tales and pre-LotR writings, Morgoth greatly desires the secret of flight. It’s mentioned quite a lot: how he tortures eagles, hoping to extract the secret of flight, etc, because neither Morgoth nor any of his followers could fly or knew how to. I beleive this is specifically stated in HoMe II, and probably other places.

I guess that rules out flight, and wings, because the impression gained is that Morgoth couldn’t make wings either: indeed, it is only towards the end of his reign that he discovers the secrets of flight, and so creates the Winged Dragons...no mention of creation of Winged Balrogs anywhere, and since they couldn’t fly before (because nout could) that in my mind settles that issue.

Of course, that leaves the problem of Vampires flying, but Tolkien’s views on Morgoth and his servants did change dramatically during and after writing LotR...


(In case anyone doesn’t know, Tolkien’s views on the Enemies, including Balrogs, were incredibly different before he wrote LotR. In the pre-LotR, Book of Lost Tales world, Balrogs were terrible foes and fire, but werne’t Maia (afaik) and though extrmely hard to kill since Lef Lords could slay them, there’s little chance that Gandalf would have had as much trouble as he did with his. During LotR, Balrogs changed in Tolkien’s mind. This is furhter shown that after LotR, when he was revising the Silmarillion, the Balrogs suddenly became much more powerful, and far, far fewer in number (around 7 he reckoned at one point), and they were now terrible Maia like Sauron. During these revisions Tolkien mentions Glorfindel’s duel with a Balrog, then crosses out the word Balrog and replaces it with Demon, reffering from then on to Glorfindel fighting a Demon, NOT a Balrog. Tolkien’s vision of Balrogs therefore changed from elite horde to extremely rare and practically unstoppable nightmares during the writing of LotR.)


Soo...what's this mean for me? Well, maybe "for me" is the wrong expression, seeing as we all ahve our own views as to the Wings Things. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
It would seem that this is indeed fairly compelling evidence for non-wingness, as nowhere in the Later Silmarillion etc afaik are there any descriptions/metaphors about flying...HOWEVER, becuase Vamps could fly even when this pre-LotR idea was floating around of torturing birds to gian the secret of flight (and may have sitll remained) it may not be a compeeling argument: Vamps are maia, as far as I know, and so are Balrogs, so even if Morgoth didn't learn how to breed/"engineer" flying creatures they still could have (mind you, originally Balrogs weren't maiar...but I don't think Vamps were either [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img] ).

I didn't claim to solve the issue! This could be viewed as very inconclusive indeed, but on the other hand maybe it's enough to get you to belive in one side of the Balrogs-Wings Debate/War/Armaggedon. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

(Disclaimer: I haven't stolen part of your life making you read this post, it's a little thing you can think about. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] )