A Worm with Wings?

[The Saucepan Man]

Sorry for starting another “wings” debate, but this is a Question that came up in the Middle-earth Flora & Fauna game in the Quiz Room. I have tried searching and skimmed a few threads, but found nothing definitive.

My question is: Did Scatha have wings?

As far as I am aware, there is no mention in the Appendices to LotR of Scatha having wings. He is classed as a “Long-worm”, which might suggest that he was wingless. However, as Gwaihir pointed out on the Quiz thread, “Worm” is a term used in the past to refer to Dragons generally, including the winged variety.

Views expressed on past threads differ on this. In Concerning Cold Drakes, a very old thread, Hunter Two One stated that Scatha was non-winged. However, there is no justification given for this and the thread is in any event based on the assumption that Scatha was a Cold-Drake, which I believe is not the case. More helpfully, Sharkû posted the following in Dragons of the Third Age:

"550-597. The dates of 'the last war of the Elder Days' were changed to 545-587, and after the last words of the original entry the following was added: 'Ancalagon is cast down by Earendil and all save two of the Dragons are destroyed.'" (HoME XI, 3, V)

This quote from the Tale of Years is unambiguous as to the dragons surviving the fall of Angband. They were Scatha and Smaug.

Clearly, if Scatha was from Ancalagon’s squadron, then he was winged. But, even taking this as cannon, I do not see the unambiguity here. As I stated on that thread, it seems to me that other Dragons must have escaped or been released from Angbad before it fell in the War of Wrath, since there seem to have been more than just two of the beasties about in the Second and Third Ages. Quite possibly, Scatha was one of these, or a descendant of one of them. And therefore not necessarily winged.

The final piece of evidence that I have been able to track down on this is the entry for “Long-worm” in the The Encyclopedia of Arda, which states:

A type of dragon found in the northern parts of Middle-earth, and perhaps elsewhere. The most famous long-worm (and in fact the only one that Tolkien explicitly identifies) was Scatha of the Ered Mithrin, who preyed on the Dwarves and Men of the Grey Mountains, and was slain by Fram of the Éothéod.

Though Tolkien gives almost no clues about long-worms in the text of The Lord of the Rings, his illustrations of dragons give us some further hints. Tolkien's dragons tend to be sinuous, serpentine creatures, having the appearance almost of a winged snake rather than the more traditional dragon-form. This would explain the term 'long-worm' easily. It's interesting to note that Tolkien gave this form to another northern dragon, Smaug, which strongly suggests that he, too, was one of the long-worms.

Again, the assumption is that Scatha had wings, but it seems to be pure speculation based on Tolkien’s drawings of Dragons. And we know that at least one of Tolkien’s Dragons, Glaurung, had no wings.

My own view is that, since Scatha post-dates the appearance of Ancalagon and the other winged Dragons (at least in terms of his appearance in Tolkien’s works), he was winged. Otherwise he would represent a retrograde step in the development of Dragons (although I don’t want to get into the touchy subject of evolution here). Then again perhaps Scatha is descended from Glaurung’s stock. There is nothing, as far as I am aware, to suggest that Glaurung was the only non-winged Dragon that Morgoth created, nor that non-winged Dragons ceased to exist when Ancalagon and his cronies appeared.

Anyone have any further thoughts on this, or able to supply a more definitive reference?