Continued from Part 2 of Do Balrogs Have Wings? Do Balrogs Fly?.
NOTE: Once again the forces of inflammatory prose have risen up to make false claims about this essay (Other Minds issue 10). At no point does it argue for corporeal or physical wings on any Balrog. Please treat any claims made by others as the absurdities they are. Clearly, if one cannot get the facts right, one’s essay on Balrog Wings need not be rebutted further than that.
A more recent essay, The Truth About Balrogs (Again), on the Tolkien Studies on the Web blog, explains Michael’s position more concisely. You can also read the very in-depth Flying away on a wing and a hair …, written in response to comments made by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull in their 2005 book, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: A Reader’s Companion at MERP.COM.
Glaurung’s Train of Balrogs
But one last objection is raised, and that is that in describing the Dagor Bragollach, THE SILMARILLION says “in the front of that fire came Glaurung the golden, father of dragons, in his full might; and in his train were Balrogs, and behind them came the black armies of the Orcs in multitudes such as the Noldor had never before seen or imagined.”
One must ask where this sentence comes from, and the answer is surprising to many. It doesn’t come from J.R.R. Tolkien. What JRRT actually wrote, in the last full “Quenta Silmarillion” from the 1930s, was “in the front of that fire came Glomund the golden, the father of dragons, and in his train were Balrogs, and behind them came the black armies of the Orcs in multitudes such as the Gnomes had never before seen or imagined.”
These Balrogs were not the flaming, cloaked-in-shadow, wing-bearing, flying Balrogs of the 1940s and 1950s. In the same text, when Tolkien described the fight between Morgoth and Ungoliant, all he wrote was “so great had Ungoliante become that she enmeshed Morgoth in her choking nets, and his awful cry echoed through the shuddering world. To his aid there came the Balrogs that lived yet in the deepest places of his ancient fortress, Utumno in the North. With their whips of flame the Balrogs smote the webs asunder….”
No mention of passing over Hithlum, swiftly arising, or arriving as a tempest of fire here. These were not fiery flying Balrogs. These are still the mounted Balrogs of yesteryear. In the same “Quenta Silmarillion” text, when describing the Nirnaeth, Tolkien wrote “But even as the vanguard of Maedhros came upon the Orcs, Morgoth let loose his last strength, and hell was emptied. There came wolves and serpents, and there came Balrogs one thousand, and there came Glomund the Father of Dragons.” The number of 1,000 Balrogs survived into the 1950s, but Tolkien soon made a note to himself in “Annals of Aman” that there should not be more than 7 at most.
In describing the outcome of the War of Wrath in this “Quenta Silmarillion”, Tolkien wrote “the Balrogs were destroyed, save some few that fled and hid themselves in caverns inaccessible at the roots of the earth.” This is the language that Christopher incorporated into the published SILMARILLION, because his father never finished rewriting “Quenta Silmarillion”. Christopher adopted as much material as he could from “Annals of Aman” and “Grey Annals”, but the latter material covered the history of the Eldar in Middle-earth after the return of the Noldor and it was unsuitable for use in the published text.
The entry in “Grey Annals” which describes the Dagor Bragollach is radically different from the 1930s description which Christopher used, reading, in part, “Rivers of fire ran down from Thangorodrim, and Glaurung, Father of Dragons, came forth in his full might. The green plains of Ardgalen were burned up and became a drear desert without growing thing; and thereafter were called ANFAUGLITH, the Gasping Dust.”
Gone is all mention of Balrogs in the dragon’s train.
The Final Word on Balrogs
Tolkien never again wrote a story about Balrogs. What we find in THE SILMARILLION, therefore, is virtually useless information, amalgamated from older, pre-LOTR (and thus incompatible) sources. And Tolkien fans often forget Christopher’s admonishment in the foreword to THE SILMARILLION: “A complete consistency (either within the compass of THE SILMARILLION itself or between THE SILMARILLION and other published writings of my father’s) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost.”
So, to learn about the nature and abilities of the Balrog of Moria one must dissect the various texts of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH, and the stories from THE BOOK OF LOST TALES and other pre-LOTR materials cannot be used to analyze the Balrog of Moria. Many people try to do so, but because Tolkien substantially changed the Balrogs while writing “Ainulindale” and THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the Balrogs of THE BOOK OF LOST TALES and the early “Quenta Silmarillion” are completely different creatures.
In the final analysis, one must accept that the Balrog of Moria had wings because J.R.R. Tolkien said it had wings, and that the Balrogs flew to Lammoth because the sentence cannot mean anything else. If one chooses not to accept these facts, then one is at variance with J.R.R. Tolkien, and there is nothing which can be said or done to counter an argument that refuses to accept the plain and simple facts.
A more complete version of this essay was published in the book Visualizing Middle-earth.