From: mcconnel@mcs.kent.edu (Mike McConnell)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien
Subject: Re: Hobbits (was Re: Bombadil), and Maiar/N
Date: 26 Jan 93 21:04:13 GMT
Organization: Kent State University

In article <1k3c3dINN6f1@galaxy.uci.agh.edu.pl>, szymon@galaxy.uci.agh.edu.pl (Szymon Sokol) writes:
|> Broughton, Wayne Jeremy (waynebro@juliet.caltech.edu) wrote:
|> : Was it really known that a *Balrog* per se was Durin's Bane?  I don't 
|> : know if Gimli actually "recognized" the Balrog as a Balrog;  rather he
|> : just realized that this terror in front of him was the embodiment of 
|> : the nightmarish descriptions he had heard of Durin's Bane.  And Legolas
|> : sure sounded kind of surprised at what he saw when he shouted "Ai-ee,
|> : a Balrog!" or some such.  Do you know of a textual reference that suggests
|> : that Durin's Bane had been known to be a Balrog?  Remember that a 
|> : reference written from the post-Third Age point of view might have included
|> : the info that it was a Balrog in hindsight.
|> 
|> Well, Durin was killed by a Balrog, as well as his son Nain the First (?), 
|> and the Dwarves left Moria a year later. It is written in the chronicles
|> of the ME (one of the appendices to the LOTR). Therefore I suggested that 
|> Gimli's words "Durin's Bane!" meant that he recognized Balrog.  
|> Of course, it is not completely clear that it was known to the heroes of LOTR,
|> but I have thought that if the dwarves spent one more year in Moria *after*
|> Durin's death, they had to fight against orcs and they probably learned that 
|> there is someone more powerful than mere orcs. In addition: if Gimli did not
|> know that Durin had been killed by the Balrog, why did he decided to call
|> the Balrog "Durin's Bane" ? If he knew nothing about circumstances of Durin's
|> death, he could attribute it to orcs as well, couldn't he?
|> he
|> -- 
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Yes, the dwarves did know that there was something more powerful than orcs in 
Moria.  Remember, after the great Dwarf-Goblin war, when Azog had been defeated
at the gates of Moria, and Thrain was ready to enter, Dain (I think it was) re-
minded him that Durin's Bane was still in Moria.  The dwarves knew that something
dark and powerful was in Moria, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they knew
that that dark and powerful thing was a Balrog.  After all, the Balrogs were not
the only evil creatures shaped by Morgoth.  So when Gimli cries "Durin's Bane",
he is recognizing the creature as the same one that killed Durin, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that he also knows that it is the type of creature classified as
a Balrog.  That's probably not the type of information that is carried down 
through the generations (and it was many generations since the first age) in 
dwarven lore.  On the other hand, it is the type of information that is remembered
by elves, so it is understandable that Legolas would recognize the creature as a
Balrog--not because he knew previously that Durin's Bane was a Balrog, but because
he knew a Balrog when he saw one.

Mike McConnell
Department of Mathmatics and Computer Science
Kent State University
Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien