I got...

[Firawyn]

THE LETTERS OF JRR TOLKIEN!

I've been on this forum for like three years now and I was constantly hearing people refer to 'Letter #X' and I finally got it! lol, Now I can follow along!

Yay for me!

[Barliman Butterbur]

THE LETTERS OF JRR TOLKIEN!

I've been on this forum for like three years now and I was constantly hearing people refer to 'Letter #X' and I finally got it! lol, Now I can follow along!

Yay for me!

Way to go, kid! We'll be expecting long scholarly reports from you from now on! ;) :D

Barley

[Firawyn]

he,he, I'll do just that. What's your first assinment Master Butterbur? ;)

[e.Blackstar]

Good for you Fir! Maybe I'm next on the Letters cosmic waiting list...;)

[abdera]

cough*check your shoes*cough

[Barliman Butterbur]

he,he, I'll do just that. What's your first assignment Master Butterbur? ;)

Here's an easy one: Do Balrogs have wings?

Barley ;)

[e.Blackstar]

cough*check your shoes*cough

Hmm?

It is NOT too short! It said everything that needed to be said!

[Firawyn]

Here's an easy one: Do Balrogs have wings?

Barley ;)

Easy? Geeze Barley that is 'easily' the most contraversial topic in the Tolkien world. In the movies, yes, the belrog had wings --HOWEVER, I've seen alot of Tolkien art that portrays belrogs WITHOUT wings.

*scuttles off to find handy 'Letters' book*

:D

[Noldor_returned]

If anybody so much as whispers balrog and wings in the same sentence from now on, I will hurt them badly once I find out where they live. My conclusion is that the Fellowship Balrog had wings, although it couldn't fly. Therefore, some do, and some don't; the most earliest don't/didn't, while later ones do. Happy now?

And everyone ignore the 5th last word in my second sentence.

[Firawyn]

uhhh...okay. Sombody has issues...


On the positive side, I think that PJ was full of poop when he allowed wings to be put on the Belrog.

[Khôr’nagan]

Let's not start a new Balrog's Wings debate here; we've got a perfectly good one going elsewhere, and Noldor is clearly frustrated over the debates (and quite understandably so, in my opinion. Those people won't see sense... :D )

I've been kind of neglegent in my Tolkienology studies this past year, but now that I'm back, I fully intend to get letters and a bunch of others, hopefully everything I don't have now. As of this moment, all I own are the trilogy, the Hobbit, the Silmarilion, Unfinished Tales, BolT 1 and 2, and The Lays of Middle Earth, so though I know (or knew) them back to front, I've still got a good bit to go with the other books.

[Barliman Butterbur]

Let's not start a new Balrog's Wings debate here...

Ah, but Firawyn has a new copy of the Tolkien Letters, and she wants to use them to settle the argument once and for all! ;)

Barley

[Aldanil]

Ah, but Firawyn has a new copy of the Tolkien Letters, and she wants to use them to settle the argument once and for all! ;)

Barley



Oh, and SHE wants to, eh? Are ya tellin' us that now?
One sup-poses the particular pronoun reading might
be supported by textual inference, but I ha'e me dou'ts!

And as for the matter of "once and for all" now, ha'e ye
half gone daft, thou good-hearted slow-witted innkeep?
Are ye real and for sure in seekin' to "settle" the question?

Don't ya understand then the uses, my old fine fellow Barliman,
of an ongoing "argument" and open inquiry? Who'd wish thus
to impinge on our phat fun and impose some epistle-distillate ending?

Further, father tapster (or is that "farther, futhamucker"?) wot ye not
well indeed that the elder great Forest of John Ronald's Letters
is hardly the sort of place that one just quick rushes into

like some all-night Walgreens to pick up the one thing you "need"
but a rustling Wonderwood quite as rich and entangled as Eryn Lesgalen?
Regarding the alate-or-otherwise nature of Balrogs, I'd only observe

These purported "wings" of so much debate
don't seem to be any too useful for flyin' with
(and what else, after all, are wings really good for?)

to judge by the reports: "Long I fell, and he fell
with me" -- no swooping bat-moves in the abyss
beneath Khazad-Dum; thrown down in defeat and

"smote the mountain-side in his ruin" like t'other that
Glorfindel overthrew in the escape from Gondolin; were I
a wicked fire-Maia what'd just been tossed off a cliff

AND I had usable wings -- might be tempted to use 'em!
Not to mention the unmistakable signal of simile: "the
shadow about it reached out like two vast wings."





there yar, neatly wrapped up
in a nine-stanza ribbon: verses aver
to "settle the argument once and for all!"

[Khôr’nagan]

Wow, I'm moved. I mean, that argument was so well written that I now realize everything I ever believed is wrong and you are completely right. :rolleyes:

If Firawyn wants to solve the debate once and for all, she can do it in the Balrog's Wings thread, not this one. And if/when she does, I'll be there, waiting to shoot her down. :D

[Barliman Butterbur]

Wow, I'm moved. I mean, that argument was so well written that I now realize everything I ever believed is wrong and you are completely right. :rolleyes:

If Firawyn wants to solve the debate once and for all, she can do it in the Balrog's Wings thread, not this one. And if/when she does, I'll be there, waiting to shoot her down. :D

The debate over Balrog's wings (which is in reality just a game to be played) will never be settled, simply because no one wants it to be settled — to say nothing of the fact that Tolkien's writings about it are vague and leave the whole matter forever open to question — despite Aldanil's old dodderer's demented rant. ;)

Barley

[Snaga]

Good news. I intend to settle this debate once and for all, by launching a range of female sanitary products under the brand name 'Balrog'.

There was me thinking I could use this thread to brag about my new hardback 'Annotated Hobbit' which is brilliant.

[Firawyn]

you wrote a book Snaga? I didn't know that!!!

Oh, and poeple, I have no desire to debate the belrog thing. If you'all wanna argue, bring it over to Project Evil. I'm going nuts with only three or four of us really posting anymore!

[Starbrow]

Hey Aldanil,
That's one of the best debate answers I've read. Have you posted it to the Balrog debate thread? I'd give you a link if I knew how.