[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

"Difficile est saturam non scribere" - Juvenal.

Actually I once again find your argument unconvincing: "wing: 6 : a part or feature usually projecting from and subordinate to the main or central part <the servants' wing of the mansion>".

So in actual fact, the shadow of Durin's Bane spread out like two vast subordinate architectural components, which suggests that Tolkien imagined it to look something like the Ashmolean Museum. No wonder the poor creature couldn't fly.

Like Estelyn, I've never really thought much about the balrog wings issue. I've always assumed that the reference to 'its wings' in The Bridge of Khazad-dûm is simply the result of a lapse in concentration. Thinking that the audience will understand that he's still talking about some amorphous shadowy projection, Tolkien then turns his wing simile into a metaphor, forgetting that ambiguity is the mother of contention. Without this slip I doubt that the passage in the appendices would have been read as anything but an example of Tolkien's fondness for the fast-disappearing use of 'fly' to mean 'flee' which Child pointed out earlier in the thread. In other words: no, Durin's Bane at least had only a threatening shadow which spread out like wings.

So much for my opinion, which is nothing new or original, nor particularly worth posting on its own. What I do have to relate is that tonight, in a fit of insanity, I decided to look at the earlier drafts of The Bridge of Khazad-dûm in The Treason of Isengard to see if they confirmed my theory. I expect that what follows has probably been said more than once before as well, but not, I think, in this thread.

Christopher Tolkien mentions three drafts prior to the published version. The earliest of these, 'A', has:

The creature made no reply, but standing up tall so that it loomed above the wizard it strode forward and smote him.

A pencilled annotation to this manuscript reads "Alter description of Balrog. It seemed to be of man's shape, but its form could not be plainly discerned. It felt larger than it looked."

The 'B' version has the Balrog stand facing Gandalf, but still makes no mention of wings. These enter the passage in the third draft, which has "...the Balrog halted facing him and the shadow about him reached out like great wings."

Christopher Tolkien notes that the 'him' here is Gandalf, since the Balrog is always referred to as 'it'. The contentious literal reference to 'its wings' enters the text in the final version only, and I think that the development of Tolkien's thinking is quite clear: the Balrog must somehow feel greater than it actually is; it does so through the use of shadow; the shadow spreads like wings. When writing the final version, Tolkien made an understandable mistake in thinking that it would be a really good idea to refer to this shadow directly as a set of wings, possibly because this identifies it as something which is definitely a part of the Balrog and under its control. That this was not one of his better ideas is borne out by the last fifty years of discussion.

Of course it's always possible that this is all an obscure joke at the expense of obsessive compulsives. Perhaps HoME XXXI will have something to say on the subject: "My father's earliest typescript of this passage has finally come to light beneath a floorboard at our old house in Northmoor Road. Beside the description of the Balrog as written in version 'C', he has written hastily in pencil: 'Make Balrog appear to have and not have wings. Cf. angels on pin-head. Keep them talking forever."