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In the days before Priestley had caught & bottled that demon which exists in the shape of carbonic acid gas, when the miner was smitten dead by an invisible foe in the deep bowels of the earth it was natural that his awe struck companions should ascribe the mysterious blow to a supernatural enemy. When the workman was assailed by what we now call fire-damp, which hurled him & his companions right & left upon the dark rocks, scorching, burning & killing, those who survived were not likely to question the existence of the mine fiend. Hence arose the superstition - now probably quite extinct - of basilisks in the mines, which destroyed with their terrible gaze. When the explanation came, that the thing which killed the miner was what he breathed, not what he saw; & when chemistry took the fire-damp from the realm of faerie, the basilisk & the fire fiend had not a leg to stand on’.
(Wirt Sikes ‘British Goblins’ (1880). Quoted in Lewis & Currie, ‘The Uncharted Realms of Tolkien’)
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To what extent these ideas affected Tolkien in the depiction of the Balrog - at least as far as his choice of having a Balrog present in Moria - is impossible to answer. I think that someone as interested as Tolkien was in folklore, would have been aware of Sikes’ book, & of the phenomenon of fire-damp (the explosive gas which builds up in mineworkings, which is mostly methane) & choke-damp (the poisonous gas, principally carbon di-oxide).
Its certainly interesting that Tolkien would have a monster of shadow (=choke-damp?) & flame (=fire-damp?) as Durin’s bane, as these are the very things, along with falls, which miners, like the dwarves, would have feared most.
The Balrog itself has been discussed almost to death, but I think that’s because the encounter between it & Gandalf is so symbolic, & Gandalf’s statements so enigmatic - especially to anyone who has not read the Silmarillion - what is the ‘Secret Fire’? And why is it that the ‘Dark Fire’
cannot pass it - because Gandalf seems not to be bragging here about his superior strength, but rather making a metaphysical statement of fact. But i won’t go any further into that at the moment.
I would like to quote from an article in a recent Amon Hen, about Tolkien’s use of adjectives:
Quote:
Interestingly, in Gandalf’s fight with the Balrog only a few adjectives are used. In connection with the Balrog itself the word ‘dark’ features predominantly: it is described as a ‘dark figure’ & the eerie silence that falls at its appearance is introduced as follows: ‘then the echoes died as suddenly as a flame blown out by a dark wind. I like the use of ‘dark’ in conjunction with ‘wind’. It imparts to me a sense of stiffling heat...the unusual use of the word ‘dark’ makes a kind of instinctive sense. When Gandalf addresses the Balrog for the first time in their confronation, he says: ‘the Dark Fire will not avail you’. Again this provides an interesting juxtaposition that is frighteningly evocative: there seems no sense of warmth & comfort about the notion of a ‘dark fire’.
The other adjective repeatedly used in this sequence in direct contrast with ‘dark’ is ‘white’. It is combined with other words such as ‘cold’ & ‘bright’. Thus, Glamdring is described as gleaming ‘cold & white’. But ‘white’, like ‘dark’, is also used to describe fire in this scene: the Balrog’s fire is dark, that of Glamdring is white, & when Gandalf destroys the bridge ‘a blinding sheet of white flame’ springs up. the imagery of ‘dark’ versus ‘white’ is stark & straightforward, but very powerful. My own favourite image in this scene, however, is that of Gandalf standing fast on the bridge: ‘grey & bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm’. (‘Modifying Words’, Beruthiel’s Pet. Amon Hen 183
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One final observation - this is the first chapter without any verse.