[Bêthberry]

I wouldn't be surprised if fairly soon a flying skwerl decended upon this thread, one whose armour is made invincible by the calm reason and astute good sense of She Who Wields Them.

alatar's idea of the water monster immediately brought to mind some of the more mythic possibilities of this scene. We've been treating the event as a military operation with feats of engineering, but of course story telling isn't limited to historical referents.

This scene, this battle, this event is of mythological proportions. A marauding, vengeful, fire breathing, terrifying dragon--also known as a night scather in Beowulf-- is defeated by coming down off the Mountain and engaging in battle in a sacred centre, isolated from the rest of the world, surrounded by deep and dark waters which the dragon isn't too keen on.

The mythic centre must be approached hierarchially. Movement is from up, top, to a downwards spiral, defeat being final placement in the dark underworld, this time, the dark waters of the lake. The bridge, a liminal object which bridges life and death, periphery and centre, as in Ragnarok (where the mythic centre is heaven in that mythology), must be destroyed for the essential symbolic homology to be developed. In Norse mythology, the breaking of the bridge Bifrost signals the end of time. Here, it is the end of the dragon's time. Sometimes bridges are for crossing, sometimes they are for burning. The realms of the shore and of the town must be separated, the gap that had been closed must be re-opened for the significance on which the story depends.

After all, this entire story of the cup stolen from the treasure hoard and the vengeful dragon seeking retaliation comes from one of Tolkien's favourite poems, Beowulf. We would do well to remember some of Tolkien's own ideas about monsters before we reduce the story to simply a matter of how did the bridge collapse. Might as well ask how Brifrost crumbled.

oh, and, by the by, Smaug's tail was also profoundly dangerous.