The Lesser Rings

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

There is no 100% telling Tolkien whether did not imagine Balrog having pink wings and blue-striped wig, but it is rather likely that he didn't, based on what we know about him. And that is an assumption made in the same way.

Neither your assumption that Gandalf must have meant ‘Minas Morgul’ nor my belief that it is not clear whether Gandalf meant ‘black sorcery’ or ‘Minas Morgul’ is an absurd assumption like the one you suggest.

Your absurd assumption is irrelevant to guesses about Gandalf’s use of morgul. There is no such pattern as there is with your imaginary Balrog.

But I do not think we can just conclude with saying "we do not know and can never know", because that is rather, well, unconstructive.

There are lots of things in Tolkien’s text that “we do not know and can never know” unless some further unpublished evidence turns up. What colour is Legolas’ hair? What was Fredegar Bolger’s name in true Westron as opposed to translated Westron? What sort of creature was Tom Bombadil, or was he sui generis? Are most Orcs immortal as the Elves are immortal or at least very long-lived compared to Men? Why was Tuor allowed to join the Eldar despite his fully Mannish ancestry? It seems to me that exactly what Gandalf meant by Morgul-knife is one of those things. Discussing any of them is equally futile and unconstructive. It you think not, then discuss any of the other matters and come to a provable conclusion.

It is quite constructive to point out that Tolkien’s text does not contain data which provides a solution to a question.

Well, and does this indicate anything?

It indicates that, if Christopher Tolkien is not gliding over a difference between the manuscript and the published Fellowship of the Ring, that Tolkien included the word Morgul-knife in a text in which Minas Morgul did not occur and even Minas Tirirth had not yet been invented.

In an earlier text described on page 211 of The Return of the Shadow (HOME 6) Christopher Tolkien in his discussion of Gandalf and Frodo’s dialogue says that Gandalf called the weapon not Morgul-knife but:

… a deadly blade, the knife of the Necromancer which remains in the wound.

The text immediately following is close to that in the published text. In the next version of the text discussed on page 363 Christopher Tolkien remarks that the manuscript text is now very close to the published text and that only a few differences need be noticed. The first of these is:

The ‘Morgul-knife’ (FR p. 234) is still the ‘knife of the Necromancer’ (p. 211) …

Tolkien substituted ‘Morgul-knife’ for ‘knife of the Necromancer’ in the next text of this conversation in which ‘Minas Morgul’ is still unmentioned although the text runs past the place in the Council in which it occurs.

In short, in the first text in which ‘Morgul-knife’ occurs is almost certainly must mean ‘black-sorcery–knife’ as there is no Minas Morgul yet in existence.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Tolkien had already invented Minas Morgul at that time but had simply not written it down or that later, when Tolkien had written it down, he now reinterpreted ‘Morgul-knife’ in a new way. But when one is reduced to inventing such possibilities, then it is better to admit that one does not know which possibility is correct.