Why not Ecthelion?

[Galin]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

Your entire argument is just stretching the what is possible.

Well more than one possibility makes things more complicated, especially since, included within my statement is the idea that not everyone has read HME -- that alone makes it a 'bit' complicated in my opinion, at least as far as discussion goes.

1. We have been through this and we have seen that Christopher Tolkien has the right to edit any unpublished material he liked. What he says and edits is good enough for me.

Yes let's bring canon considerations into the matter. That never complicates things

2. Tolkien was a busy man and had a very demanding full time job. He never got to rewrite many things that he planned to do. It's a very weak argument to use that he had not rewritten the stories as an excuse. Especially, since it's very easy to edit the number of balrogs. More importantly he never in later work suggested that there were numerous balrogs again.

I never say above that by not revising a given passage containing many Balrogs 'proves' that Tolkien was of two minds, but rather that it doesn't exactly make the matter as cut and dry as you seem to be trying to make it now...

'Sauron came against Orodreth, the warden of the tower, with a host of Balrogs.' Of the Ruin of Beleriand And the Fall of Fingolfin [Christopher Tolkien edited this to: '... named Gorthaur, came against Orodreth, the warden of the tower upon Tol Sirion.' Of The Ruin Of Beleriand]

But not only did Tolkien not revise 'host of Balrogs' in the early 1950s -- while making revisions to this same passage [passage 143], Christopher Tolkien even notes a revision to passage 143 on LQ2, which puts this revision [even if more minor than the early 1950s revision], in the same time phase as the '3 or 7' Balrog note...

... at least generally, so we don't know which comes later, the revision to 143 or the marginal note, and now one has to argue that Tolkien maybe just missed this reference, even on LQ2. Well, maybe is part of the point: it helps complicate matters 'a bit' because people will have different opinions about how to view these things.

3. It simply does not fit with the story that the likes of Tuor or Ecthelion were killing Balrogs by the handful. We have seen that Gandalf died fighting one and it was a real threat to Lothlorien, that contained Galadriel.

I haven't said otherwise. Still it's a fact [and not that you said otherwise] that after Tolkien wrote the Moria passage he still imagined very many Balrogs existing in Middle-earth in the First Age.

4. Tolkien constantly refers to Balrogs as demons throughout his letters and notes. So just, because he refers to Glorfindel's battle with 'demon' hardly implies he planned to change it from a Balrog to some other beast.

Well, all I said was that someone else raised this, and that I thought it very unlikely myself.

In any case the point there was, in response to you bringing up this statement from JRRT about Glorfindel, was that Tolkien's note about Glorfindel's fight with the demon possibly needing revision tells us nothing about Balrog numbers.

So I am sorry to say the matter is a very simple one. There were no more than 7 Balrogs in the story as we know it and no reason that there should even be more than 3.

Yes and The Lord of the Rings is about a short guy trying to get rid of some evil jewelry