Hi! (and Fell Beasts...)

[Son of Númenor]

I have always taken for granted that these creatures were simply mythical inventions of Tolkien, alluding to or based partially on dinosaurs - pterodactyls and their like, in particular.

The passage you quote, Dwimmerlaik, is one of my favorite descriptive passages in The Lord of the Rings. (Welcome to the Downs, by the way. )

Cheers for the replies so far and I've just realized something:

A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil.

In hideous eyrie.. Doesn't that mean a 'hideous eagle nest' ? So maybe they were cross breeds of some ancient creature, like the Bats and the Eagles, and were probably based on pterodactyls as Son of Numenor(Ace avatar btw) said!

Pretty cool eh!!

Dwimmerlaik

[Sapphire_Flame]

That's an interesting theory, Dwimmerlaik. Personally, I've always pictured the fell beasts as being pterodactyls, or something similar.

This question was actually put to Tolkien in a letter. A woman wrote to him and asked "Did the Witch-king ride a pterodactyl at the siege of Gondor?" The good professor replied:

Yes and no. I did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl', and often is drawn [...]. But obviously it is pterodactylic and owes much to the new mythology [of the Prehistoric], and its description even provides a sort of way in which it could be a last survivor of older geological eras.

(This is from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Letter #211)

Abedithon le,

~ Aranel ~