The History of the Hobbit
Page 66
Dragons are one of the most persistent features in Tolkien’s work, appearing in the Silmarillion tradition (Glorund the Golden, the ‘dragons of the north’ who destroy Gondolin, Ancalagon the Black), in both of his children’s tales that preceded The Hobbit (Roverandom’s Great White Dragon of the Moon and Farmer Giles of Ham’s Chrysophylax Dives) as well as in the Father Christmas Letters (cf. the 1927 letter, the full version of which appears in Letters from Father Christmas pages 32–4), in several of his poems (‘The Hoard’, ‘The Dragon’s Visit’), in his scholarly essays (‘On Fairy-Stories’ and particularly ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’), and of course in his art: in addition to his illustrations for The Hobbit, Roverandom, and the Silmarillion tales, all of which have some featuring dragons, see the dragon-drawings reproduced in Artist & Illustrator (H-S#48 & 49), only two out of a number of uncollected pieces. A dragon (almost certainly Smaug himself) can even be seen in one of the Father Christmas Letters, painted on the cave walls along with prehistoric beasts in the letter for 1932 (see Plate VI [detail] and Letters from Father Christmas, page 75), and a tiny toy dragon belonging to a monster child appears in one untitled miscellaneous sketch (H-S#77). A recognized authority on the subject who even lectured on dragons at Oxford’s Natural History Museum,5 Tolkien argued that, far from being a worn-out folktale cliché, dragons were eminently fitted to serve as the supreme challenge for any hero. Like the elves, whom he rescued from being treated as dainty flower fairies, Tolkien also redeemed the dragon and re-established it as the greatest of all fantasy monsters. There is a reason that the world’s pre-eminent role-playing game, which borrows liberally from folklore, mythology, legendry, and modern fantasy, is named Dungeons & Dragons rather than featuring any other monster in the title.
Turning from Tolkien’s theory to his practice, we can divide the dragons appearing in his work into essentially three groups. The first, and least important, are those who remain undifferentiated from one another in the background of the stories, although their deeds en masse may be of importance: the dragons of the north who destroy the dwarves’ settlements in the Grey Mountains (LotR.1124, 1109), the host of dragons who destroyed Gondolin (‘for dragons it was that destroyed that city many ages ago’ – cf. page 115), those dragons in Farmer Giles of Ham who consider ‘knights merely mythical’ but nonetheless remain in their lairs far from Giles’ land, the various lesser moon-dragons mentioned in Roverandom who wreak such havoc in the Father Christmas Letters when the Man in the Moon is temporarily absent (Letters from Father Christmas, 1927 letter), and of course the great host of winged dragons who nearly defeat the Army of the Valar in the final battle that once and for all ends the First Age. Although only described in general terms, these background dragons are important mainly because they provide a context, evidence that the few individual dragons with whom we meet are not the only ones of their kind but typical of the species.6
Secondly, there are those dragons who are merely a name (Ancalagon the Black, Scatha the Worm) or deed (the nameless cold-drake – that is, a flameless dragon – that forced Durin’s Folk to flee the Grey Mountains) but who are given no line of dialogue or any characteristic that would mark them as individual personalities. While we would naturally like to know more about all of these, even in their abbreviated state they too serve an important purpose in the legendarium. Every collection of real-world myths is of necessity incomplete; there is always some story that has been lost, some figure who is reduced to a bare name or fact (e.g., the Old English ‘Earendel’, the ‘recovery’ of whose myth sparked Tolkien’s creation of his legendarium). The inclusion of such figures, of obvious significance but shorn of all detail, helps make Tolkien’s created myth seem much more like those surviving mythologies painstakingly compiled by generations of scholars. For example, we are fortunate that the story of Wayland the Smith has survived (e.g., in the poem ‘The Lay of Völund’ [Völundarqviða], part of the Elder Edda), so that we do not have to puzzle it out from such allusive evidence as the illustration of one scene from the legend on the Franks Casket (cf. the frontispiece to Dronke, The Poetic Edda, volume II [1997]), but the once-popular story of his father Wade the Giant has been lost (cf. R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of Medieval England [1952], pages 19–22). Similarly, we have lost the stories that once explained geographical features such as the chalk-figures now known as the White Horse of Uffington (which may in fact be intended to represent a dragon; cf. Paul Newman, Lost Gods of Albion [1997]), the Cerne Giant, or the Long Man of Wilmington, while image and story alike have vanished in the case of other hill-figures such as the Red Horse of Tysoe [destroyed 1800] or the pair of giants known as Gogmagog [destroyed in the 1660s] that once overlooked Plymouth harbour. In a chronicle or condensed account such as those represented by the appendices of The Lord of the Rings or the later parts of the 1977 Silmarillion there may be room for only the barest facts, but even here Tolkien makes sure that dragons are represented, including some that would be wholly unknown if we had only the major Silmarillion stories (e.g., the stories of Beren & Lúthien, Túrin, and Tuor) to go by or indeed the main story of The Lord of the Rings shorn of its Appendices.
Thirdly and most importantly, we have those dragons who are presented with fully developed personalities, true characters in their respective works: Smaug, Glorund, Chrysophylax Dives (whose name simply means ‘Rich Treasure-Guardian’), and, to a lesser extent, the unnamed dragons appearing in ‘The Dragon’s Visit’, ‘The Hoard’, and Roverandom. Of these, Glorund (also known at various times and in various texts as Glórung [1926 ‘Sketch’], Glómund [1930 Quenta], and finally Glaurung [‘Grey Annals’, published Silmarillion]), the Father of Dragons, is the most purely malicious; devious in preferring to inflict misery rather than indulge in straightforward destruction, as when he enspells Túrin and Nienor rather than simply killing them. He is also the most powerful of all Tolkien’s dragons, save only Ancalagon the Black (of whom more later), and the one who has the most impact on the mythology, being not only deeply enmeshed in the Túrin story but fighting in two of the six great battles of Beleriand: the Fourth Battle, Dagor Bragollach (‘the Battle of Sudden Flame’; Silm. Chapter XVIII) and the Fifth Battle, Nirnaeth Arnoediad (‘[the Battle of] Unnumbered Tears’; Silm. Chapter XX) – incidentally, the only two in this sequence of battles which Morgoth won – as well as an earlier sally when he was ‘yet young and scarce half-grown’ (Silm. 116; cf. also Smaug’s having been ‘young and tender’ at the time of his descent upon Dale, DAA.282). Smaug can destroy a dwarf-kingdom and powerful human city at the same time, while Chrysophylax, though not overbold (FGH 25 & 58), twice routs the knights of the Middle Kingdom (‘all the King’s horses and all the King’s men’; FGH 59 & 72) and the green dragon of ‘The Dragon’s Visit’ handily destroys the entire village of Bimble Bay when provoked, despite the best efforts of its fire brigade.7 But Glorund is in a different league entirely: he leads balrogs into battle (Silm.151), destroys whole armies (‘Elves and Men withered before him’; Silm.192), lays waste one of the great elven cities of old (‘Glaurung came in full fire against the Doors of [Nargothrond], and overthrew them, and passed within’; Silm.213), and even commands orc armies and sets himself up as lord over his own realm under Morgoth’s overlordship (‘he gathered Orcs to him and ruled as a dragon-king’; 1930 Quenta, HME IV.129), rather like the much earlier Tevildo in ‘The Tale of Tinúviel’ and as Thû the Necromancer (i.e., Sauron) does from Wizard’s Isle (Tol Sirion) in ‘The Lay of Leithian’. And we should remember that these elven armies he opposed were not made up of wood-elves or wild-elves but Eldar; it takes Prince Fingon and a host of elven archers to repel him when he is still young and not yet at his full strength, and at his height he plays a devastating role in the Fourth and Fifth Battles and destroys the mighty Noldor of Nargothrond, a hidden city full of elven warriors, Finrod’s men, who are probably the peers of those three Elrond sends out much later against the Nazgûl (Glorfindel and two others; cf. LotR.226).
In his ‘malicious wisdom’, piercing eye and hypnotic voice, nigh-unstoppable might, gloating possessiveness over treasure, and vulnerable underbelly, Glorund obviously served as Tolkien’s model for all the dragons who came after him, most especially Smaug, the greatest dragon of latter days (LotR.1109).
(ii)
Smaug the Magnificent
It is entirely in keeping with the ‘Children of Morgoth’ theme running throughout The Hobbit that, while Tolkien had established in the Silmarillion writings that dragons were created by Morgoth,8 Smaug by contrast is solitary and independent. Unlike Glorund, he comes alone when he descends upon the Mountain, much as do Chrysophylax Dives in Farmer Giles of Ham and the green dragon in ‘The Dragon’s Visit’. And although like his progenitor Smaug too sets himself up as a king over his usurped halls – cf. ‘They shall see me and remember who is King under the Mountain’ (page 515; cf. DAA.288) and ‘“Which king?” said [Bard] . . . “As like as not it is . . . the dragon, the only King under the Mountain we have ever known”’ (pages 547–8; cf. DAA.302–3) – his is a kingship in name only. Smaug is never seen commanding armies of orcs or following anybody’s command; he has no connection with the other scattered survivors of Morgoth’s minions who appear elsewhere in the book, such as the Necromancer, the goblins of the Misty Mountains, or the great bats of Mirkwood who later appear in the Battle of Five Armies (cf. Morgoth’s messenger-bats in ‘The Lay of Leithian’ Canto XI lines 3402–3408a [HME III.278–9] and Silm.178).
This represents a different conception not just from the earlier Silmarillion stories, in which all evil things were united under Morgoth’s command (although they also sought to advance their own interests, as when Glorund first serves Morgoth’s bidding by destroying Nargothrond and then indulges himself by claiming all its treasures), but also from the Lord of the Rings era that followed, where once again the various evil races and beings of Middle-earth are falling under the command of (or at least into allegiance with) a Dark Lord: as Gandalf says of Gollum, ‘Mordor draws all wicked things, and the Dark Power was bending all its will to gather them there’ (LotR.72). In short, at the time The Hobbit was written (1930–32), Tolkien seems to have conceived of Middle-earth as no longer having a Dark Lord since Morgoth’s fall. Morgoth’s taint remained, but the evil creatures that once served him no longer had any unified purpose. Not until the creation of the Númenórean material (The Lost Road [circa 1936] and ‘The Fall of Númenor’ [ibid.]; cf. HME V and see also The Notion Club Papers [circa 1944–6] in HME IX), shortly before The Hobbit’s publication, does the idea of Sauron (whom Tolkien in his 1965 radio interview described as Morgoth’s ‘petty lieutenant’) assuming Morgoth’s mantle as a second Dark Lord seem to have arisen. This latter concept obviously underlies The Lord of the Rings (as reflected in that work’s title), and later as part of his work to reconcile Bilbo’s world to Middle-earth as it had developed in the sequel Tolkien deftly re-envisioned The Hobbit by presenting Bilbo’s adventure as taking place during a lull in Sauron’s activities, just before the long-banished Dark Lord (quiescent or incognito since the loss of the One Ring at the beginning of the Age) reasserted himself, dropping his guise as ‘the Necromancer’ and reclaiming his title as Lord of Mordor (cf. ‘The Tale of Years’, Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings).
In the post-Lord of the Rings period Tolkien would even speculate on how Sauron might have made use of Smaug, had the dragon survived to the time of the War of the Ring. Gandalf believed him fully capable of destroying Rivendell and ravaging Eriador, including the Shire (‘The Quest of Erebor’, Unfinished Tales pp. 322 & 326). In fact, Bilbo’s sudden mental image while listening to the dwarves’ song during the unexpected party –
. . . in the wood beyond the Water a flame leapt up . . . and he thought of plundering dragons lighting on his quiet hill and setting it all in flames. Then he shuddered . . . (Pryftan Fragment, page 7)
– which almost dissuades him from going on the quest, becomes oddly prophetic when, a quarter-century after writing this passage, Tolkien decided that this is what would have come to pass had the hobbit not joined Thorin & Company and thus set in motion the chain of events that brought about the dragon’s demise before the War of the Ring.9 This is not to say that Smaug would have been under Sauron’s command as Glorund had been under Morgoth’s, any more than Shelob or Caradhras or the Watcher in the Water were, merely that Sauron would have been able to stir him up to new villainy that would surpass any destruction he wrought in his youth.
Thus, while clearly greatly influenced by Tolkien’s earlier portrayal of Glorund – who in turn had been inspired by what was for Tolkien the quintessential dragon, Fafnir the great, guardian of the Nibelung treasure, a foe killable only by the greatest of all saga-heroes, Sigurd Fáfnirsbane – Smaug is also quite distinct from the great foalókë of the First Age.10 One major cause of this divergence is that with Smaug Tolkien is drawing not just on his own legendry but also on another outside literary source, one which dominated his professional scholarship during the 1930s: Beowulf. Tolkien said in his Beowulf essay that there were only three great dragons in Old Norse and Old English literature: the Midgard Serpent (Miðgarðsormr or the Middle-earth Wyrm), Fafnir, and Beowulf’s dragon (‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, page 9). Fafnir, as we have already seen, became the primary model or inspiration for Glorund. The Midgard Serpent, whom Tolkien described as the fit adversary for the gods themselves rather than merely human heroes (it is foretold in Völuspá and the Prose Edda that in the battle after the destruction of the sun and moon, Ragnarök, he will slay and be slain by Thor, the greatest warrior of all the gods of Valhalla and most popular of all the Old English and Norse gods in pre-Christian times), found his analogue in Tolkien’s legendarium in Ancalagon the Black, the greatest of all the winged dragons, who almost won the day for the Dark Lord in the apocalyptic battle that ended the Elder Days (the Great Battle or War of Wrath; cf. Silm.251–2). Dragons play an important role in this ‘Battle of Battles’ from its very first appearance in the 1926 ‘Sketch of the Mythology’ (HME IV.39); Ancalagon makes his first appearance in the revised (Q II) version of the 1930 Quenta (contrast HME IV.160 with IV.157) and also features in such later works as the ‘(Earliest) Annals of Beleriand’ ([circa 1930]; HME IV.309), the ‘(Later) Annals of Beleriand’ ([circa 1937]; HME V.144) and the ‘Conclusion’ of the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion (HME V.329). Ancalagon’s mythological significance within the legendarium, and his parallelism to the Midgard Serpent, were both significantly enhanced near the very end of Tolkien’s life through a few late [post-1968] references in Tolkien’s linguistic writings to ‘the prophecy of Andreth’ (a wise woman, one of the two main characters in Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, or ‘The Debate of Finrod and Andreth’, HME X.301–66), which foretells that ‘the Great Dragon, Ancalagon the Black’ was to return to fight in the Last Battle (Dagor Dagorath) when Morgoth returns from Outside to destroy the world at the end of time, where he was fated to be slain by Túrin, who would return from the dead for that final deed (HME XII.374–5).
The third of these great dragons, Beowulf’s bane, dominates the final third of the Old English poem just as Grendel dominates the first third (and just as Smaug dominates the final third of The Hobbit, even after his demise). Beowulf was a major source for both The Hobbit and the Rohan sections of The Lord of the Rings, and we need not explore all the parallels here – indeed, a book-length study has been devoted to just the influence of Beowulf on The Hobbit (Bonniejean Christensen’s Beowulf and The Hobbit: Elegy into Fantasy in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Creative Technique [dissertation, Univ. of S. Calif., 1969]), a whole chapter of which is devoted to elements of Beowulf’s dragon adapted to the Smaug chapters.11 But the way in which Tolkien selected elements that fit what he needed for his story is instructive of his complex relationship with all his outside sources: he was neither a naive reader nor a passive borrower but transformed and remade what he chose to take (consciously or otherwise) from earlier authors
.12 For example, in both Beowulf and The Hobbit the dragon lairs in a hill or barrow where he guards ancient treasure for centuries, unmolested by any outsider, until stirred up by the theft of a cup from his hoard he embarks on an orgy of destruction which leads to the destruction of a nearby town and shortly thereafter his own death. But the Beowulf-dragon had discovered a hidden hoard and claimed it for his own, while Smaug, like the unnamed dragon in Tolkien’s poem ‘The Hoard’,13 steals his treasure and kills its previous owner(s); the Beowulf-dragon has as much right to the treasure as anybody, while Smaug’s ownership is tainted with blood from the start. So too the dragon’s arousal leads to the death of an old king (King Beowulf after half a century leading the Geats, old Thorin after a century as leading Durin’s folk in exile and soon after his becoming King under the Mountain) and the emergence of a young warrior who suddenly steps forward to become hero and then king (Wiglaf the Wægmunding, Bard the Bowman). But again the differences are many: Beowulf proudly orders his honor-guard to hold back and not interfere in the fight and is only saved from throwing his life away when one young warrior disobeys his command and rushes to his aid, helping him to kill the dragon; Thorin is surrounded by his closest companions when mortally wounded in one last desperate heroic sally. Beowulf’s dying thoughts are of the treasure he has won, but after his death his people bury it with him in his barrow; Thorin’s death-speech renounces greed and gold in favor of the virtues Bilbo embodies (see page 679 & DAA.348), and his treasure (sans Orcrist and the Arkenstone) is distributed among his people and their neighbors, enriching the land.