: : [BZZT!]

: : No Balrogs ever fell to their deaths. Two balrogs, mortally
: : wounded, FELL. Big difference.

: That is a matter of personal opinion. I don't recall reading
: anywhere that the Balrogs which fought Glorfindel and Gandalf
: were mortally wounded. Besides, Balrogs were pretty tough
: characters: Gothmog continued to fight even after having his
: arm hacked off.

I'll have to go with Tolkien on this one. He says quite clearly that Glorfindel (in the original story, with a non-Maiaric Balrog) gutted Balrog and it uttered a death-cry. Gandalf says he threw down his enemy, which means he vanquished him, killed him. It doesn't mean the Balrog was merely tossed from the mountain top. This is the same Balrog that, when caught off guard by Gandalf's breaking of the bridge, fell and still managed to lash out with its whip and drag Gandalf with it.

Only a dead or dying Balrog is NOT going to take Gandalf with it when he tosses it off a mountaintop. Earendil also threw down Ancalagon. Are we to suppose that Earendil was a man of such strength that he could throw a viable dragon -- the largest and most powerful of its kind -- from his ship in the sky with sufficient force to overcome its ability to fly so that it was killed when it hit the mountains below?

That's too much to accept, and I will not accept it, in either case. Dead and dying Balrogs, like dead and dying dragons, do not fly. That is the simplest explanation and there is no evidence to indicate that Tolkien was depicting anything more complicated.

: : And note that two winged dragons died after falling from the
: : sky, because they, like the balrogs, were mortally wounded.

: They were probably dead already before they fell from the sky.

Like the Balrog Gandalf mortally wounded, and the Balrog that Glorfindel mortally wounded.

: : : ...And why didn't the Balrog of Moria use his wings when he
: : : fell from the bridge and glide to a landing next to
: : : the underground lake instead of plunging right into it?...

: : For the same reason Gandalf didn't use his parachute-like
: : cloak: the author didn't write it that way (and we don't know
: : that it was a lake -- in fact, we have better reason to guess
: : it was a river).

: It is physically impossible to use a cloak as a parachute (or
: even as a glider). If such were the case, the Greeks would
: have been gliding since the days of Archimedes.

It is physically impossible for anything to breathe fire of its own accord. It is physically impossible for a man to live 2000 years. These things are taken for granted in Middle-earth. The point above is that Tolkien didn't write the passage the way your question implies he should have in order to prove a point. He wrote the passage to provide a brief account of a battle which lasted for days.

: Regarding the lake, I will have to reread the passage, but for
: the purpose of discussion it is irrelevant - water is water.

Water IS water, but you're insisting there was a lakeshore for the Balrog to land on (and implying it should have been able to ignore Gandalf enough to maneuver itself around, even though he was hacking at it with Glamdring all the way down).

: : You're disregarding the fact that the Balrog had lashed at
: : out Gandalf with its whip so as to drag him after it, and
: : that Gandalf fought with the Balrog on the way down.

: It could have simply been a desperation move - i.e., if I'm
: going down, you're going with me...

Yes, and it's just as likely the Balrog tricked Gandalf into destroying the bridge precisely so that it could drag him down into the chasm and thus get him away from the Company of the Ring.

: : Clearly battle, not sending him to his death, was what it had
: : on its mind. And since Gandalf said they fell for a long
: : time, it's a pretty good bet they didn't fall at a fast rate.

: All objects fall at the same rate (unless acted upon by an
: outside force)

[snip]

Balloons do not fall at the same rate as rocks. There are other aspects to physics which one must allow for, such as the presence of an atmosphere. Hence one cannot conclude that Gandalf and the Balrog fell at any particular rate of speed. We have too little information on the matter.

: Creative license is one thing, but I think Tolkien should have
: rethought this entire scene before submitting the final draft.

The passage is adequately written in my opinion. People just need to stop rewriting it for him in order to justify their assumptions. If you make no assumptions and don't alter the passage, there is only one logical conclusion to reach: we have too little information to know precisely what happened, or even to guess with any hope of verification at what happened.

: : (This all sounds so familiar....)

: The Encyclopedia of Arda has a rather long and unbiased
: discussion concerning the subject of Balrog wings...

I have long and unbiased discussions concerning the subject of Balrog wings (I assume nothing, I have no personal agenda, I accept the story as told without revising it).

The Encyclopedia of Arda, on the other hand, sets out to strongly imply (and thus prove) there are no wings and uses, as all other failed no-wings arguments, the illogic that the word "like" means there weren't real wings there.

They fail to take into consideration (as do many "no wingers") the fact that their argument, if it were valid, would mean there was no shadow because it, too, is introduced with the word "wings".

Furthermore, they make the same misapplication of "metaphor" that other people have. They are clearly relying upon the disproven arguments which have been posted to the news groups to make their case.

And the fact they completely misrepresent the argument in favor of wings in order to shoot it down reveals just how biased they actually are.

I do not link to the Encyclopedia of Arda because it's a highly untrustworthy work. It's simply not a credible source of information, and their apparently deliberate bastardization of well-documented discussions does neither them nor Tolkien fandom any credit.
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