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Re: Dragons again

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  Posted by Dave C-Q on September 13, 1999 at 14:51:05
In Reply to: Dragons again posted by Cuiviar on September 13, 1999 at 14:37:42:



: I'm just working from a not so good memory here, so forgive me if i get : this wrong. In the dragon debate a bit back, there was the conclusion that : the fire dragons were no longer around by the fourth age (smaug being the : last?)...but that there were other non-fire breathing dragons around, and : that Tolkien suggested that these were the dragons of (memory-blank here) : and Beowulf. : Beowulf's dragon most certainly was a fire dragon...that's my only point : here. : Basically, i'm just looking for a restatement of the conclusions, so i can : get it right. : -------------------------------

As far as anything gets concluded here, that wasn't it.

Seems as though Tolkien was playing "can-you-guess-what-I-mean-by-this?" again. ;) Seems as though that in the statement in LOTR (the Council of Elrond) that "There are now no longer any dragons who could melt a great ring" [paraphrase] the emphasis wasn't supposed to be on "no longer any dragons" but on "who could melt a great ring." Meaning that there were still fire-breathers around, but none great enough or powerful enough to melt one of the great rings.

Damn semantics! ;)

So it appears that Tolkien was of the mind that Smaug was not the last of the fire-breathers, just the last of the great dragons.

At least that's what I think was concluded...

Dave C-Q



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