Speaking to Dragons…a very rich concept, isn’t it? Days of the Dragon is exploring the dragons from myth and literature who talk. Come along! You might just learn a thing or two about HOW to talk to dragons!
If you’d like to read the first Days of the Dragon about speaking to dragons, go here: Speaking to Dragons: Chrysophylax the Rich
Glaurung the Golden is another dragon from the mythology of Middle Earth as recorded by Professor J.R.R. Tolkien. Glaurung was a formidable and wily creature. He was a dragon of the First Age, created by the malevolent Morgoth, a fallen member of the Valar. Morgoth (sub) created many dark creatures: balrogs, orcs, werewolves, spiders…and dragons. Quite a few dragons, in fact.
Sidenote: While all of Morgoth’s dragons were created from darkness, not all dragons in the Middle Earth mythology were evil. I’ll be writing soon on the Tolkien’s dragons who guard the Door of Night.
Glaurung was the first of Morgoth’s dragon creations; though it took the dragon many years to grow to full maturity, when he did emerge from Morgoth’s dark fortress, he was unstoppable.
Glaurung had no wings, but he was fire-breathing, he could speak, and he had dark magic in his gaze. He was able to hypnotize and inject forgetfulness into both human and Elf. He also came to have a particular delight in tormenting one human in particular: Turin, son of Hurin.
Glaurung spoke several times to Turin, always taunting him with evil words of untruth. Glaurung even spoke to Turin’s sister, upon whom the dragon had cast a spell of forgetfulness, revealing to her a terrible truth, (that the dragon had manipulated into fruition):
“Hail, Nienor, daughter of Hurin. We meet again ere the end. I give thee joy that thou hast found thy brother at last….”
Yes, Glaurung’s spell of forgetfulness had resulted in Turin and his sister, Nienor, falling into an incestuous love and ultimately resulting in their deaths.
The takeaway from this dragon tale is 1) The gift of speech is not synonymous with integrity, even with dragons, and 2) be wary of a dragon’s gaze.
If you would like to read more about Glauring, The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien has the entire tale. The Silmarillion has a shorter version of the same tale.
More literary and mythological speaking dragons coming in future Days of the Dragon…until then, remember the advice of Gandalf the Grey, “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” (From The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien).
Virginia Chandler 