BILBO BAGGINS’S ultimate test in his quest is his confrontation with that most feared of monsters: the fire-breathing Dragon. Let us examine the Dragon as a species. Let us look first at the word: DRAGON.
DRAGON~English
DRAGON~Old French
DRAKE~Old English
DRAKE~Old German
DRACO~Latin
DRAKON~Greek
DARC~Sanskrit
The Greek Drakon means Serpent, but is derived from the Greek word Drakein, meaning “look, glance, flash, gleam.” Thus, the Greek Drakon suggests “to see fiercely” and the idea of a watcher or fierce guardian. Similarly, the Sanskrit Darc has the implication “creature that looks on you with a deadly glance.”
In Greek and Sanskrit the words for this Monstrous Serpent convey the sense of a Watcher with a Deadly Glance that is also a guardian of treasure or a sacred site. It also suggests a creature with the capacity to see Prophetic Visions, and to “see” in the sense of being in possession of Ancient Arcane Knowledge.
In Ancient Greece, Dragons guarded treasures like the Golden Fleece, but more often guarded sacred wells or caves of a sacred and prophetic nature. The most famous was the Dragon at the Delphic Oracle that the sun god Apollo slew with his arrow. Thereafter, he lay deep beneath the ground, but the vapours of his breath still escaped through a crevasse and put the priestesses in a trance that allowed them to prophecy the future.
As professor of Anglo-Saxon, J. R. R. Tolkien was an authority on Beowulf, and has acknowledged that “Beowulf is among my most valued sources” for his tale of the Hobbit. The two stories are not very obviously similar; however, there are strong parallels in the plot structure of the Dragon episodes of Beowulf and The Hobbit.
Beowulf’s Dragon is awakened by a thief who finds his way into the Dragon’s cavern and steals a jewelled cup from the Dragon treasure hoard. This is duplicated by Bilbo Baggins’s burglary when he also steals a jewelled cup from the treasure hoard. Both thieves escape unscathed; however, other heroes die and nearby Human settlements in both tales suffer terribly from the Dragon’s wrath.
The Hobbit is the Beowulf Dragon story from the thief’s point of view. However, Beowulf’s Dragon is given no personality and is not even named. If comparisons must be made, Tolkien’s Dragon is closer to the crafty and evil Dragon of the Volsung Saga.
DRAGONS AND WORMS
In Old English and Norse literature~and most European mythology~Dragon and Worm are used interchangeably to describe the same monster. However, the word Worm has a very different root-meaning related to the physical characteristics associated with snakes and serpents.
Snakes and Serpents are also twisting and turning creatures, and in most modern languages of northern Europe these words became entwined with the word Worm and its variations: Wurm is the German for snake; Worm is the Dutch for snake, and Orm means snake in both Danish and Swedish.
Snake and Serpent, however, come from different root-meanings, which add other dimensions to our composite monster.
SNAKE is from the Prehistoric German root:
SNAG, meaning crawl, while SERPENT is from the Latin
SERPERE, meaning crawl, creep.
MONSTER = DRAGON + WORM + SNAKE + SERPENT
RIDDLE OF THE DRAGON
In the creation of his winged, fire-breathing Dragon, Tolkien took what he considered the best from the collective Dragon mythology of western cultures. He also borrowed elements suggested by the words Dragon and Worm. He then chose a name that would conjure up the ultimate Dragon ~a perfect villain, completely evil and supremely intelligent.
That character was realized in a single name: Smaug.
To the contemporary reader, there is one immediate association: Smaug is a pun on the modern word smog, meaning foul polluted smoke and fog; this implies evil brimstone smoke and vapour exhaled by a fire-breathing Dragon.
Yet it was the conundrum of an ancient Anglo-Saxon spell~rather than an air-pollution problem~ that inspired Tolkien in the creation of Smaug the Magnificent. It began with an Old English spell for protection against Dragons: wid smeogan wyrme, which translates as “against the penetrating worm.”
THE FIREWORK DRAGON
Fortunately for most Hobbits, their experience of Dragons was almost entirely limited to ancient tales of Elvish Days when it was reputed a multitude of creeping, crawling and flying monsters stalked Middle-Earth. Many Hobbits of the Shire chose to disbelieve these legends, although they still loved to hear deliciously scary legends of Dragons and heros told over and over again.
Knowing of the Hobbits fascination for these fearsome beasts, whenever Gandalf the Wizard agreed to create one of his magnificent firework displays for a special Hobbit celebration, the climax of the evening was the appearance of a terrifying, flying, swooping Firework Dragon who would light up the night sky above the Shire. This brilliant, exploding and roaring of the Dragons, thrilled its Hobbit audience.
Tolkien decided the spell was not actually a spell, but a riddle. It was not the spell itself, but the answer to the riddle it posed that granted protection from the Dragon. So, to solve the riddle, Tolkien first asked: “How do you protect yourself against the penetrating worm?”
Only by discovering the secret of the Dragon’s name can you defeat the Dragon. Of course, this is a variation of the Rumpelstiltskin story~and a dozen other fairy tales. All of these tales are based on the belief that naming is essentially a magical act. It is a shamanic principle shared by all tribal cultures and is based on the observation that you cannot control what you do not know. This is often summed up in aphorisms such as “know thine enemy.”
Tolkien believed that (as with all good riddles) the answer was to be found within the riddle itself: wid smeogan wyrme. So Tolkien asked himself why the Dragon was described as the smeogan or “penetrating” worm. He believed that smeogan was the clue to the secret of the Dragon’s name.
Tolkien observed that the adjective smeogan (meaning penetrating) and its verb smeagan (to inquire into), along with the related smeagol (burrowing, worming into) and its verb smugan (to creep through) were all derived from the reconstructed Prehistoric German verb smugan (to squeeze through a hole).
SMEOGAN~penetrating (Old English) from the verb
SMEAGAN~to inquire into (Old English)
SMEAGOL~burrowing, worming into (Old English), from the verb
SMUGAN~to creep through (Old English)
All these Old English words derive from the Prehistoric German verb
SMUGAN~to squeeze through a hole
Prehistoric German verb Smugan converted to the past tense becomes
SMAUG~squeezed through a hole
By converting this verb to its past tense, Tolkien came up with the word Smaug, which he himself termed “a low philological jest.”
Despite (or because of) the low jest, Tolkien liked the sound of Smaug. He felt it carried the collective meaning of composite parts in Old English: penetrating, inquiring, burrowing, worm-ing into, and creeping through.
Furthermore, Smaug was the adjectival form of the Old English verb smeagan, which translates as subtle, crafty.
This was exactly what Tolkien wanted to convey in the name of a Dragon: a subtle and sophisticated monster full of crafty twists and turns.
SMEOGAN~penetrating
SMEAGAN~inquire into
SMAUG~subtle, crafty
Tolkien’s solution to the riddle of the Dragon’s name: Smaug
HOBBIT AND DRAGON
Armed with the One Ring of invisibility and the sword Sting, Bilbo Baggins had completed the ideal basic training as thief and Hobbler by the time he encountered the Dragon. It became increasingly clear that the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins was the perfect choice for burglar-hero to pillage the treasury of the Dragon.
After all, the Hobbit had a great deal in common with the Dragon. Bilbo Baggins was a Hobbit (holbytlan) and smial-dweller, a hole-builder and hole-dweller. Much the same could be said of Smaug, who squeezed through a hole in the mountain to hoard his treasure.
Even more obviously, the Gollum and the Dragon had much in common: Smeagol (worming into, burrowing) and Smaug (a worm squeezed through a hole) are both names constructed from the Old English words smeogan (penetrating) and smeagan (to inquire into).
As Bilbo Baggins had already penetrated the mountain maze of Smeagol Gollum and outwitted that monster in a contest of riddles, he was especially well qualified for his encounter with the Dragon.
Thus it is obvious why a Hobbit was hired to confront the Dragon.
Bilbo Baggins knew how to use the name of the Dragon against the monster and at the same time was wise enough to avoid revealing his own true name to the monster. With his inquiring Hobbitish mind he liked riddles and looking for the roots and beginning of things. Furthermore, it takes a life-long hole-dweller, used to creeping through burrows and worming his way through secret passageways, to penetrate the devious stratagems of the Dragon.
Bilbo Baggins inquired into the meaning of Smaug and found that the monster was indeed subtle and crafty. But he also found that the inquiring mind of Smaug suffered from idle curiosity. Consequently, Bilbo discovered that the Dragon could be distracted with riddles while he spied upon the Dragon and planned his escape.
Bilbo found that Smaug’s greatest vice was his vanity. He realized that Smaug was Smug. It was Smaug’s arrogance and contempt for his foes that rendered him liable to succumb to the Hobbit’s flattery and accidentally reveal his one mortal weakness.
So how does the Hobbit use the answer to the Riddle of the Dragon’s Name: “against the penetrating worm?”
How can the penetrating worm be penetrated and slain?
The answer is in the name:
SMAUG squeezed through a hole.
Bilbo Baggins learned the secret of Smaug’s mortality: a bald patch in the diamond waistcoat covering the Dragon’s belly. Soon after, the Hobbit sent word to the hero Bard the Bowman that Smaug the Fire Dragon could only be slain if the hero’s arrow could be squeezed through a hole in the jewelled armour covering the Dragon’s belly.
When the arrow found its mark, the mighty winged Fire Dragon, Smaug the Golden, was slain and fell from the sky.