Steeds
After losing their horses at the Ford of Bruinen, the Nazgûl returned to Mordor and reappeared mounted on hideous flying beasts; Beregond called them "Hell Hawks". Tolkien describes them as "fell beasts", though Tolkien applies the adjective fell ("fierce, cruel") to a variety of other creatures throughout The Lord of the Rings — even at one point to Gandalf. In a letter, he calls the winged mounts "Nazgûl-birds". In the absence of a proper name, derivative works sometimes press "fellbeast" or "fell-beast" into service.
The flying steeds figure prominently in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, where the Witch-king of Angmar, the Lord of the Nazgûl, rides one against King Théoden of Rohan. Tolkien describes the Witch-king's mount thus:
... it was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was ...
A few paragraphs later, it is said to attack with "beak and claw".
Tolkien once wrote that he "did not intend the steed of the Witch-king to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl'", while acknowledging that it was "obviously ... pterodactylic and owes much" to the "new ... mythology of the 'Prehistoric'", and might even be "a last survivor of older geological eras."
In Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, one of the Nazgûl is shown riding these creatures. In the Rankin-Bass 1980 animated version of The Return of the King, the Nazgûl ride winged horses, although the Witch-king does ride a creature more in line with the book when he confronts Éowyn. In Peter Jackson's film trilogy based on The Lord of the Rings, all nine Nazgûl are shown onscreen riding them. Jackson's creatures explicitly differ from Tolkien's description in that they have teeth instead of beaks. The Nazgûl use them in battle more extensively than in the book. In the film the Witch-king's mount is largely responsible for the death of Théoden and his horse Snowmane, while in the book Snowmane is killed by a "black dart", crushing Théoden as he falls. As confirmed in the films' audio commentary, the design of the creatures was based largely on illustrations by artist John Howe.
Read more about this topic: Fellbeast
Famous quotes containing the word steeds:
“The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus’ gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin to ope their golden eyes;
With every thing that pretty is, my lady sweet, arise;
Arise, arise!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)