[Findegil]

quote:If you think Legolas did understand that the beast in front was Balrog out of his education by Thranduil, then I will ask you why didn't Aragorn identify the Balrog as what it is?

How do we know he didn't? Merely because he didn't shout about it as Legolas did?
But it is completely possible that, though Aragorn had roughly the same or better education than Legolas, he simply had not been taught precisely what a Balrog looks like. There would have been little need - they were supposed all to have been destroyed.

Because Aragorn even after he had time to think of it and was in saftey in Lórien he did not use the proper name for the Balrog even so he had heard it from Legolas and Gandalf. If this isn't eveidence for Aragorn not knowing about Balrogs, I do not know what you will call evidence.

This sounds very unlikely. Never even to have heard of Balrogs would require that he had missed huge portions of the tales of the first age.

You are right it sounds anlikely, but who else will explain his ingnorence of the Balrog that he shows?

But Legolas is quite explicitly the son of Thranduil: "There was also a strange Elf clad in green and brown, Legolas, a messenger from his father, Thranduil, the King of the Elves of Northern Mirkwood." (LotR II 2).

I never said that he wasn't the son of Thranduil. He clearly was. But when he was born is not said and so no evidence is given that he was in exictence when his father and grandfather moved form Beleriand to the Anduin their is also no evidence for the revers.

It seems extremely likely that we would have at least some reference - particularly considering that Tolkien clearly thought the matter of Glorfindel's reincarnation so significant, and devoted at least two essays to it.

I don't think so. JRR Tolkien din't read FoG when he wrote the essay concerning Glorfindel. Legolas has really a very small role in that story. So it is likely that Tolkien even missed that he had used that name in that story. And only writing this esay's he observed that Galdor of the Havens was also porbably identical to Galdor of Gondolin.

Again, I don't think that Tolkien thought of Legolas of Mirkwood being the same person as Legolas of Gondolin. But we can not really say what solution he might have found had he marked that he reused that name. (We have to think of Glorfindel and Galdor - both had not been in print, so Tolkien was free to change the names in FoG but he didn't. He did come up with a reborn Elf and a possible long lingering on the hither shore of the Lord of peoples of the Tree.) What evidence had we have of these without the essays? For Glorfindel there was a remark in the mansucripts of the council of Elrond that he will tell of his ancestry in Gondolin. But for Galdor we hav nothing.

And now thinks become even more complex: The elf from Mirkwood that brought the message of Gollums escape to the council was at first named Galdor.
So we have:
Legolas of the house of the tree in Gondolin
Galdor lord of the house of Gondolin
Galdor of Mirkwood renamed to Legols
Galdor of the Havens

Tolkien in an after view says that Galdor of Havens could have been the same as Galdor of Gondolin.

I do NOT argue that it is cannon that Legolas of FoG was the same as Legols of LotR. But I can't see enough evidence to state it otherwise as cannon. Both way's are possible even if seconde is more likely. That's all we can say nothing more. If someone wants to belive in the one way or the other we cannot ultimatley deney the possibilty.

Respectfully
Findegil