An interesting parallel in Wagner, where the dragon Fafner held the ring in his hoard until killed by Siegfried.
Never mind.
Don’t they mention in LOTR that the only ways to destroy the ring are a) Mt. Doom or b) get a dragon to eat it, but choice b) is discounted since all the dragons are dead. Conceivably, if smaug had eaten Bilbo, ring and all, the entireity of LOTR would’ve been unnecessary.
Also its fun to picture Gandalf kicking himself at the beginning of LOTR when he’d actually had the One Ring and one of only two things in the world that could destroy it in the same room back during The Hobbit, but he hadn’t taken advantage of it.
Not quite. Gandalf says that some of the Great Rings had been eaten by dragons and thus destroyed (presumably be means those worn by Dwarves), but that no dragon in existence burned hot enough to melt the One. Apparently he had seen the specs for Sauron’s ring, obtained with Barudur was overrun at the end of the Second Age.
Yes, but if Smaug eats it the effect is the same-it’s out of reach of pretty much everyone.
In the short term, maybe, but then, so would solutions like throwing it into the sea. Eventually, though, it’d turn up again. And even if it’s out of reach, Sauron without direct access to the Ring was still strong enough to pretty well mop up the entire free world. The only way to stop him was to actually destroy the blasted thing.
More to subscribe to the thread than anything else, but…
I think Skald’s last suggestion in the OP is most likely. Dain has a claim on Erebor, especially after Thorin dies. Gandalf would presumably retrieve the map and key (pretty easily from the spiders, or with some persuasion from the elves, alternatively the new plan might not even need them) and let Dain or his designees* take a crack at things. I just can’t imagine Gandalf not having a backup plan in such a risky situation.
*-IIRC, Dain is already sitting pretty in the Iron Hills, so he might just commission an expedition to handle things and make Erebor a province, or even relocate there. After all, it does seem the choicest place in ME after Moria.
I think that depends on the digestive cycle of dragons. Presumably its slow since they don’t feed very often, but eventually what was left of poor Bilbo would come out the other end, and The Ring with it.
I’m not sure Tolkien ever addressed the specifics of Dragon’s digestive tracts, but presumably if Smaug’s digestive system couldn’t destroy the ring, it would work its way out eventually.
Wouldn’t want to be the dark servant of Sauron that had to go digging through dragon poop to find it, though.
Fewmets. The word for dragon poop is fewmets. It’s such a great word that comes up so seldom, it’s a shame to waste an opportunity to use it.
The best result of Bilbo’s adventures was the destruction of the Goblin army in the Northern Kingdom, enabling Aragorn and his Rangers to travel South and reclaim the Southern Kingdom in Lord of the Rings.
Smaug is supposed to be a badass, but all it took to bring him down was one guy with a lucky arrow.
Does it have an magical qualities as do the droppings of unicorns?
I’m sure it all would have worked out one way or another. Remember Gandalf had a foretelling. Eru/Illuvitar/God tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Send forth the Dwarves and make sure that little Bilbo goes with them.” To which Gandalf replied, “Yes sir.”
Pretty much they were all on a Mission From God. And once God is on your side the long term drama goes out the window. Regardless of whatever else happens, events were going to unfold in such a way that through unlikely coincidences Bilbo sets off a chain reaction that results in a dead Smaug.
Why would he do anything? When “the Necromancer” turns out to be Sauron, Gandalf has much, much bigger concerns than who holds the hoard of Thror.
In that case, no need to worry about old Smaug. For although he has nasty big pointy teeth, that frightens us not because we have…
THE HOLY HANDGRENADE!
That’s going to be my new word for the week. Got a reliable cite for it?
Finally the song-and-dance production number makes sense! Bilbo’s Journey is an allegory for The Blues Brothers!
He won’t, because he’s not correct, precisely. “Fewmets” are the droppings of a species that is being hunted. So dragon poop is only properly called fewmets by someone hunting the dragon. 
Wiki on fewmets - see the last paragraph: Feces - Wikipedia
Tolkien’s “The Quest of Erebor,” found in both Unfinished Tales and The Annotated Hobbit, has some great insights into Gandalf’s thinking. Had Smaug survived the expedition of Thorin & Co., I’m sure the wizard would’ve gone to Plan B - whether Bard, Dain or Aragorn in due time, I don’t know, but he’d have tried something. Smaug was too big and evil a chess piece to leave on the board in the runup to the decisive conflict he foresaw. As it was, King Dain of Erebor and King Brand of Dale were both killed fighting orcs before the gates of the Lonely Mountain during the War of the Ring, so the good guys were clearly hard-pressed. Add a dragon to the mix, and it’s very bad news indeed.
Dragons vs. Ents!
Or can you imagine the amount of pants-shitting (or fewmenting, if you will ;)) in Gondor when Smaug the Golden comes swooping out of the sky?
Sorry, I’ve just got a soft spot in my upper chest for the big guy. He was my first super-villain, if you will.
I read in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door that “fewmets” are “dragon droppings,” but that’s the only such usage of the word I’ve ever seen. I thought “fewmets” was a hunter’s term for deer droppings. Wikipedia says it’s a medieval generic term for the droppings of an any game animal being stalked.