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Wightish ponderings...

I was recently reading UT, and something came up in the part about the finding of the ring. When the Witch King was trying to find the "Shire" the only reason he thought to look so far far north was due to the wights; it says that the Witch King sent them to the barrow downs himself. It now makes me wonder: what the heck IS a Wight?

Quote:

Barrow-wights - The Undead; according to ancient Mannish belief, certain evil spirits possessed the power to inhabit and animate the bodies of the Dead.

The Tolkien Companion pg. 43

Quote:

Barrow-downs - A line of grey-green slopes lying east of the Shire, between the Old Forest and Bree. They were a source of dread to Shire- and Bree-dwellers alike - and rightly so. And yet they were also the sight of the most ancient memorials to Men of Middle-earth, having been revered by the ancestors of the Edain, before this people crossed the Blue Mountains into Beleriand during the First Age.

The hills were crowned with old stone circles and isolated dolmens, and with numerous "barrows", or stone chambered burial-mounds. There, the early Men had buried the noble among their dead. Their decendants, in the Dunedain kingdoms of Arnor and Arthedain, therefore revered the mounds (which they knew as Tyrn Gorthad), and later princes of Arthedain and Cardolan inhumed their own royal dead there in similar mounds. But after the final fall of the North-kingdom, evil spirits from faraway Angmar entered the mounds and animated the long-dead corpses. These Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places among the stone-rings and the Downs became a place of dread in nearby lands.

The Tolkien Companion pg. 42

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: TolkienGurl ]

Quote:

evil spirits from faraway Angmar entered the mounds and animated the long-dead corpses.

*dives under desk and shivers*

That is freakishly scary. I was just re-reading the whole Barrow-Downs chapter today. I didn't realize that the Witch-King actually sent them there. I thought they just "were".

Did he send them there? I thought they were driven out of Angamr (Angmar? Agmar? Argmar?) when the Witch Kind of [aforementioned Realm] driven was out.

[ October 28, 2002: Message edited by: Galorme ]

No, it was the Witch-King that sent them.

That's super creepy. I don't like Barrow-wights anymore... [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img]

I've come up with a bizarre theory which might explain the barrow wights. We know that the Witchking used a Morgul knife which nearly turned Frodo into some sort of wraith. Could the barrow wights be his previous victims, his captives and enemies from Arnor who had been stabbed with Morgul knives?

They were evil spirits who inhabited the bodies of dead kings in the Barrow Downs.

but where did the spirits come from?? I'm reading Fellowship of the Ring for the 2nd time right now, and I'm almost to the part with the Barrow Downs. I'm really interested in re-reading it now, although it does sound rather freaky!!
Arwen

No-one really knows where they came from. They could be the spirits of dead orcs and evil things. They could be Úmaia, or other Ainur. Or they could just be a priori spirits. Possibly even a mish-mash of the above.