[Formendacil]

I, like a few others, find it somewhat incredulous that having a hobbit and a woman (and no others!) was a part of the "formula" for killing the Witchking. The idea that a Dunadan or an Elf, or a Wizard could not kill the Witchking, just because they were not a woman and/or a hobbit.

There was a large dose of luck in Eowyn and Merry's accomplishment. The Witchking was over-confident, Merry was totally ignored, Eowyn's shield arm was broken and not her sword arm, Merry just happened to be carrying a sword that was particularly deadly to the Witchking. I might be wrong, but I'm seeing a fair element of luck in the matter. It was the luck of those characters in those circumstances that brought down the Witchking, rather than any prerequisites they happened to meet, such as Hobbit or woman.

Another thing...

The Sword (or Dagger) of the Barrow-downs.

While there is NO doubt whatsoever that it was the special power of this sword, its utter deadliness to the Witchking, that bore such a huge part in felling the Witchking, I must take exception to statements along the lines of "it had to be a sword of Westernesse (aka a Barrow-sword) to kill the Witchking".

So nothing else would have worked? What about Sting? Forged in Gondolin, "kin" to Biter and Beater (aka Orcrist and Glamdring), obviously superior to Frodo's previous sword. Do people think that if it had been Frodo in Merry's place that he wouldn't have had the same success with Sting as Merry did with his Barrow-sword? Surely the Numenoreans (men of Westernesse) were not the only ones to put spells deadly to evil on their blades. And was not Numenorean craft (and this Third Age craft at that) ultimately derived from the Noldorin and Sindarin cultures?

Or what about Anduril? Originally forged by Telchar (a Dwarf!) and reforged in Rivendell (by Elves), it was nonetheless "wound with runes" and was the very sword to have felled Sauron. Would a blow from it have been less successful than the Barrow-sword?

I'm not saying that it wasn't a good thing that Merry had his Barrow-sword, and not just some generic butcher knife out of Edoras, but the Barrow-swords were hardly the only blades in Middle-earth that could sever the Witchking's unseen sinew.