Whence dwimmerlaik?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Evidently the Rohirrim are a superstitious lot, and anything beyond their ken would be looked at suspiciously as "sorcery" (whether good, bad or indifferent), hence dwimmerlaik (dweomerlayk) as a nethworldly/shadowy presence capable of spell-casting accords with that distrust.

Very true, and they are right to be afraid of Galadriel, who is indeed perilous. As Gandalf says of Fangorn in The White Rider: "Dangerous! And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord. And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Glóin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion".

However, unlike Saruman, who is described as "dwimmer-crafty", Galadriel doesn't receive a dwimmer- adjective. In any case, Tolkien doesn't invent the Rohirric dwimmer- vocabulary: all of it comes directly from Old English, so it would be the Anglo-Saxons who were superstitious and suspicious of the unknown. Since so much of the world was unknown to them, and much of the unknown in their day was lethally destructive, this should come as no great surprise.

Old English can be surprisingly technical (such as in the number of words it has for types of hill), so what would be the difference between, for example, searucraeft as in the HME IV OE Annals and dweomer-craeft? Is one more scientific and the other occult or closer to conjuring? I'm drawn to the idea of the dwimmerlaik as something phantasmal, insubstantial, even illusory and yet wielding a power in its voice. A good description for a Ringwraith, but it also raises an interesting parallel with Saruman.