Barrow-wights



"Cold be hand and heart and bone and cold be sleep under stone never more to wake on stony bed never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead In the black wind the stars shall die and still be gold here let them lie till the Dark Lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land."

- The dismal, tortured chant of the Barrow-wight.

West of the Brandywine River beyond the Old Forest were the Barrow-downs, the most ancient burial ground of men in Middle-Earth. There were no trees nor water there, but only grass and turf covering dome-shaped hills that were crowned with monoliths and great rings of bone-white stone. These hills were the burial mounds that were made in the First Age of the Sun for the Kings of Men. For many ages the Barrow-downs were sacred and revered, until out of the Witch-Kingdom of Angmar many terrible and tortured spirits fled across Middle-Earth, desperately searching to hide from the ravening light of the Sun. Demons whose bodies had been destroyed looked for other bodies in which their evil spirits could dwell. And so it was that the Barrow-downs became a haunted and terrible place. The demons became Barrow-wights, the Undead who animated the bones and jeweled armor of the ancient Kings of Men who had lived in the First Age of the Sun.

The Barrow-wights were of a substance of darkness that could enter the eye, heart and mind and crush the will. They were form-shifters and could move from shape to shape and animate whatever life-form they wished. Most often the Barrow-wight came on the unwary traveller in he guise of a dark-phantom whose eyes were luminous and cold. The voice of the figure was at once horrible and hypnotic, its skeletal hand had a touch like ice and a grip like the iron jaws of a trap. Once under the spell of the Undead, the victim had no will of his own. In this way the Barrow-wights drew the living into the treasure tombs of the downs. A dismal choir of tortured souls could be heard inside the Barrow as, in the green half-light, the Barrow-wight laid his victim on a stone altar and bound him in chains of gold. He draped him in pale cloth and precious jewellery of the ancient dead, and with a sacrificial sword ended them.

In the darkness they were powerful spirits and they could be held at bay only with the spell of strong incantations. Note:Tom Bombadil could perform the following with a song. However, normally they could be destroyed only by exposure to light, and it was light they hated and feared the most. The Barrow-wights were lost and tortured spirits and their last chance to remain on Earth depended on the dark security of their burial vaults. Once the stone chamber was broken open, light would pour in on the Barrow-wights and they would fade like mist before the sun and be gone forever.

History
On September 28 (Third Age: 3018) Frodo Baggins and his companions; Sam Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck, and Pippin Took while passing through the Barrow-downs were captured one-by-one by the Barrow-wights and trapped in what was believed to be the cairn of the last prince of Cardolan.

There they were almost slain by a wight, three of the Hobbits had been lain in a barrow filled with a strange green light and were dressed in white robes and wore jewels and gold and had a sword across their necks. The wight had finished an incantation, and was preparing to finish them off when Frodo summoned up the courage to slice off its hand, he then called upon Tom Bombadil when the wight extinguished the dim light in the cavern.

Bombadil performed some kind of exorcism on the barrow, which caused the wight to flee with a shriek, he then gave the hobbits swords and then spread out the gold and treasures from the barrow on the grass so that the barrow's spell was broken and no Wight would return to it.

Behind the Scenes

 * It is possible that the Witch-king himself had visited the Barrow-downs, during the Ringwraiths search for Frodo and that it was he who had roused the Barrow-wights to be on the watch for trespassers on their land.
 * they may have been Maiar or possibly spirits of Orcs, fallen Avari, or evil Men.

Other versions of the legendarium
Due to his inspiration from Hrómundar saga Gripssonar, during the writing of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien at first foresaw a link between the wights and the Ringwraiths, initially describing the Black Riders as horsed Wights, but the suggestion that they were the same kind of creatures was dropped in the published work. In the final work there remained a link between them: the wights were now spirits sent by the Witch-king.

Inspiration
The concept of burial mound dwelling evil spirits, was not a new one created by Tolkien. The Barrow-wights themselves are based on a similar creature in Germanic Mythology known in Norse as Draugar (the singular being Draugr).

They were said to be evil spirits residing in the bodies of dead heroes and kings and usually (but not universally) unharmed by conventional weapons. In such cases a hero of great strength and bravery. The defeat of a Draugr was not always permanent, they could return to plague the living if the right actions were not preformed after the Draugr was vanquished. The usual means of destroying a Draugr was to cut of its head and to burn the body for only then would the evil spirit be prevented from returning to the body.

Another, probably related, creature from Germanic (and also Slavic) folklore was the Mahr (also called an Alp), a vampyre like creature that was said to rise from its barrow after dark to plague the sleeping and drink their blood. The primary way to vanquish them was to open their Barrow to the rays of the sun, much like the Barrow-wight from Tolkien's mythology.

Etymology
The name Barrow-wights was based on the Old Norse Draugr. Barrow refers to the burial mounds they inhabited and wight is an Old English word for "human being" or "person" (it does not mean "spirit" or "ghost"; it is cognate to modern German "Wicht", meaning "unpleasant person"). Tolkien borrowed this concept from Norse mythology, see e.g. Waking of Angantyr and Hrómundar saga Gripssonar.

Appearances

 * The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Video Game
 * The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring
 * Battle for Middle Earth II
 * The Lord of the Rings Online