Re: psychic decomposition
Originally posted by shaber
Do any of Tolkien's notes actually confirm that the Barrow wights are maiar?
The Barrow-downs, as the name says, were the barrows of the Arnorean Kings; the kings of two thirds of the splitted Arnor (ie of Rhudaur and Cardolan) indeed bowed down to the might of Angmar before the end of their realms, and the last two kings or so of Rhudaur were even allied with Angmar.
They might be bound to the world like the Nazgûl and the Grey Host of Erech, either because they followed the Witchking and the power of his ring (imo unlikely) or because their lives were simply unfulfilled - or they found some kind of "evil" immortality, like the Mouth of Sauron (imo also unlikely)
The fact that they desperately try to sacrifice their victims like also the hobbits while speaking their famous lines about the death of the Sun etc kinda indicates that they're still slaves to some evil power like the Witchking of Angmar; They were maybe released after the destruction of the Ring.
But is there any guarantee that they were evil men scared remember in the dead marshes not all the phantom corpses were of evildoers, but they are "ALL foul" and "a fell light" is in the lot of them! The most obvious explanation is that this is an illusion of Sauron's designed to cause loss of morale, but still it does not inspire agreeable thoughts...
No, the only guarantee is the fact that they sacrifice people and chant satanic verses 😛
But - back to the basic question, what is evil 😛
The Barrowwights did evil things by themselves while the dead people in the dead marshes only *seemed* evil and cause evil things; but unwillingly.
The illusion-idea is interesting 😕
I didn't mention necrophilia 😐
The author of Tolkien Author of the Century suggested that these motifs could signify that all the dead are rotten and the Barrow wights are those who fought against the witchking, but suffered a mental as well as physical decomposition in death scared If all the dead are malevolent then the phantoms in the Dead Marshes might really be there after all 😘