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Barrow-wights - The Undead; according to ancient Mannish belief, certain evil spirits possessed the power to inhabit and animate the bodies of the Dead.
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The Tolkien Companion pg. 43
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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.
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The Tolkien Companion pg. 42
[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: TolkienGurl ]