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Hungry Ghoul
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/wight.jpg" align=absmiddle> Atavistic Agony
The point is not really whether the Witch-King was inviolable by common blade, but that he was
intangible by living men.
Only Èowyn and Merry on all the field Pelennor could muster the fatalist courage (which Tolkien, especially in his letters, liked to call the 'theory of Northern courage', i.e. that of Norse and European legend) to lay hand on the Lord of the Nazgûl, both for similar reasons.
Merry had seen his lord Théoden, whom he grew to love and respect highly, slain by the Witch-King; and he lay on the ground, hopeless, in the turmoil of a battle that seemed likely to be in vain at that moment. Then Dernhelm reveals himself to be Éowyn, and Merry's courage rises again, for he cannot let her, 'so desperate, so fair', be slain also. Gathering his remaining valiance and strength, he strikes the blow filled with the white fury of revenge and devotion.
Éowyn was fatalist to the brink of suicide, seeking only the valiant death in battle, which seemed to her so much better than an inevitable drowning in the darkness of the Enemy, or even the continuation of a caged life should the West prevail.
Like Merry, she just saw the death of her lord, whom she loved as a father, and seeing her chance to go to her ancestors in pride, and avenge Théoden's sacrifice, she, too, did not strike with but a common steel blade, but with the
spirit it took to slay the Witch-King.
For both Merry and Èowyn, the power of the prophecy of Glorfindel should also not be underestimated. In what way it is restrictive, we cannot know – maybe it was totally impossible for any 'living man' to slay the Witch-King, maybe it was a clairvoyance of any sort by Glorfindel that struck home on that day on the Pelennor.
A more speculative idea of mine would be that not the 'man' part of the prophecy is important, but the 'living'. For in a way both Merry and Èowyn were, in the moments they struck their blows, nearer to death than life; Merry on the brink of dying, and Éowyn seeking death, both if them desperate and doom before their eyes.
Overall, my point is that the Witch-King was not felled by blade of Westernesse or sword of whatsoever, but by
fate. In this way, the relation of the evil creature and its slayer is not unlike that of dragons. It takes more than a skilled warrior, and more than just a noble blade. It takes a hero in the truest sense of the old legends, that has the fulfill the great schemes of gods and kings, fight the battle which he cannot win, and still always live outside the society in order to keep the world a place for the people to live in.
Those are all the heroes of Middle-Earth, both in the Midengeard, Midjun-Gard of Norse legend, for which Starkad, Béowulf and Theoderich fought, and in Tolkien's legends of Middle-Earth. Here, it is naturally the mortals which make up the relatively greatest heroes, and slayers of the evil creatures, as for them there is less to lose in their world, and more to gain than what can be seen:
'Cattle die, kindred die / Every man is mortal: / But I know one thing that never dies, / The glory of the great dead.'.
This stanza from the
Hávamál, the sayings of Hár, are the epitome of the courage in Tolkien's myths – fatalist courage, and its power.
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