An afterthought:
I have come to love the histories-- Trotter, Tinfang Warble, and all-- precisely because they show me *Tolkien's road to Faerie*-- the road that he himself trod over the course of his lifetime. It's the man's own enchantment-- the enchantment that he himself is UNDER-- that I value the most, because that enchantment was what fueled his sub-creation and enchanted so many others. In reading his letters, I see clearly why he is enchanted, and I understand that the enchantment is open to me as well.
And
Bilbo, are there other prophets-- in this case, mythmakers? Of course.
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It was in retrospective that Tolkien amassed all his storey elements into the grand vision of the Legendarium. For that reason alone I think it valuable to put aside or hold in abeyance if you will his rather insistent claims in later years about what the text means. I am far more interested in what might have brought those Black Riders riding, riding, riding in the first place. My bet is on an entire panoply of possibilities.
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But Bethberry, that is his whole theory of sub-creating, myth-making, being a recorder, searching for eucatastrophe. To understand the fruits, check the leaves, trunk, roots and the soil. Look at his life. Look at what he insisted was important for *him*, what he was grounded in.
To put it another way, a man is what he eats, body, soul, and spirit.