There are many momentous events that happen to the four hobbits Sam, Frodo, Merry and Pippin, on their journey out of The Shire. However, very few of them actually appear in Peter Jackson’sLord of the Ringsfilm adaptations, which vastly shorten the hobbits' journey tothe Prancing Pony in Bree.
In Tolkien’s original book versions however, the hobbits don’t flee The Shire in the middle of the night, running in terror from the black riders who chase them, they have a strategic and carefully planned out route that takes them several weeks. They journey through the Old Forest, stay a few nights withmean Farmer Maggotand his wife, and also lodge in Tom Bombadill’s mystical and magical abode. However, not all of their adventures during this time are as pleasant as these sound, there are also many spies and many dangers along the way.
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One of the biggest of which is the Barrow Downs, a vast area of burial mounds that lies betweenthe Old Forrestand Bree. The Barrow Downs aren’t, in themselves, dangerous, they are simply fields that stretch on for miles, and would be easy to navigate if not for the Barrow-wights who haunt the place. The Wights are a sort of undead creature, akin to a ghoul or a zombie, and also thought to be closely related in magical properties to the Ring-wraiths.
They appear as figures in the dark who change shape, and their voices are both terrible and alluring. They draw people into their barrows with their glowing hypnotic eyes, which may easily be mistaken for a peaceful, guiding light on the dark downs. However, they are anything but, and once they have lured their victims into their lairs, they feast off the individual’s will, and then run them through with a sword. So how did these terrible beings come to exist in Middle Earth?
It all started with the Great Plague that struck the lands from beyond Mordor, and wiped out a dangerous amount of the population. This began in the 1630s of the Third Age of Middle Earth, and it’s not known exactly where it derived from, but it moved alarmingly quickly, and spread through the lands of Rhun and Rhovanion, desecrating the kingdom’s peoples as it went. Soon, it traveled toPelargir, which becomes the famousLord of the Ringskingdomof Gondor. The Great Plague has a huge hand in wiping out Numenorian blood from the world, as well as killing several of the race of the Dunedain, the men with long life that Aragorn is known for being a part of. But that was just the start of its misery, as the plague especially hit the Dunedains of Cardolan, which greatly weakened them and their ability to protect the surrounding lands.
It was at this point that the Witch-king of Angmar decided to seize his moment and strike in the midst of the chaos. He wanted to prevent the Dunedain from having a change to regroup and fortify themselves after the devastation, and the best way to do that was to seize their lands, which were currently left defenseless as they tried to deal with the onslaught of the plague. He therefore released dozens of evil spirits into the downs, and these spirits began infesting the barrows. That is why the Barrow-wights can often be considered to be the reanimated corpses of kings who were buried there long ago, because it is believed that the vengeful spirits ofthe tombs of Angmarmay have inhabited the bodies of those who rested, and began using them as vessels through which to conduct their terrible magic. And with evil that profound about the lands, the darkness only grew, and the Barrow-wights gained numbers too great for the Dunedain to ever be able to take back the lands, especially with how few of them there were left.
In theFellowship of the Ring, the four hobbits are very nearly added to the numbers of the dead on the downs when they become lost in the fields and are lured in by one of the terrifying creatures. Frodo is barely aware enough of what is going on to register their impending doom, but he describes seeing the other hobbits in ceremonial pale robes, draped with gold, with a long sword across their necks that is essentially drawing the life force out of them.
Luckily,Tom Bombadil (the only being who could resist the ring) has warned him of their existence, and Frodo sings a song to summon the woodland sprite, who rushes to their aid. He then gives them four weapons to protect themselves, and it’s a good thing he does, becauseMerry’s sword later becomes the missing key to destroying the Witch-king of Angmar, who started all of the evil on the downs in the first place. The hobbits live to complete their quest, but if they had succumbed to the evil there and then, the whole fate of the world would have been very different.
