Kryptic Tales of Middle-earth
© Michael Martinez
We don't often hear about the ghost stories people must have told each other in Middle-earth. Tolkien's work is permeated with well-crafted legends that are usually founded in fact (within the scope of his pseudohistory), but when you stop to consider the immense expanses of time the pseudohistory of Middle-earth covers, you have to wonder just how far-fetched some of those legends must have become.
Everyone has heard the story about the lunatic who escapes from an insane asylum and nearly kills a young couple on a dark road, leaving his claw hanging on the car door (this would have to be a very old car, of course). Maybe that story owes something to the Norse myth of the war god Tyr, who put his hand in the mouth of Fenris and let the wolf bite it off while the other Aesir chained the wolf. Tyr had to be a little crazy to do that.
Middle-earth's first ghost stories were probably the long-forgotten tales the Elves made up about Melkor's monsters before Orome discovered their home at Cuivienen. "And indeed the most ancient songs of the Elves, of which echoes are remembered still in the West, tell of the shadow-shapes that walked in the hills above Cuivienen, or would pass suddenly over the stars; and of the dark Rider upon his wild horse that pursued those that wandered to take them and devour them."
The early Elves were rather unsophisticated when compared with their Eldarin successors. They knew nothing of who the Valar were, how the world came to be, or what these monsters were (bred from Yavanna's innocent creatures, or corrupted Maiar who had assumed shapes of horror). Nor were their powers of mind and body well-developed. Did the Elves even know, before they met the Valar, how to use their sub-creational faculties? It would be interesting if the first Elf-minstrels, who in later ages could "make the things of which they sing appear before the eyes of those that listen", made such songs of power that their audiences saw again the terrifying and mystical shadow shapes which crept around their otherwise pleasant world.
Orome led the Eldar west through a frightening, large, unknown world to the western shores of Middle-earth, and from there most of the Eldar departed to a land of light. It is difficult to imagine the High Elves of Aman dwelling on the ghosts and demons of their past. They took up the study of high civilization and high art, and built great cities and powerful artifacts. But the Eldar who remained in Middle-earth, the Sindar, were left in the darkness (or the faint light of the stars), and though for long ages they were mostly untroubled by Melkor's creatures they still had reason to know fear.
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