Merry's Barrow Dream

[Valandil]

After Tom rescues Frodo & Co from the Barrow Wight, and then commands the sleeping threesome to awake, Merry says;

"What in the name of wonder? Of course, I remember! The Men of Carn Dum came on us at night and we were worsted. Ah! The spear in my heart! No! No! What am I saying? I have been dreaming. Where did you get to, Frodo?"

We find in Appendix A that;

'Some say that the mound in which the Ringbearer was imprisoned had been the grave of the last prince of Cardolan, who fell in the war of 1409.'

The dream that Merry had sounds very much a likely end of someone who died there - either that prince, or one of his men. "Carn Dum" was the chief city of Angmar - the land of the Witch-King, and the land to which the prince of Cardolan would have fallen in 1409.

So - what happened? Was Merry somehow connected with a remnant of that attack? A spirit that had remained? A lingering memory attached to some object? What triggered his dream? Merely hobbit lore about the demise of Cardolan?

Ironic too - that Merry was the one whose blade, recovered from that Barrow, struck the Witch-King whose forces had once assailed the Barrow, slaying him along with Eowyn.