If you look up the word gyst -- 'guest, visitor, stranger, outsider, outlandish creature, enemy' -- in the Dictionary of Old English, you will find the following note:
Wordplay on the senses of gyst1;‘visitor, stranger’, and gāst‘spirit, soul; demon’ is common in poetry; some poetic examples spelled gæst(-) may alternatively be read as forms of gāst
Turning to the entry for gāst/gǣst -- 'breath, air, wind, spirit, soul, person, ghost, angel, demon', etc. -- you will find the same note. This observation is by no means new. Tolkien was well aware of it. He spoke of it in an appendix to Beowulf: The Monsters and Critics (1983: 35).
Which all makes me wonder about the use of the 'guests' to describe Men, as seen by the Elves who quickly came to believe that the fëa of Men, that is, their souls or spirits, did not have Arda as their proper home. They were strangers in Arda, guests (S 42; Morgoth 315). The fëa of Men are at once gyst and gāst.
I want to explore this more later, but I am trying to finish my darn book.
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