[Maédhros]

Originally posted by Aiwendil

This is one possibility - that is, to assume that there were Green-elves but that they were not numerous enough to be an "army". Personally, I would go this way; I don't think that the reference in Letters is sufficient evidence that the Green-elves were dropped.

I think I'm ok with Finwë´s idea in here.

From the Notes in the End of the Tale of Years

There were very evident problems with the old story. Had he ever turned to it again, my father would undoubtedly have found some solution other than that in the Quenta to the question, How was the treasure of Nargothrond brought to Doriath? There, the curse that Mîm laid upon the gold at his death 'came upon the possessors in this wise. Each one of Húrin's company died or was slain in quarrels upon the road; but Húrin went unto Thingol and sought his aid, and the folk of Thingol bore the treasure to the Thousand Caves.' As I said in IV.188, 'it ruins the gesture, if Húrin must get the king himself to send for the gold with which he is then to be humiliated'. It seems to me most likely (but this is mere speculation) that my father would have reintroduced the outlaws from the old Tales (11.113-15,222-3) as the bearers of the treasure (though not the fierce battle between them and the Elves of the Thousand Caves): in the scrappy writings at the end of The Wanderings of Húrin Asgon and his companions reappear after the disaster in Brethil and go with Húrin to Nargothrond (pp. 306-7).

I think that we can all safely agree that the reintroduction of the outlaws acompanying Húrin to Nargothrond is necessary in our version.

Regarding the battle of the Outlaws in Menegroth, CT seems that it would have been abandoned. I think that CT instincts are better than mine in this so I would defer to him. But notice the interesting fact that CT states that the fight in Menegroth, not outside it.
We could:
1. Leave their faith ambiguous as Aiwendil suggests.
2. We could use Findegil option of using the Quenta version to deal with the fate of the outlaws.

Personally, I like Findegil’s option better because, we know from both the Tale and the Quenta that the outlaws die and that they were affected by the curse of Mîm. That being said, that does not mean however that in our versión we would state explicitly that all of the outlaws were killed, leaving open the idea that one of them could be Dírhaval or one who instructed some of the tales to him.

How he would have treated Thingol's behaviour towards the Dwarves is impossible to say. That story was only once told fully, in the Tale of the Nauglafring, in which the conduct of Tinwelint (precursor of Thingol) was wholly at variance with the later conception of the king (see II.245-6). In the Sketch no more is said of the matter than that the Dwarves were 'driven away without payment', while in the Quenta 'Thingol... scanted his promised reward for their labour; and bitter words grew between them, and there was battle in Thingol's halls'. There seems to be no clue or hint in later writing (in The Tale of Years the same bare phrase is used in all the versions: Thingol quarrels with the Dwarves'), unless one is seen in the words quoted from Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn on p. 353: Celeborn in his view of the destruction of Doriath ignored Morgoth's part in it 'and Thingol's own faults'.

I think personally that this is the most troublesome part in the whole affair. What would be the interaction between Thingol and the dwarves? The idea that I was thinking of is in a was following the Tale in that the dwarves of Nogrod felt that it could be said that Mîm’s treasure should belong to the dwarven race, because the folk of Mîm were the original dwellers of Nargothrond. But that is just an idea that I’m playing with.

In The Tale of Years my father seems not to have considered the problem of the passage of the Dwarvish host into Doriath despite the Girdle of Melian, but in writing the word 'cannot' against the D version (p. 352) he showed that he regarded the story he had outlined as impossible, for that reason. In another place he sketched a possible solution (ibid.): 'Somehow it must be contrived that Thingol is lured outside or induced to go to war beyond his borders and is there slain by the Dwarves. Then Melian departs, and the girdle being removed Doriath is ravaged by the Dwarves.'

That is exactly what I’m doing. By following the Tale, we could use that while Thingol went for the Hunt, they somehow drifted outside the protection of the girdle and there were ambushed by the dwarves.

In the story that appears in The Silmarillion the outlaws who went with Húrin to Nargothrond were removed, as also was the curse of Mîm; and the only treasure that Húrin took from Nargothrond was the Nauglamîr - which was here supposed to have been made by Dwarves for Finrod Felagund, and to have been the most prized by him of all the hoard of Nargothrond. Húrin was represented as being at last freed from the delusions inspired by Morgoth in his encounter with Melian in Menegroth. The Dwarves who set the Silmaril in the Nauglamîr were already in Menegroth engaged on other works, and it was they who slew Thingol; at that time Melian's power was with-drawn from Neldoreth and Region, and she vanished out of Middle-earth, leaving Doriath unprotected. The ambush and destruction of the Dwarves at Sarn Athrad was given again to Beren and the Green Elves (following my father's letter of 1963 quoted on p. 353, where however he said that 'Beren had no army'), and from the same source the Ents, 'Shepherds of the Trees', were introduced.
This story was not lightly or easily conceived, but was the outcome of long experimentation among alternative conceptions. In this work Guy Kay took a major part, and the chapter that I finally wrote owes much to my discussions with him. It is, and was, obvious that a step was being taken of a different order from any other 'manipulation' of my father's own writing in the course of the book: even in the case of the story of The Fall of Gondolin, to which my father had never returned, something could be contrived without introducing radical changes in the narrative. It seemed at that time that there were elements inherent in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with 'The Silmarillion' as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon that conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function.

I think that while CT Ruin of Doriath has a lot of merit and it is a beautiful work, we should try and be more faithful to the ideas of JRRT.