[Aiwendil]

RD-EX-21

Findegil wrote:

I at last would find it utterly starnge if the youth and upgrwoing of Húrin is told in the Narn but not the final end of the tragedy in which he still played a major part.

The "final tragedy" of the Narn is the death of Turin and Nienor. This, at any rate, is the way Tolkien divided things up in every post-LT re-telling.

In addition a chapter called the "Ruin of Doriath" that goes for half of its lenght through the ruin of Brethil will not work for me.

I can but repeat my mantra: no matter what we do, there are huge problems of scale in the later portions of the Silmarillion, at least if one views things from a literary perspective. I don't think that we should strive to 'fix' things through clever chapter breaks, since our goal is not a literary work but rather a simple account of 'canonical' (in the sense defined by our principles) events.

RD-EX-28

Ah, I do see the problem there now. I like your suggestion, though it is a 'risky' emendation. I will think about this and see if I can come up with anything better.

RD-EX-40

I did misunderstand. But the passage is still not quite perfect. First of all this sentence needs some tense changes:

And he said: ‘Yea’; but {Ufedhin}[they] said: ‘Know then that great store of thy best and purest gold{ remaineth still, for }[did]we have husbanded{ it}, {having a boon to ask of thee, and it is this: we would}[to] make thee a carcanet and to its making lay all the skill and cunning that we have, and we desire that this should be the most marvellous ornament that the Earth has seen, and the greatest of the works of Elves and Dwarves.

I would suggest:

And he said: ‘Yea’; but {Ufedhin}[they] said: ‘Know then that great store of thy best and purest gold {remaineth still, for }[did] we {have} husband{ed it}, {having a boon to ask of thee, and it is this: we would}[to] make thee a carcanet and to its making lay all the skill and cunning that we have, and we desire[d] that this should be the most marvellous ornament that the Earth has seen, and the greatest of the works of Elves and Dwarves.

The following sentence:

Therefore we {beg of thee to let us have}[took from thee] that Silmaril that thou treasurest, that it may shine wondrously amid the {Nauglafring}[Nauglamír], the Necklace of the Dwarves.’>

. . . may not work because they are telling Thingol that they took from him that which he had already given them. I can see that one could look at it as a sort of recapitulation to Thingol of that which he already knew. But it reads awkwardly. It still sounds on the whole as though the Dwarves are claiming the making of the Nauglamir as their own idea.

I'm really not sure whether there's a problem with the paragraph or I'm reading too deeply into it.

As for RD-EX-36.5 - it does seem a bit odd to have Thingol doubt their purpose and only reluctantly give them the jewel now. I suppose we ought to delete this.

RD-EX-22 and RD-EX-24

Okay, I suppose it makes sense for him still to wash it of its stains. But to remove the curse of the blood from Melian's words we would need to do as I suggested and change 'trebly' to 'doubly':

RD-EX-22<TN Now<editorial brigde when Húrin and his Band had departed from Menegroth> came {Gwenniel}[Melian] to {Tinwelint}[Thingol] and said: ‘Touch not this gold, for my heart tells me it is {trebly} [doubly] cursed. Cursed indeed by the dragon's breath, and cursed by RD-EX-23 {thy lieges' blood that moistens it, and the death of those they slew}; but some more bitter and more binding ill methinks hangs over it that I may not see.’

§24b The summon to Belegost: Why should be the summon of Thingol restriced to Nogrod? Thingol called for best Smith the dwarven nations had and the Belegost dwarves left it for Smith of Nogrod. (For what ever reason, maybe they had have the last contract and it was simply this time the turne of Nogrod or they recongised that the smith of Nogord were beter for the special order Thingol had placed.) I don't see a forcing reason to skip the summon to both cities. We do restrict the answer to it on the Nogrod-dwarfes and that is sufficient for our purpose.

If I remember correctly, in TN only the Dwarves of Nogrod are summoned, and only they are involved in the quarrel. In Q30, the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost are summoned, and both groups are involved in the quarrel.

So in every version we have, the Dwarves that are involved in the quarrel are the same as the Dwarves that are summoned. There is no indication that any of the Dwarves summoned would not have accepted Thingol's offer (why should they?), so I think that the statement that only the Dwarves of Nogrod were involved should be taken to imply that only they were summoned to work for Thingol.

RD-EX-25

I'm inclined not to use this description because we are putting it in a different context from that for which it was written. It was intended to describe the work of the Dwarves, not the original hoard. Now, the original hoard has changed somewhat. But I don't think that means that we can apply description to it that wasn't meant for it.