[davem]

Originally Posted by Saureg

I am not that familar with the idea of the second historic source - the manuscript from Gondor. But if it was written by a military scribe; a historian. It would have been written in a concised form without much spoken dialogue among key characters. I have in mind the works of old Greco-Roman historians like Appian, Curtius and Plutarch in mind. They simply presented their work in an informative (need to know basis), telling, chronological order with emphasis on the main events and omitting trivial happens that were either unimportant or lost with time.

Findegil is mentioned in the Prologue to LotR & it gets more interesting when we read the passage. It begins:

The original Red Book has not been preserved, but many copies were made, especially of the first volume, for the use of the descendants of the children of Master Samwise. The most important copy, however, has a different history. It was kept at Great Smials, but it was written in Gondor, probably at the request of the great-grandson of Peregrin, and completed in S.R. 1592 (F.A. 172). Its southern scribe appended this note: Findegil, King's Writer, finished this work in IV 172. It is an exact copy in all details of the Thain's Book in Minas Tirith. That book was a copy, made at the request of King Elessar, of the Red Book of
the Periannath, and was brought to him by the Thain Peregrin when he retired to Gondor in IV 64.

So, Findegil produced an 'exact copy in all details' of the Thain's book. Seems we have a translation by Prof Tolkien of a copy of the original Red Book written by Bilbo/Frodo/Sam....but the passage continues:

The Thain's book was thus the first copy made of the Red Book and contained much that was later omitted or lost. In Minas Tirith it received much annotation, and many corrections, especially of names, words, and quotations in the Elvish languages;

So, its not an 'exact' copy, as Findegil states - its been amended & corrected by other hands. We further see that there are sections of the text which were written by another author & included in the Findegil copy - Barahir, grandson of Faramir:

and there was added to it an abbreviated version of those parts of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen which lie outside the account of the War. The full tale is stated to have been written by Barahir, grandson of the Steward Faramir, some time after the passing of the king.

Tolkien (the fictional translator) seems even to be aware of other copies which also exist, because he makes a comparison between the one he's used & others. He even states that Findegil's copy is better than the others - or at least more important:

But the chief importance of Findegil's copy is that it alone contains the whole of Bilbo's 'Translations from the Elvish'. These three volumes were found to be a work of great skill and learning in which, between 1403 and 1418, he had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written. But since they were little used by Frodo, being almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days, no more is said of them here.

So, there were other copies of the Red Book which didn't contain Bilbo's 'Translations from the Elvish' - or not the whole of them. What we seem to have is a translation of one version of the Red Book, & we cannot know how different the other copies were - for instance, were the 'annotations & corrections' uniform across all copies, or were there different annotations & corrections in different copies.

What all this does is actually to move us further & further away from the original events, & makes any demand for 'consistency' of style, even of detail, less & less likely to be satisfied.

Edit: Of course, we don't know whether 'Tolkien' had access to Findegil's original copy - very unlikely given the length of time which seperates the beginning of the
Fourth Age from the early 20th century. In fact, its likely that what 'Tolkien' did have was a copy of a copy of a copy (ad almost infinitum given that timescale) which included Findegil's note as part of the text. How many 'annotations & corrections' had crept in since Findegil's original copy is anybody's guess...