[Aiwendil]

It seems Androg turns out to be rather a difficult issue. Sorry in advance for a long post.

Findegil wrote:

Now to Andróg, Andvír and all that matter: Dírhaval composed his Lay in the Haevens after he spoke to Mablung. Thus not before 507 FA. He perished in the attack of the Feanorians up on the Haevens in 538 FA. The battle on the sumit of Amon Rudh took place in the year 489 FA. Now Andvír is described as very old in text A. I would think that means about 70 years. Even if he was found late by Dírhaval, let's say in 535 FA he would have been born around 465 FA and would have been around 24 years at the battle of Amon Rudh. Even assuming that Andvir was only 65 at that late date would make him 19 at the battle. Thus Andróg must have been older than what we expected. At the very least about 40 years.

After presenting such a nice solution earlier, you have made a very good case against it! I had forgotten about the upper limit of 538 FA for the meeting of Dírhaval with a 'very old' Andvír. In view of this, my earlier suggestion that Andróg was a young man when in the outlaw band and that Andvír was born after the battle at Amon Rudh is completely untenable.

Let me take a step back for a moment and try to look at the problem in my usual pedantic way. I think there are three critical questions:

1. Does the sentence in 'Aelfwine and Dirhaval' refer to Andróg or Andvír?

2. Does A&D pre-date or post-date the 'Narn' texts that contain the story of Andróg's death?

3. To what extent does the statement in A&D contradict the story in the 'Narn'?
The real meaning of this question depends on the answer to 2; if A&D is later, the question is whether it sufficiently indicates 'the details of what is to be changed' per principle 2b; if A&D is earlier, the question is whether the 'Narn' necessitates that the statement in A&D be removed.

On question 1, I am still inclined toward the Andróg-interpretation, though I agree with Aran that it is not the only tenable one. The main reason is that I find it curious that, if Andvír was a member of Turin's band, he was never mentioned in the 'Narn', particularly if we accept CT's guess that the two texts are very roughly contemporaneous. If A&D was written shortly before the relevant portions of the Narn, then surely Tolkien would have introduced Andvír in the latter. If A&D was written shortly after the Narn, it is strange (though not impossible) that Tolkien would invent a new character so at odds with the story he had just formulated.

I actually think it most probable that Tolkien intended Andróg to survive and sire Andvír after the battle at Amon Rudh and simply did not observe the inconsistency in the dates when he wrote that Andvír was 'very old' when Dirhaval spoke with him. But I don't have any hard evidence for this conclusion.

Question 2 is yet another place where a 'History of the Turin saga' would be a great help. As it is we have nothing to go on save CT's brief remarks on the dating in XI. Actually, when taken at face value CT seems to contradict himself. He says of the text A of A&D first that:

this story [i.e. the part of the Narn with Androg in it] was fully in being (so far as it ever went) when A was written

This would suggest that A&D was written after the Androg story in the 'Narn' was already worked out. But then he adds:

indeed it seems likely enough that A belongs to the time when my father was working on it.

This, on the contrary, suggests that at the time A&D was written, JRRT had not yet arrived at the 'final' form (such as it is) of the story of Androg's role in Turin's band - in which case, the final version of that story superceded the statement in A&D about Androg and Andvir. Possibly what CT means is that A&D is later but not much later. But in any case, CT here seems to be drawing his conclusions based mainly on the content of A&D rather than external evidence and so is actually not much better a judge than we are.

If I had again to venture a guess as to the truth, my guess would be that A&D is later than the central portions of the Narn. It seems to me more likely that Tolkien would first invent Androg and his history and then later give him a son and use him to 'explain' the transmission of the legend than the reverse (that he would invent Androg and Andvir together to explain the transmission and then eliminate Andvir and/or create the story of Androg's death, thus ruling him out as the transmitter of the legend). Indeed, if it weren't for CT's surmise that A&D dates from much the same time as the 'Narn', I would have thought it a much later text, by which time Tolkien had either forgotten the details of the 'Narn' or had conceived of some large changes to its story. Again, though, there's no hard evidence.

Finally, question 3. Clearly there is some contradiction between the Narn texts we have and A&D. I suppose the simplest scenario to evaluate would be the one where A&D was written before the Narn story was finalized (that is, as finalized as it ever was). In this case, since in the Narn Androg dies at Amon Rudh and Andvir is pretty clearly not in the story, the Narn would take precedence and the statement in A&D would have to be removed entirely.

The much more difficult question is, if A&D is later than the Narn texts, is it sufficiently clear to us how the Narn should be changed that we can justify those changes? This is complicated (just our luck) by the fact that the answer may be contingent on the answer to 1 - is it Androg or Andvir that survives?

If we could be sure it was Androg, then I think Findegil's suggestion about moving his healing by Beleg to after the battle would pretty clearly be the best way to go. However, this would leave us with another serious problem - the issue of the dates that Findegil has pointed out. If Andvir was not born until after 489, he cannot have been 'very old' before 538. That makes this path look like a dead end to me.

What if we could be sure it was Andvir who was intended, as a member of Turin's band, to survive? I think this would necessitate some big changes to the 'Narn' - certainly more than just inserting mention of his name. Androg is said to have been hunted from Dor-lomin for the slaying of a woman. It seems to me very strange indeed that he should bring his son with him into outlawry. Worse, I think the portrayal of Androg in the Narn is rather at odds with his being old enough to have a grown son (especially given the point I made earlier about Algund, the oldest of the band, having been at the Nirnaeth).

I don't know what conclusions to draw from all this, other than that the more I look at it, the thornier this issue becomes. My old fallback suggestion - ambiguity - is not really useful here, as it's simply not feasible (or desirable) to produce a version that does not state whether Androg survived the battle or whether he had a son in the band.