My apologies for the delay in responding.
What I had in mind for 4 was merely something like this:
Quote:
|
<Q30 On a time when Eärendil was yet young, and the days of Gondolin were full of joy and peace {(and yet Idril's heart misgave her, and foreboding crept upon her spirit like a cloud)}, Maeglin was lost. Now Maeglin loved mining and quarrying after metals above other craft; and he was master and leader of the Elves who worked in the mountains distant from the city, seeking for metals for their smithying of things both of peace and war. But often Maeglin went with few of his folk beyond the leaguer of the hills, though the king knew not that his bidding was defied; and so it came to pass, as fate willed, that Maeglin> {Now it so chanced that not long after Maeglin went to the hills for the getting of ore, and} straying in the mountains alone was {taken by some of the Orcs prowling there, and they would do ... this seemed good to the Orcs,} <TY captured by spies of Melkor> and they returned from the mountains about Gondolin to the Hills of Iron and the dark halls of Morgoth; thither they haled Maeglin with them, and now was he in a sore dread. ...
|
That is, simply cut out the whole episode and replace it with the statement of his capture from the Tale of Years. This has the virtue that it cannot be taken as contradicting the Tale of Years, and it makes the Sauron explanation still possible.
A purely logistical aside: I see that both Maedhros and Findegil are using square brackets for any text not from FoG that is intended for use in the new version. Is there some reason that the angular brackets have been abandoned? Personally, I'd prefer to stick to the original convention: <
X text> means text inserted from source X and [text] means a word from the base text that is normalized via a routine substitution - such as [Melkor] for original Melko.
Sorry to sound picky about this, but I think creating a clear and consistent system is worth it. The textual situation is complex as it is!