Aran wrote:
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1. This is a small thing, but the editorial bridge must either go or be altered, because Tolkien stressed at least twice that the Narns were not "sung."
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Very much agreed.
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2. This is more major. How can we justify having this portion of the Lay at all? After all, the later conceptions of the lay ended before the Wanderings of Húrin! I don't see where this fragment comes in.
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Interesting question. Of course, if we remove the editorial bridge then we no longer claim that the lines of alliterative verse are an excerpt from the Lay of the Children of Hurin. They could just be an account of Mim's death, with no more 'in-universe' existence than our prose narratives.
But I imagine it very likely that there was a lay that told of Hurin's visit to Nargothrond. For one thing, I find it remarkable that the 'Atanatarion' would cover all the later tales of Beleriand with the sole exception of the Ruin of Doriath. More convincingly, Tolkien called 'The Wanderings of Hurin' the link to 'Sigil Elu-naeth', 'The Necklace of the Woe of Thingol'. Now, we don't know that the tale of 'Sigil Elu-naeth' was a 'Narn' in the same meter as the Narn i Chin Hurin, but it's at least plausible that it was, and that our excerpt comes from that lay.
Personally, I imagine the 'Narn e'Rach Morgoth' to consist of two parts, the 'Narn i Chin Hurin' and the 'Narn Sigil Elu-naeth', just as the 'Narn en-El' consists of 'Narn e-Dant Gondolin' and 'Narn Orthad en-El'. But of course this is just my own fancy.