[William Cloud Hicklin]

Hmmmmm- well, it's always possible that Tolkien was, characteristically, vacillating!

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Actually, I think I'm coming around to the "uncritical translation of old legends" view of Bilbo's work especially in light of T's description of Quenta Silmarillion as a compilation made in Numenor, focused around the Great Tales (all of them about Edain). This is especially appealing in that we know that Bilbo was quite fond of Aragorn and very interested in his lineage. The only (minor) problem there is that "Translations from Numenor" or some such might have been a more accurate title, even though the given one isn't inaccurate (presumably the Numenorean QS was written in Sindarin).

I had something of a small epiphany in this regard brought on by analogies made here to classical mythology. We have all read collections of "Greek" mythology-- except that many of those stories and several of the best known in fact come from Ovid, a Roman; further confusing matters is the fact that often these collections, especially the older ones, use the Latin rather than Greek names of deities (even that reflects Roman "garbling;" with the exception of Apollo, the Roman pantheon were native Latin gods who were subsequently syncretized with the Greek and appropriated their legends).

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As for the Numenorean Turin- it certainly is the case that various poems get made about the same story, or pieces of the same story--how many poems and tales have been made about Arthur and his knights, including by Tolkien? See also the fight at Finnsburg, known both from its own fragmentary poem and as an episode recited in Beowulf, and the three extant medieval versions of the Sigurd/Siegfried tale. One in-universe example is the poem of Beren and Luthien's meeting sung by Aragorn at Weathertop, which is clearly distinct from the Lay of Leithian.