[Aiwendil]

Well, but does not the burden of proof lay for dropping it, i.e. 'keep 'X' until proven problematic/contradictory'?

I think not, not in this case anyway.

If it were the change that we were considering that was of dubious validity, then the burden of proof would be on making the change. But this cannot apply when it is the text that is dubious, and the proposed change is designed to remove a possibly unworkable element.

My concoctions are to not create a scenario that would, within the text be used as an explanation, but rather to illustrate that even if Aelfwine is extracted, Erresea is still viable, and explainable by at least 2 hypothetical, but plausible scenarios.

But whether the explanation is used in the text or is merely our implicit rationale, it is still a concoction. Eressea is indeed explainable, but then so are many things. The question is not whether it is explainable, but whether it is justified, based on the texts.

The whole point, in the text, of "Eressea" is that Aelfwine journeyed there and was told the lore of the Eldar. If we eliminate Aelfwine, we are removing the entire basis for the conversation, as well as moving the conversation back thousands of years. Of course we could construct any number of rationalizations for this move, but then we could make any number of changes to the texts and "explain" them away.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that we must eliminate "Eressea".

So the resulting vagueness of the Aelfwineless text works thus to our advantage.

This particular type of vagueness, though, is not a virtue. Vagueness is a virtue when it allows the ambiguous coexistence of contradictory elements from the texts, when there is not sufficient justification for deciding on any particular choice. But if we keep "Eressea", then the vagueness is only between various rationalizations - not between textual ideas. The only way to retain vagueness concerning the actual idea from the text is to remove "Eressea". Note that in doing so, we never contradict the possibility that Pengolodh spoke those words in Eressea; we merely leave other possibilities open as well.