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Old 08-30-2003, 06:50 AM   #19
Findegil
King's Writer
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,694
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Sting

I have re-read this thread since I searched for Aiwendils suggestion to reintroduce the first part of Ulmos message.
I like to make a coment on this: What we do in deleting it is taking a single very compressed account of the message (and the Cristhoper Tolkiens Sil'77 text) over the explicit older texts and the suggestions of at least one junger text. The version pruduced should, in my view, be at least dubious about content of the message.

Quote:
{Now he had bid often with the king for the hand of Idril, yet Turgon finding her very loth had as often said nay, for him seemed Maeglin's suit was caused as much by the desire of standing in high power beside the royal throne as by love of that most fair maid} And {Maeglin's} [his] secret hatred grew ever greater, for he desired above all things to possess {her} Idril, the only heir of the King of Gondolin FG-TG-10
Way was the first part of this deleted? In "Laws and Coutoms among the Eldar" it is told:
Quote:
... For the marriage of the Eldar do not take place between 'close kin'. ... By 'close kin' for this purpose was meant members of one 'house', especially sisters and brothers. None of the Eldar married those in direct line of descent, nor children of the same parents, nor the sister or brother of either of thier parents; nor did they wed 'half-sisters' or 'half-brothers'. Since as has been shown only in the rerest events did the Eldar have second spouses, half-sister or half-brother had for them a special meaning: they used these terms when both of the parents of one child were related to both of the parents of another, as when two brothers married two sisters of another family, or a sister and a brother of one haouse amrried a brother and sister of another: things which often occurred. Otherwise 'first cousins', as we should say, might marry, but seldom did so, or desired to do so, unless one of the parents of each were far-sundered in kin.
Since these last half sentence was clearly true for Maeglin and Idril it would not have been unnatural or unlawfull for them to marry. The addition in the Sil'77 was in my view false and we shouldn't make the same failure a second time.

I will later add some thoughts to the treason of Meaglin, but that has to wait a bit.

Respectfully
Findegil
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