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Old 03-28-2004, 10:58 AM   #23
lindil
Seeker of the Straight Path
 
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: a hidden fastness in Big Valley nor cal
Posts: 1,681
lindil has just left Hobbiton.
lindil's thoughts

Chapter Sub-Divisions
I suggest the following subdivisions of the Earedil material, by Q and QS sourcetexts, and with BoLT II'sEarendil/Poetic Lay material a seperate subsection and then following the LQ in XIp.247,

I - VoE I [Q source text, and 77/99],'Of the Exiles and the Assault on the Havens of Sirion'[?]
II- VoE II BoLT II'sEarendil/Poetic Lay , his 'voyage' [without the silmaril ]proper.*
III- VoEIII QS text from V The Lost Road [the Voyages of Elwing and Earendil and Earendil's prayer before the Valar]
~ further subdivisions according to the LQ chapters in XI p.247:~
IV - Of the Great Battle and the War of the Wrath
V- The Last End of the Oath of Feanor and his Sons
VI- Of the Passing of the Elves [Ed. Note]do we want to add(and the Edain?)

So for now VoE I, II, and III would be seperate, but as II is sorted out, it would incorporated into I.


I rather doubt we need a 2nd Prophecy of Mandos, but if some one has something we missed in the 2nd prophecy thread...

*However, a note on II, requires I think, it's own question:
On Bilbo and his Lay of Earendil

It is possibly the supreme irony of the Legendarium that we never hear an even compressed version of the actual Voyage of Earendil other than Bilbo's Criticized version [by Aragorn no less] . To me it begs the question, 'Why would Bilbo write a poorly informed Lay of Earendil?' because no official One existed, [probably fragments as messy as what we have!] and thus, Bilbo had a big whole in his book, it, like the full tale of the ending of Beren and Luthien, was as far as mortals like Bilbo and Aragorn were concerned, werer locked in Elrond's [and maybe other's] head.

So perhaps it was all done as a prod to get the real version out of someone in Rivendell.

We do not know how such a ploy, if it ever happened, would have succeeded, but we do know that Bilbo' was the final choice of JRRT as redactor, so possible inclusion of part or some of his obviously late Earendil material [or at least Aragorn's bit about the Ellesar[?!] does not seem so far fetched, as it might.

On Gil-Galad son of_________
I think we might want to at least look seriously as Fingon as sire of Gil-Galad, and retaining the earlier note re: Fingon's sending him, in it's functional entirety:

- XI p. 177 (LQ2 ch.10 - The Siege of Angband) reads

Quote:
“ ‘…(as Mandos foretold) because the overlordship passed from it, the elder to the House of Fingolfin, both in Elende and in Beleriand, …
I am not sure on the dating, but the point could be made, regardless, that the passing of the Overlordship to another house [i.e. Fingolfin, Fingon, Turgon and then Gil-Galad son of Fingon] would require an alteration of a Doom of Mandos. That is I think, a more serious issue than any one choice in the thicket that is Gil-Galad's family tree.

I think the passing of the Overlordship to a specifically named 2nd branch, would in turn require the passing to the 3rd branch in M-E to also have it's declared statment.

What to make of the "both in Elende" line? It was that Fingolfin did in fact rule in Tuna for some years. And in suport of my point, we have a specific statment of Finarfin being given the Rule of the Noldor when their pardon was received.

So what we do not have, and it would take the same sort of FF as the Gil-Galad in Nargothrond, is any text or line that the ruling-house in M-E would pass to the Finarfinian line.

The Mouths of Sirion

Also though I have not yet grasped all of the threads of the Mouth's of Sirion and Lordship of the Elves there, I did note on the Later Silm Map[ XI p. 184], placing 'ship havens ' close to the tip of Cape Balar, with the name Earendil off a bit to the rigth, leaving a further question, of course. The Accompanying note on p. 190 tells us only that Earendil probably belongs to the ship Havens, placed exactly by a circled dot at the back of a small bay at the base of the Cape of Balar.

A further possibility, not spelled out, but possibly implied, is that the Sindar from Doriath [and any possible sindar from Gondolin] did not want a purely Noldorin Ruler [Gil-Galad son of ... ] The 2 parties, and any Edain that are said to have wandered south [see the Aelfwine and Dirhaval I think].

Anyway, this could well be a reason, to keep the possibility of 2 settelemnts [one reallty Cirdan's mainland outpost.

Also, the reality is being Lord of a people implies some responsibility for defense of the people, and Gil-Galad and Cirdan, for whatever reason [space?] did not have them brought to Balar.

So keeping Earendil [however rarely he may have been around] as Lord [not anykind of King] of a mostly non-Noldorin people does not at all interfere with King Gil-Galad on Balar with Cirdan.

We are in no place I can recall, given info on the relationship between Cirdan and Gil-Galad. Probably the longest alliance between Sindarin and Noldorin Lords.

Who is leading the hosts of the West Findegil posted:
Quote:
About Ingwiel/Ingwion/Finarfin: I agree with Aiwendil, that Ingwion son of Ingwe was the chief of the Vanyar and that Finarfin led the Nodor of Valinor. Petty Dwarf’s second edition of the text seems good to me. If we are going to take the emendation to the typescript as the only valid story, then this must mean that Ingwion was the leader of all the Elves of Valinor, or so I think.
I agree as this goes with our principle of , 'when in doubt -add whatever is not contradictory with the main body of the story. Both Ingwion and Finarfin should be mentioned.



A note on Principles
This area is clearly a weak point of our principles [and if anyone wishes to go in this direction of a further addition- do it on the **Principles**thread itself], and indeed something of an Achilles heel for us.

We have multiple conflicting versions, with no real method of evaluating which bit of it can claim priority, once the dating has been given obviating factors, such as well, 'he might have been getting soft', or 'the crazy LQ texts that were derived from older photocopies of Q, and only randomly corrected, leaving sever and bizarre anachronisms.


This is a situation, we are likely to see again, and again, as we enter the tangled notes and outlines and semi-corrected LQ texts. The Legendarium could be seen as a gem, and it's brilliance is partly a product of the interconnection and relationship of the facets. Change one thing, and it often , as we all know, leads to several other ramifications.

As a side thought, I think perhaps we should consider a hierarchical list of peoples, titles, qualities, etc to rank, and as best we can, view things like the Parentage of Gil-Galad and all it entails, and the location/lordship of Earendil more objectively than at present.

Exactly how this would be worked out I won’t spend time on here or now, but it might take some of the personal element out of our tangles.

Although such decisions will always come down to the Human level at some point, or else we will have a painfully dry ‘abstraction’ of Tolkien, not anything that could really be called his.

Many of the currently 'neutral' changes made to our FoG are of this type, and inevitably so for a text that specifically eschewed [so far] an element of revision, that focused on stylistic harmonization of the differing strata of texts.



Anyway, just thought I should stir the pot a bit, with what little I could come up with.

I hope to comment on the other 3 projects soon.
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Last edited by lindil; 03-28-2004 at 11:22 AM. Reason: minor update of leadership of the Amies of the West Question.
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