The Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin

[Aiwendil]

RB-DF-07.5: I think Findegil's last suggestion is good.

RB-DF-07.7: As it stands, this addition is confusing - it sounds as if Finrod is adding a prefix to his own name rather than that of his father. Moreover, the linguistic note feels rather out of place in the midst of the narrative. If we must include this point here, perhaps a footnote quoting the 'Shibboleth' more directly would be better.

I don't recall at the moment whether I had reviewed the changes past RB-DF-10; I'll see if I have any notes on them lying around.

[Findegil]

Nice to read a pot from you Aiwendil!

RB-DF-07.7: I think we might skip that addition completly and add a direct qoute from the Shibboleth in th chapter 5 Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië.

Respectfuly
Findegil

[Aiwendil]

I'm glad to have finally made some time to get back into things here.

I agree about skipping RB-DF-07.7 here and adding the quote to 'Of Eldamar'.

A few more comments for now:

RB-DF-11: In the latest conception, 'Haladin' refers not to the folk of Brethil in general but only to the family of Haleth, so this should be:

but RB-DF-11 {Haleth}[Halmir Lord of the Halethrim] sent swift word to Thingol

RB-DF-12, -13: I think we can stick to GA a bit more in the interest of stylistic unity:

And Thingol sent Beleg the bowman, chief of his march-wardens, to his aid with many archers RB-DF-12 <GA and great strength of the Eglath armed with axes; and issuing from the deeps of the forest they took an Orc-legion at unawares and destroyed it. Thus for a while the black tide out of the North was stemmed in that region and the Orcs did not dare to cross the {Taiglin}[Taeglin] for many years after.> Thus the folk of Haleth dwelt yet for many years in watchful peace in the forest of Brethil; and behind their guard the kingdom of Nargothrond had respite and mustered anew its strength.

Note that QS mentions archers and GA mentions axes; one doesn't quite know whether this is simply an alternative description or whether it means that Tolkien changed his mind about how Beleg's company was equipped. But as Beleg was obviously a bowman, it makes sense that there would be other archers in the company as well, so I think we can let both descriptors stand.

RB-DF-14: An account of Hurin and Huor in Gondolin also, of course, appears in our version of the 'Narn'. I looked back at the Narn thread to remind myself if we had discussed this issue there, but it seem that at the time we simply included the account in the Narn without deciding what to do in 'The Ruin of Beleriand' (if I'm missing someplace where we discussed this further, please let me know).

On one level, I have to say I'm tempted to remove the account completely from this chapter since it seems redundant with the Narn. The problem with this, however, is that the Narn leaves out the main battle with the Orcs and its context in post-Bragollach Beleriand, focusing exclusively on Hurin and Huor.

At the very least, I think we should stick entirely to QS here, since material introduced from GA is quite blatantly redundant with the Narn (which in this section is closely based on GA).

§172: Again here, I am inclined to stick more closely to GA, as it seems to me that the additions from QS add only verbiage and not substance. It even seems to me that the statement in QS that 'the Orcs won many of the passes, and some came even into Mithrim' may contradict GA. In QS, only 'some' Orcs penetrated the mountains as far as Mithrim, and Fingon was able to drive them off himself; in GA, they penetrate the mountains in sufficient numbers that Fingon is 'outnumbered' and the Orcs are only driven off with the aid of Cirdan. I would take this whole paragraph from GA with no additions from QS.

[Findegil]

RB-DF-11: Very good catch. Agreed.

RB-DF-12; -13: Your editing is good. Agreed.

RB-DF-14: This was discussed under the labels NA-EX-05 and NA-TI-02b in the thread Narn I Chîn Húrin1: Túrins Fostering on page 1. My Posting #33 gives a good overview.
I agree that the story now as our texts stand are told twice in diffrent words. I agree and tried to do as fare as possible that we should use only the text of QS to avoid redundant wording. If it is undisiered all together to have the story told twice I would rather skip here the passage dealing with Húrin and Hour alltogether, and not cut anything out of our Narn version. But if we do so it would be hard to find a reason for Turgon being mentioned here at all. I would rather let the story stand here told very briefly and then in an more ampel scale in the Narn.

§172: I have to read both accounts again before further comments, but I think my interpretation was based on the view that there is diffrence between Hithlum and Mithrim. I will come back to this point.

Respectfuly
Findegil

[gondowe]

Hello fellows,

as for the change Haladin for Halethrim, I had seen it but, what can we do with the previous occurrences of Haladin in the Chapter 23 Of the Coming of the Edain & their Hauses and Lordships in Beleriand, f.e. named by Bëor, even when Haleth had not born.
Perhaps it is a change not developed by the professor, or you think its an internal change?

Greetings.

[Aiwendil]

Good to see you, gondowe!

You make a good point that without 'Haladin' we have no general word to refer to the second kindred of the Edain prior to the chieftanship of Haleth. But really we are only dealing with two or three mentions of them before Haleth appears, and I think it would be a shame to let that prevent us from taking up the change. At worst, I expect we could refer to the people 'who later were called the Halethrim', or something along those lines.

RB-DF-14: I agree completely that the version in the Narn should remain there, regardless of what we do here.

But I'm still torn as to what to do here. I have to say, I'm somewhat inclined to reduce the whole episode here to a brief mention and say 'as is after told'. This would be much as in QS, the destruction of Barahir's band is mentioned in a single sentence in the present chapter and then the full story is told in 'Of Beren and Luthien'. It seems rather undesirable to me to tell the same story twice, even if it is in different words. But, like I said, I need to give it a little bit more thought.

[Aiwendil]

Comments for the remainder of the chapter:

RB-SM-01: It seems to me that by adding this sentence from GA, we end up saying twice that the swarthy men came into Beleriand. I do see that the GA passage gives a more detailed picture of their movements and also adds the detail that the Dwarves had told Maedhros of their approach, but I think these could be worked in without the redundancy:

§150 . . . And it is said that at this time the Swarthy Men came first {into Beleriand;} <GAout of Eriador, and passing north about the Eryd Luin entered into Lothlann. Their coming was not wholly unlookedfor, since the Dwarves had warned {Maidros}[Maeðros] that hosts of Men out of the further East were journeying towards Beleriand.> [A]nd some were already secretly under the dominion of Morgoth, and came at his call; but not all . . .

RB-SM-05: There is another slight redundancy here in that QS has already stated that some of the Swarthy Men were already in league with Morgoth. But here it is not so easy to simply take the extra details from GA and add them to the passage in QS, since the GA statement refers to the folk of Bor and Ulfang, who are not introduced in QS until the following paragraph. I suppose the redundancy is slight enough that we might let it stand. Another solution might be to follow GA version I and put the whole statement in the footnote instead of just the second half of it as in version II.

RB-SM-06: In QS, the statement that the people of Haleth 'dwelt to the southward in the woods by Sirion' explains their not being involved in the northern war initially. With our change here, it instead (purportedly) explains why they had little contact with the Easterlings. The thing is, it really doesn't explain that at all, since Brethil is not really any further south than the area in eastern Beleriand where the Easterlings settled. We could probably get away with just changing 'southward' to 'westward'. Also, I think that since this now forms the end of the section instead of leading into the account of the battle in Brethil, we should combine it with the previous sentence:

There was small love between the Three Houses and the Swarthy Men; and they met seldom. For the newcomers abode long in East Beleriand; but the people of Hador were shut in Hithlum, and Bëor's house was well nigh destroyed{.}[;] {Yet}and RB-SM-06 {Haleth and his men}<LQ2 the People of Haleth> {remained still free; for they had been at first untouched by the northern war, since they} dwelt to the {southward}[eastward] in the woods by Sirion.