The Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin

[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.