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Re: Lays
Good question. I agree that it would be nice to use the lays -I'm quite fond of them. I think in places where the lays give more information than the prose versions (e.g. Thingol and Beren), they should definitely be used. As for the insertion of poetry into prose: there are two cases we'll be dealing with.
First is the insertion of a decent chunk of poetry, in which case I think there's nothing wrong with the sudden change. This is not so much a literary project as a canonical one - if the best source for the canon on a certain section is poetry, I don't think we need worry about inserting it. I can't off the top of my head think of a place where we'd want to insert a really long section of poetry, but I don't think there's anything wrong with it in principle.
Second is the insertion of just a little bit of detail from the poems. In some cases this will be just a word or two of description, which presents no problem. In other cases we'll have dialogue to deal with. This does present a problem: the dialogue in the poems is assumed to be somewhat stylized; we don't expect that Beren and Thingol really conversed in rhymed octosyllabic couplets. It would serve no purpose to retain the exact form of the dialogue when made into prose, as the dialogue from the poem cannot be considered 'true' or 'canon' to begin with. The question of what to do with it falls under the category of stylistic changes, a topic so far not definitively addressed - but I'd say some editorialization would probably be acceptable here.
For Feanor's oath I think it would be better to go with the Annals of Aman, which also give an exact form. But I think that the Lays will prove useful for Beren and Luthien.
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