[Aiwendil]

I think I have stumbled upon a further complication.

TY B has the curious:

Celegorm and Curufin destroy the Dwarf-host at Sarn-athrad in Rath-loriel

If this is to be believed, then at this stage we have not the story that is being proposed for our use; rather, the battle remains at Sarn-athrad, but Sarn-athrad becomes a ford over Rath-loriel/Ascar.

In C and D the battle is at "the fords of Ascar". It is not made clear whether the ford described is Sarn-athrad or not.

But by the late work on "Maeglin", Sarn Athrad (which there becomes Harathrad and then Athrad Daer) is again over Gelion.

I had not before observed that in B it is not only the position of the battle that changes but in fact the position of Sarn Athrad - and that this change was certainly temporary, as seen in "Maeglin".

This raises for me the question of whether TY C and D in fact represent a change from B or not. If not, then they refer to Ascar not because, as we have supposed, there is now another ford over that river, at which the battle now takes place, but rather because at this stage Sarn Athrad was a ford over Ascar, not Gelion, and the battle remained at Sarn Athrad. Alternatively, one could suppose that C represents a further stage of development from B, with the name "Sarn Athrad" transferred back to the ford over Gelion but the battle kept at the (now unnamed) ford over Ascar. Or one could suppose that Ascar in all these TY versions is a mistake (which I still think is a possibility, though I admit it may be unlikely).

Suppose we discount the possibility that it is a mistake. We are left with the two possibilities:

1. The story underlying TY C is the same as that in B: Sarn-athrad is now a ford over Ascar.

2. The story has changed so that Sarn-athrad is over Gelion and the battle at another ford, over Ascar.

Of these two options, I am inclined to think, in view of the lack of any evidence of a change from the story in B, that 1 is more likely. If this is the case, then the battle was and always remained at Sarn Athrad, and so should it in our version, with Sarn Athrad/Athrad Daer, as per "Maeglin", again over Gelion/Duin Daer.

Maedhros wrote:

Now in the Tale of Years, as Findegil has posted, in version B,C and D the battle takes place in the fords over the River Ascar, but the ones who slay the dwarves are not Beren and Co. but rather Celegorm and Curufin. Now, if we are going to use the Tale of Years alternative that the fight was over the ford of the River Ascar, we should take also the fact that it was Celegorm and Curufin who were involved in the fight and not Beren and Co. Can we justify using half a sentence from there but not the other part? Doesn't that make dubious that alteration?

So you would not follow letter 247, which returns the role to Beren? I see no reason to think that the story in this letter necessitates the placing of the ford at any particulary place.