"Concerning... 'The Hoard'" revealed

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Honestly, given the apology note, the most likely scenario is that 2017 CT mis-remembered, and Finrod's Nauglamir was invented for the published Silm. Failing that, I think my theory of it being a brief note in the pre-"Wanderings" material holds up. I've not seen any evidence of a substantial, definitive "Text X" which should displace "Concerning".

I wouldn't dismiss Text X's existence out of hand, however; there are mountains of JRRT manuscripts which have never been published, neither in HoME nor anywhere else. Although sometimes I suspect Christopher would have published every scrap had he been able to, in reality he was constrained both by deadlines and length limitations (IIRC, one of the volumes of HME had to be substantially rewritten to fit it within the set page cap)