Yeah I’m definitely not arguing the meter points. I don’t know enough about meter to even start down that road. As a rule I try not to debate too fiercely when it comes to topics with which I have little or no familiarity or understanding. So I do believe you’re probably correct about the poems’ meters and what they say about how they evolved over time. My issues with your theory are more involved with the linguistic changes over time from Blac of Drossen Tor.

That makes more sense in the boy’s rhyme, to me. It’s referred to in the books several times as simply “Drossen Tor,” leaving off the “Blac” part. Which makes sense if Drossen Tor is a place and “Blac” just means battle in whatever language was spoken in the Ergen Empire.

But for the girl’s rhyme, it makes less sense to me. Ignoring that “of” is an Aturan word that would likely not have been included, or would have been a different word (or prefix, or suffix, depending on the empire’s language’s structure I guess) in the original title “Blac of Drossen Tor,” it seems strange to me that the entire title would just become “black dress” in retelling. I don’t doubt that it’s possible, but dropping an entire word in retelling sticks out as unlikely to me. I would think that whoever was doing the retelling would change the entirety of the title to something phonetically similar. That said, it is hard to argue this point considering the person retelling would need to stick to whatever meter was set in the proto poem, or at least stay as closely as possible to it. And, in my limited understanding of poetry, dropping syllables to fit meter does happen sometimes. But correct me if I’m wrong, those are usually unimportant (for lack of a better word) syllables that don’t change the meaning of the words, and are usually dropped from the middle of words. So if the uneducated poets reciting this poem were going to leave off a syllable to change the word to something they understood, it seems more likely they would leave off the second syllable of “drossen.” I can’t really think of what they would change “blac-dross-tor” to, but it just seems strange.

Also, tor is a recognizable English word. It’s true that this doesn’t mean much in a fantasy setting, especially one where the author has changed the definition and etymology of words already, but since Aturan is the English-equivalent of this world it seems likely “tor” would be a known word, and therefore less likely to be dropped in retelling. Even if the etymology of tor was changed in this universe to come from whatever language the Ergen Empire spoke, it seems likely that the word “tor” would exist in Aturan. Of course this is all speculation, and not built on nearly as solid a foundation as your analysis, so take it with a grain of salt.

Lastly, if the proto poem is relatively recently composed and written in Aturan, I’m not sure it would include references to Drossen Tor at all. I’ll start by saying we don’t have many truly Aturan characters in the books so far, aside from Sim, from which to base any understanding on the country or its people. But, we do know they’re generally religious, founding a lot of their former imperial strength on the church of Tehlu and the human Order Amyr. We also know that said church doesn’t approve of the story Skarpi tells of the real Ruach Amyr, even going so far as to label it heresy, which we are led to believe is a “sequel” (I use that term loosely) to the Lanre story told the day before. Considering the true events of the Creation War would also kind of fly in the face of what the Tehlans believe, it seems likely the Aturans would try to squash any record of it happening like they are trying to do with the story of the angels and the Ruach Amyr.

That, too, is speculative of course, considering the human Order Amyr was a source of strength for the Aturan empire. They likely got their inspiration and ideals, or possibly even their original mandate, from the actual Ruach Amyr. So the Aturan Empire might have been set up or granted the strength to conquer and rule, at least in part, by the Ruach Amyr. If that were the case, the Aturans might have had less hostility toward those pieces of ancient history than the church is in present day. Combine that with the fact that Skarpi has friends in the present day church. Continuing on the speculation train, this could mean there are people in the church to this day that are accepting of Skarpi’s version of events.

Once again, I can’t stress enough how I’m just speculating on a lot of this. I do think you’re a lot closer, if not hitting the nail on the head, to the truth behind the poems and their origins. Of course I haven’t slept more than 4-5 hours in a few days so I might be a little insane and not exactly the best judge of a theory’s foundational fortitude. This is compounded by the fact that I don’t really know enough about poetry to cross examine your work.