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Parma Eldalamberon Volume 8 [8]

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JF &IF~JM[& ml1JD)&l1&OO1]3JE~(Q)N

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THE BOOK OF EL VEN TONGUES Volume 2 Number4

Parma is a journal of linguistic studies of fantasy literature, especially of the Elvish languages and nomenclature in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is published at irregular intervals as sufficient material becomes available. Submissions are welcome! STAFF and CREDITS Christopher Gilson: Editor Adam Christensen: Front Cover Patrick Wynne: Back Cover Jorge Quinonez: Typing Assistance

CONTENTS The Unified Field Theory of Elvish, by Patrick Wynne ....... 2 Pronouns in Noldorin and Sindarin, by Tom Loback ......... 3

Itarille Quete, translated by Craig Mamock ................... 6 A Survey of Eldarin Pronouns, by Bill Welden ................... 8 23 and 31: Problematic Numbers in Elvish, by Arden R. Smith .... 16 Orc Military Organization and Language, by Tom Loback ....... 17 An Analysis of Firiel's Song, by Patrick Wynne ................. 21 RUNES: Letters to Parma . ................................. 45 Copyright © 1989 by Christopher Gilson. Individual articles and atrwork remain the property of their authors. The works of ].R. R. Tolkien published through 1983 are © by George Allen & Unwin, or else © by Frank Williamson and Christopher Tolkien as Executors of the Estate of ].R.R. Tolkien. Submissions and comments should be sent to the Editor, 2310A Prince Street, Berkeley, CA 94705

when a subject has been previously alluded to and -nte being used "where no subject is previously mentioned", to use Tolkien's own words. For an example of extreme Conceptionist thinking at its worst I would refer you to a recent issue of quettar (no. 34, I think, but I can't locate my copy nght now) [no. 33, p.12 - Ed.] in which someone commented that most of "the Etymologies" was worthless as far as shedding light on the Q. verb system since it was all so different from the LotR material and that the best one could hope for f~om "the Etym." was to pick it clean of any usable bIts of new vocabulary. This person obviously did not, and likely never will, spend any time or effort in trying to see how the verbs in "the Etymologies" can be reconciled with LotR. The main "con" of the "Unifist" school (I will not say "Unitarian"!) is that there can be no doubt at all that Tolkien's concept of Quenya did indeed change with time, and that when all is said and done there will be pre-LotR material which will have to be deemed wholly irreconcilable with the LotR/post-LotR materiaL For example, I strongly suspect that the early genitive sing. in final -n was rejected in favor of that in -0. But from now on I will have to do an awful lot of long, hard t?inking about variant forms and possible explanatlOns for them before I go declaring anything as "rejected". Take, for example, the early version of the Elvish greeting given in The Return of the Shadow pg. 324: Eleni silir Iumesse omentiemman, with its variant Elen sile ... In my days as a Conceptionist I would have thought automatically: present tense sing. and plural endino-s -e and -ir rejected in favor of later -a and -ar~ 1st person pI. possessive -mma rejected in favor of later -Iva, -Ima. Now I will not be so hasty. Of course we see present tense 3rd pers. sing. verbs ending ~n -e in "The Etym.": tape 'he stops', teke 'wntes', etc. Perhaps sile/silir differs form sila in mood or aspect, hence a different inflexion (note also the short vowel in the earlier forms). Sile and sila might even be different verbs, perhaps one < SIL and the other < THIL, and so they conjugate differently. Perhaps -mma is a previously unknown mute on that point. Any or all of these suppositions may be wrong, but you get th~ idea .. I may sound overwrought when I say thIS (and like any new convert to a cause or belief I perhaps am liable to overzelousness), but each word from the Master's pen is a precious thing, and I will not discard them lightly.

The Unified Field Theory ofEIvish by Patrick Wynne [from a letter to Bill Welden, 1 February 1989]

Y?ur mention of Chris and how he is "always ... trymg to find a way to make all of the published or unpublished forms correct" brings up the interesting topic of how to reconcile pre-LotR Quenya with LotR/ post-LotR Quenya. * There seem to be two main schools of thought on this. Chris's approach, in which one analyzes pre-LotR Quenya under the assumption that, theoretically at least, it can be seen to accord with the LotR/postLotR material, might be dubbed the "Unified Field" schooL The other approach, and the one which currently seems to have the most adherents, assumes by and large that (apparent) discrepancies between the two masses of material are the result of changes in Tolkien' s conception of Quenya with the passage of time. This approach could be called the "Unimmaculate Conception" schooL Both schools can be seen to have their pros and cor:s. I used to be a staunch "Conceptionist" up untIl Mythcon last summer, but after having struck up an acquaintance with Mr. Gilson there and having exchanged several letters since, I will confess that I have now been converted to the "Unifist" way of thinking. So, I feel I have a fairly good perspective of life on both sides of the linguistic fence, so to speak. It seems to me that the main danger in the Conceptionist school is that it makes it too easy (for some people) to be a lazy thinker. That was my problem, at any rate. For example, given -nte 'they' in the post-LotR co.rpus and -Ito 'they' in the pre-LotR corpus, I blIthely assumed, without exerting too much mental energy, that -nte was a later, "correct" form which replaced the earlier (and now rejected) form -Ito. Chris recently pointed out to me that both forms are likely to be valid, -Ito being used

* This is perhaps a slightly better way to refer to the distinction than "published" and "unpublished". Certainly there is a lot of Quenya - Cirion's Oath, the latest version of "OHima Markirya", etc. - which was written after LotR's publication and yet remained "unpublished" during Tolkien's life, and one can probably feel almost 100% certain that there would be nothing in this post-LotR unpublished material which would deliberately contradict the Q. seen in LotR. 2

Pronouns in Noldorin and Sindarin by 1"0 m

loback

Cases:

Subject

Object

PQssessive

Singular

Plural

ho 'he' he 'she' ha'it' huin'they'

hon 'him' hen 'her' ha'it' hin'them'

hono 'his' hene 'hers' hana'its' hein 'theirs'

Singular Plural Singular Plural

hi 'this' hin 'these' ha(?) 'that' hain 'those'

hi 'this' hin'these' ('that') hain 'those'

Singular

e 'he'

('him')

Plural ?Royal

Ie 'thou' .Im,mm. . (?) 'I, myself' ('you') ('we, ourselves') e 'we/he'

Ie 'thee' nin, nim(?)* 'me, myself' ('you') ('us') e 'us/he'

Noldorin

Sindarin

• Formal usage vs. common: (J-chebln estel anlm, could read -

in 'his' din 'his' (,thine, thy') ('mine') ('yours') ('our') in 'our/his'

'not kept hope for me'.

Also while in nora lim, Asfaloth the lim can be interpreted otherwise and Glorfindel is speaking apparently to Asfaloth; the total blank for 'you' is very suspicious - could it be that lim can be interpreted to mean 'you'? Seems to fit with Ie and im/nim. Further uin in letter seems odd. Could it be uin Echuir 'their Stirring' implying balance of text, 23 Feb etc. Highly speculative fills might be: ?ha, hai 'that'

?i ?de ?ge 'him' obj.

?Ii 'you'

lin, lim 'you'

?nini, nimi 'mine' ?Iene 'thine, thy' lini, limi 'your, yours'

Third Age Sind. may have dropped final vowel of possessives?

Following your suggestion that the Noldorin pronouns are arranged in case order, I offer up this tentative chart for Parma. By studying case definitions, etc., in the Little Oxford Dictionary and assuming that Tolkien followed that order a more filled chart can be made. Interestingly this led to a re-definition of hi, hln, haln from the Moria Gate inscription (re. 'these' and 'those' see Little Oxford,

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and therefore hi ='this'). Overall look seems to contradict usage of e = 'he' and din ='his' in letter of Elessarto Samwise. Question: Since gate inscription translation seems to indicate an "everyday" usage confusion between them and those such as we all make at times, could that explain the anomaly of e = 'he' (perhaps a royal 'we' or a familiar 'he' or archaic form like theelthou) and in, din = 'his' (perhaps adj. obj. plu. pass. of hono in spite of bess din sing.; or a later 3rd Age common usage indicating asimplification of an obviously complicated situation?)? Orwhat? Up to a point Nold. and Sind. sections seem to fit together well especially Moria Gate which was probably written nearer in time to Etymologies than Elessar's Letter. P.S. Love to know what you think on this. P.P.S. Can't say that I can chart all pronoun cases in English, perhaps you can. It seems JRRT's intention these have a form in Nold.lSind. at the start of LotR and that there is some regular progression of forms including differing vowel changes in the progressive change of a plural (Nold. 'they, them, theirs', Sind. 'this, that, these, those'). If huln is plural form of ho, he, ha, how does that affect plurals elsewhere, if at all?

Editor's Reply When I suggested case assignments forthe 3rd person pronouns I was thinking only of the singular. The plurals have a pattern which in the context of Etymologies seems more inviting. The vowels in the forms (which solely distinguish them from each other) hY.i.n, hIn, h~n correspond to the phonetic pattern of plural nouns in Noldorin: amQ.n 'hill' pI. emu In, emyn; n~n 'water' pI. nIn; adjir 'father' pI. ed~r, eder.) This suggests that the differences amoung the plural pronouns marked "gender" rather than case, at least etymologically, thus:

Masculine Feminine Neutral

ho 'he' he 'she' ha'it'

hon hen

hono hene hana

huin'they' hin'they' hein 'they'

I suppose it should be added that this sort of paradigm might be susceptible to historical change, since a purely masculine 'they' or feminine 'they' would occur less frequently than the neutral 'they', especially if the last included both pure plural of "it and it . . ." and the common plural of "he and she (and others)". And I would rather leave haln 'them' translated as in the text and see a connection with heln 'they' as plural of 'it'. These forms heln, hain could be viewed as phonetic variants of each other: ct. N celr, S calr 'ship', Er~nlon 'scion of kings', Fornost Eriiln 'Norbury of the Kings'. But I am willing to admit that these could not only come from the hypothetical PQ plural *han-i" but also from *han-ya-, *hen-ya-, *hin-ya. So it may combine with the ''function" of Eng!. those as well as they, them. As for the demonstrative of proximity in Sindarin, I would relate them this way to the table:

Masculine Feminine Proximity

ho 'he' he 'she' hi 'now'

hon hen hin 'these'

hono hene

huin'they' hin'they'

This suggests the relationship between hi and hln is still our best clue for translating the difference between ho, he and hon, hen. Since the final -n does not mark plural in 'he' or 'she' perhaps that is not the functional difference between 'now' and 'these'. Though 'now' does in a way mean 'this (time)" it can also be seen as equivalent of 'here (in time)'. Certainly hi is derived from root SI'this, here, now', just like ho < so, he < se. The full context of hln is Celebrlmbor teithant I thiw hin 'C. drew these signs' where it seems the combination i ..• hin is what equates to English these. In other words when the demonstative is used as an adjective it follows the noun which is also accompanied by the definite article. This same rule applies in Welsh grammar: y ty hwn 'this house' lit. 'the house this', which if we try to put into idiomatic English while retaining the article would be something like 'the house here'. In other words the demonstrative adjectives in this house, these signs are effectively equivalent to an adjectival form of here. If we relate this to the personal pronouns he, she their adjectival forms are the possessive: his house, her house, his signs, her signs. Notice that the form of these pronouns does not change between modifying a singular vs. plural noun. The difference between this and these is in agreement with the number of the noun modified rather than the "antecedent" (if we can view 'here' as the peculiar antecedent of hi, hin the way 'Dick' or 'Jane' would be the antecedents of ho, hon and he, hen), then it seems theoretically possible to have hi 'here, now' with possessive hln 'of here, of now' = both 'this' and 'these'.

4

Taking all this into account, I am inclined to view the probable way of saying 'his sign' and 'her sign' as tiw hon and tiw hen. Of course 'his. sign' can mean 'a sign from him', 'a sign to him' or 'a sign about him'. I would also compare therefor the "objective" 1st person in A tiro n1n. Fanuilos! '0 guard~, Elbereth!' Beside ~is there is also in UTered e-mbar nln 'the mountains of!IlJ'. home'. I would guess that this may be a nominalization of the possessive pronoun like 'mine' from 'my', 'hers' from 'her', 'theirs' from 'their'. The literal translation of the phrase would be 'mountains of the home (that is) mine'. The "noun" form is used here

because the possessive modifies another possessive e-mbar '(of) the home', which is possessive purely by position in the phrase following the main noun. The object cumpossessive form nin would modify the main noun if it were left short: ered e-mbar nin 'my mountains at home'. The (absolute) possessives in, din 'his' are further examples of this lengthened form, and possibly also of the grammatical device of "deferential" vs. "formal" in the third person, which he mentions in Appendix F, II, as an aspect of some Mannish speech habits of Third Age Middle-earth. The connection of Noldorin ho, he, ha to Sindarin e 'he' may lie in an historical change. In unempatic syllables the sound h tended to be lost in Sindarin. This would have lead to phonetic alternates 0, e, a of which the only homophone that had any utility in its semantics (0 and a already had various other uses), was e a sometime variant of the word i, in, e, en 'the'. In Sindarin one could perhaps either emphasise the gender of the subject, ho, he, ha or simply use e for any singular subject of whatever gender. The possessive in is surely devised by analogy with nln, nln. The breakdown of anim into *annim < an + *nlm supports an assumption of analogical *nim > im. Still we should keep in mind that the parallel we are trying to explain is 1m 'I' (appositive both times) and lim which since it is adresses to a horse, and the imperative verb is noro 'run, ride on', it seems that the sense of 11m in context is 'by yourself'. I could believe an element im "self" derived from ING- 'first, formost', and related to the Q name Ingwe. Tolkien implies that *ngw would normally yield Noldorin mb which we know in regular progression yields mm > "m" in Sindarin. It could be then that lim is from Ie + im. And the phrase 1m Narvi = 'Narvi's self', which satisfies perfectly the semantic requirements of the inscription, granted the possibility of Sindarin idiom. But we can never lose sight that the fact of the matter is that 1m Narvl = 'I Narvi' in actual Elven usage.

5

Quenya Version

Translated by

Itarille quete: "Nainuvan, an atarinya cena i umbarihyo tulie ant a r a 1 mindonihyasse; nain uvan otsove 2 an herunya ataltie t e r - m a h tal a 3 Melcor ar uentuluva marenna!" - an orerya ne 4 rUClna i lomeo nwalmesse. Tuor quete: "Ye! Itarille, ea n e,S ar coianye; 6 sf tultuvan 7 atarilya sinome, nais 8 Melcoro Mardissen!" Ar vanes u n d u 9 i ambo erve,1 0 rucina orehya i indiso 11 nainienen. Si, il u v e a 12 orerya nainieo raumo-

©IF®~@ [RaJ®[l'[1i)@©~

Whilst going through the poem "1m Naitho" which appeared in issue seven of Parma, I looked up the part of "The Fall of Gondolin" from which the poem was drawn so as to get a better idea of what was going on. Naturally, I began to consider ways in which I would have translated certain portions which Since I am an were rather difficult to render. avowed quenyandll (perhaps even a quenyandur), it was natural that I should do so in High-Elven It is written as far as terms, hence this piece. possible in the Quenya evidenced in The Lord of the Rings, and other places. I have tried to avoid, insofar as it was possible, the use of vocabulary from the volumes of The History fo Middle Earth, except where unavoidable and the word in question has related forms in the "final-form" corpus.

1 'Highest, loftiest': an- superlative or intensive prefix, tara 'lofty'.

2

'Seven times, to the seventh extent': otso 'seven', *-ve adverb-forming suffix.

3 mahta- 'fight' - Etym. MAK-; cpo macil, maca r. I didn't translate this literally as I don't like NIB- &c., though I can't say why.

Original Version (The Book of Lost Tales 2, p.187, Unwin Paperbacks 1986 Edition)

4 Past tense of na- 'to be'. S I prefer this to *ni by analogy with Ie, which we are told is from Quenya; I think we have the same morpheme as for more appearing here.

Then said Idril: "Woe is me whose father awaiteth doom even upon his topmost pinnacle; but seven times woe whose lord hath gone down before Melko and will stride home no more!" - for she was distraught with the agony of that night. Then said Tuor: "Lo! Idril, it is I, and I live; yet now I will get thy father hence, be it from the Halls of Melko!" With that he would make down the hill alone, maddened by the grief of his wife; but she coming to her wits in a storm of weeping clasped his knees saying: "My lord! My lord!" and delayed him. Yet even as they spake a great noise and a yelling rose from that place of anguish. Behold, the tower leapt into flame and in a stab of fire it fell, for the dragons crushed the base of it and all who stood there. Great was the clangour of that terrible fall, and therein passed Turgon King of the Gondothlim, and for that hour the victory was to Melko.

6 By analogy with S cui-. 7 tulta- 'fetch' Entulesse, etc.

Etym. TUL-; cpo utu lien,

8 Purely a subjunctive, of course; no optative force. 9 undu 'down' -

Etym. UNU-.

10 erve 'alone, on his own'. Based somewhat hazardously on *elve 'like a star, in a starry manner' whence elvea 'starlike'. Other possibilities are *ereve, *erave, or perhaps more plausibly *eryave (cp. erya in Etym. ER-). 11

Possibly Indira; cpo plural olorl of 0105.

12 'Whole'; adj. formed from iluve by analogy with lome/lomea, rave/ravea, yalme/yalmea &c.

6

sse maperye 13 telcohyar 14 quetala "Herunya! Herunya!" ar met t e 1 5 vaniehya. Lumesse quetente rave ar nalme 1 6 tuler i nwalmeo ardallo. Ye, i mindon cap e 17 runyanna ar taltes naro cirie, an i urul6ci racer sundahya ar i rimbe i ne ara 18 se. 19 And a 20 ne i aica 21 taltieo I am m a 22 yasse vane Turcanu i o n dol i n d e rim b e 0 23 Aran ar lumesse Melcor ne i nacil.24

t~~~~'i~~~~;I~,;;~\;'~;t)~~;~1" .i!?t. . :.•\. ., ,. ,'. . ¥.•, . ~ -.r":'" . . .,..,:._",. \... . . . . ", .....'1,.. ' . , ' ..•. ~ t~.:\~.,l...·"I't"·' .:.~'

";'. .....' ~,""':""

,~. \"I!:,.•"........•

'~""'"

.~ "Ti·;:f:f..:·~·'~t .. ·-:-:;:::~7." teo This would not be the first example of the Elves shoveling on extra plural markers: cf. falmalln nar. (the declension sheet [Beyond Bree March 1989, p. 7] marks the final r in the multiple plural allative as optional; it may be included in "Namarle" for ease of pronunciation w/following Imbe).· This brings me to te 'them' in a lalta te, lalta te '0 praise them, praise them'. Before you made the scales fall from my eyes, I had assumed this to be the accusative of ante. But since there are abundantly mentioned antecedents for te in the preceding lines, te must be the accusative form of toi. The tal> te shift is phonetically plausible, for tho' I can't think of an 01 > e example in Elvish off hand there are abundant examples to be had elsewhere, e.g. Greek olkonomla > English economy. It may be that the acc. form of nte is te as well, but ante probably has as little use for an accusative form as it does for a possessive form.

aina : 'holy'. mana : 'blessed'. Since both of these adjectives modify a plural subject tal, one would expect plural forms alnar, manar. Note in Line 6 we have Tal frimar. The answer to this enigma seemingly lies w/meldielto. As mentioned above, this consists fo meld(a) + yelto, and note that yelto is suffixed to the singular form of the adjective; we do nt see **meldarielto. Aina and mana are therefore kept in the sing. to keep them in accord w/melda, their plurality being made abundantly clear by tal and -Ito squatting on either side like bookends. We do have the rather odd situation here of tal and -Ito both occurring in the same sentence, a double subject as it were: 'They (are) holy, blessed, and beloved are they'. Here we can see that -Ito is acting very much like a 3r2. person pI. inflection rather than as a pronoun suffix, much in accord w/your own theories I would say. A more normal way of constructing this sentence might be Toi aina, mana, meldler, but meldlelto is clearly used for the extra syllable it provides, necessary to maintain the iambic meter. If pronoun suffixes sometimes act more like inflexions, there are also instances of inflexions acting more like pronoun suffixes: note the use of -r for 'they' in karler 'they made' and antar

25

'they gave' in Lines 5 and 6. Perhaps this was considered bad style - T. changed these forms to karielto and antalto. Tol, besides its obvious metrical function in this line, serves to provide a subject which prevents confusing alna and mana as adjectives used substantively : aina, mana meldielto could be mistaken for 'the holy one, the blessed one, they are beloved'. The presence of tol makes it clear this is not the case.

enga : 'save'.

That is, 'except for'.

Where does this derive from?

Might it be related to en

'there, look! yonder', in the sense of isolating something exceptional?3

morion : '(the) dark one'. Nothing too exceptional here though! The first element is adj. more 'black' (I'm assuming more is an adj., while m6re - wllong 0 - is a noun), or its combining form morl- as in morimalte 'blackhanded'. the ending -on '-one' must derive from ONO- 'beget', a root which begat Q onna 'creature', Nan.

Metrics:

Another entirely iambic line ,

,

,

,

Toi ailna, malna melldiellto - enlga molrion : 2

3

4

5

6

7

Line 4 talantie. Mardello Melko lende : marie. "He is fallen. Melko has gone from Earth: it is good." talantie : 'He is fallen'. One possible explanation for this form has already been given in the discussion of numessler in line 2, q.v. It is also possible that talantie is a verb in the perfect tense, 3rd person singular, 'has fallen', the subject being morlon 'dark one' at the end of the preceding line (for the use of the colon in this poem to indicate the subject, see tare in Line 12). It is well known that the perfect tense is marked by -Ie (at the same time it is important to remember that -Ie serves a wide variety of other functions in Quenya, appearing in the past tense plural: ullier 'they poured'; the gerundial/infinitive: enyalle 'recalling'; certain plural adjectives; laurie 'golden'; an ending. in feminine names: Nessanle; a copula suffix: marie 'it is good'; etc.) It is not readily apparent form the published material, however, what stem the perfect inflection is added to. This does become clear in the unpublished material found at Marquette, where one finds the perfect form lendien 'I have come', which shows that the perfect tense is formed from the past-tense stem (Iend-) rather than from the present-tense stem (linn- or lest-). Also compare the present tense tulln 'I come' (short vowel) with the past tense tll Ie 'came' and perfect tense utullen 'I have come' (both with long vowels). In the first draft of the Eressean Fragment (LR-56) we find the 3rd person singular past tense form atalante 'down-fell'. This would yield a perfect form atalantie, which is said to be a prefix meaning ·complete" (LR-390). That this initial a- is something other than the perfect augment seen in avanier 'have passed away' and other forms is indicated by its use in a past tense form atalante (as well as in the past tense form ataltane in the second version of the Eressean Fragment). Such augmentless perfects as talantle and lendien (also note from The Book of Lost Tales 1

tullelt0 4 'they have come', tulier 4 'have come', antullen 'hath returned') show that use of the augment

3 Perhaps prefix en- 'back, again, reo' (as in entul- 'come back, come again, return') added to root 3AR 'have, hold' yielded verb stem *engar- 'hold back, exclude, reserve', which was used in a stock imperative construction like engar(a) nelde atani 'exclude three men' (similar the English use of 'save'), and separation from the verbal conjugation lead to reinterpretation of the root r as an inflection only appropriate with plural object.

Thus plural *engar > singular *enga.

26

C.G.

in the perfect tense was not considered de rigueur. Since the past tense plural was also marked by -ie, this might be seen as leading to confusion: would lendielto mean 'they came' or 'they have come'? It may be that the importance of a clear distinction between past and perfect tenses did not loom quite so large in the Elvish mind as it does in our own. One does not have to search far to find languages which do not distinguish tenses which we consider basic. Japanese, for example, does not distinguish between past and perfect: Ikimaslta can be translated as either 'went' or 'has gone'. Finnish has no separate future tense, and uses the present to indicate that concept. In cases in Elvish where a clear pasVperfect distinction was deemed vital, no doubt the augment would be used: elendielto 'they have come'. There were other methods of clarification available as well, such as the use of sl 'now' and perhaps en (see the discussion of en in line 1). Indeed, the availability of methods of pasVperfect distinction other than the augment would be vital in the case of verbs beginning with a vowel, where there seems no convenient way to add an augment, as with ullier 'poured'. In such a case si could be used: SI ullier '(they) now have poured'.

Mardello : 'from Earth'. Ablative of mar 'Earth', seen in Line 8 (inflectional stem m a rd e-). In its most basic sense, mar (or mar) means 'home' or 'dwelling', and the variety of uses to which this word is put is nothing short of astonishing. It is used to refer to everything from a ship (Eambar), to domed buildings (oromardi), to entire countries (Eldamar), and in this poem to the Earth itself. The more usual cosmological term for the Earth was ambar (inflexional stem ambaro-), though its avoidance in this line is understandable since the ablative ambarollo would not fit the meter. Ambar could have conceivably been used as the first word in Line 8 instead of I-mar, assuming that beginning that line w/a trochee rather than an iamb would fit the artist's vision, but no doubt once mar was used instead of am bar in Line 4 the poet withes to remain consistent.

Melko : At this point the name was probably interpreted as 'The Lusty One, He Who Lusts' < *Mailiko < MIL-IK-. Also note Q maile 'lust', mallea 'lustful', and the similarity between the Noldorin form Maeleg to N mael 'lust', maelui 'lustful'. These words perhaps had sexual as well as propertarian connotations (remember Luthien before Morgoth? - "Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark than any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor.")

lende : 'has gone'. Literally, 'went'. The pa.t. of either IInna or lesta- (the latter may have been rejected). Note the Sind. verb anglennatha 'will approach' in the Unp. Epilogue. The Q equivalent of this would be analinnuva (ana- 'to, towards' + linna 'go' + uva). Also note elle, eller 'came' in "Nleninque", which must derive somehow from ELED- 'go, depart, leave' (but this meaning for this root was rejected) or LED- 'go, fare, travel'. Lende is translated as a perfect tense in this line due to its placement between two verbs referring to the present: talantie 'he is fallen' and marie 'it is good'. Another example of the "implied perfect".

marie : 'it is good'.

As stated previously. this is derived from mara 'good' + ye 'it is'. "The Etymologies" says that mara derives from the proto-form *magri 'useful, fit, good (of things)' < MAG'use, handle' Here the definition has been expanded beyond the mere utility of a physical object to include the moral good of an abstract event, namely the ousting of Melko. No doubt the similarity to mana 'blessed' helped in this extension of the original meaning of mara.

Metrics: another fully iambic line: , , '\

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'\

'\

talanltie. I Mardeilio Mellko lenlde: malrie 12

3

4

5

6

7

4 Curiously, these have short vowels, all the more curious since antullen has a long vowel.

27

[P.W.]

Tolkien's emendation of Mardello Melko to Melko Mardello apparently has the result to change the third foot into a trochee: trochee

..

,

,

,

,

talanltie. I Melko I Mardeilio lenlde: malrie. 12

3

4

5

6

7

I say "apparently" because I am not sure that the weak stress on the final sy"able of talantle can legitimately be used as a metrical stress under these circumstances, namely being immediately followed by a primary stress on the first syllable of Melka. Tolkien writes in his metrical analysis of "Namarle" in Road Goes Ever On (pg. 61) that weak stress as in Andune, etc." I also note that trochees only occur in "Namarie" as the first foot of a line, not internally. Anyway, if the final weak stress in talantle cannot be used, then the emended line works out to only six feet, the second and third being anapcests:

,

anap.

,

~,

anap.

,

,

talanltie. Mellko Mardeilio lenlde: malrie. 1

2

3

4

5

6

Obviously, the emendation was intended to provide some metrical variety (a" those nonstop iambs do get monotonous after a while). T. may also have wanted to put this sentence into a more normal word-order, i.e. subject first, and in the process put Melka next to tal antle, which refers to him.5

Line 5 Eldain en karier Isil, nan hildin U'r-anar. "For Elves they made the Moon, but for Men th_e .red Sun;"

Eldain : 'For Elves'. Dative plural fa elda 'elf'. en karier " 'they made'. Both here and with antar

in line 6, plural -r performs a function virtually identical to that of the inflection -Ito. The emended versions of lines 5 and 6 emphasize this: there karler and antar become karlelto and antalto. This pronominal use of -r seems unique in the corpus, with the exception of numessier 'they are in the West' (although Vallon practically acts as its subject).

5 Probably both metrical interpretations of the emended line are possible, depending on the purpose and style of the line in context.

That 13 of the 14 lines all have 14 syllables suggests that syllable

pairing or dimeter is part of the scheme and that the "trochaic" interpretation of this and line 6 is part of the effect.

In both cases it begins a new sentence with a rhetorical shift (here between Melko falling

and his being gone), so that putting stress on the final syllable in taillntie may tend to yield a pause before the trochee, with the time made up by the more rapid pronunciation of the metrically unstressed pair -ko Mar-.

But it may be this works precisely because the alternative exists of "anaprestic"

reduction in these lines of. 3 feet into 2, if a rhetorical pause were undesirable here.

This would explain

both revisions since what Tolkien's observed stricture, that secondarily stressed syllables cannot be metrically unstressed save before a primary stress, means both original lines cannot be reinterpretted with two anaprests vs. iamb + trochee + iamb.

C. G.

28

Isil : 'the Moon'.

Here in the accusitive. "The Etymologies" gloss this as 'the Sheen' < THIL-, the initial 1- being an "intensive prefix where I is base vowel."

nan : 'but'.

"The Etymologies" give two forms, na and nan, but we have no examples of the usage of

the first form.

hildin : 'for Men'. Dative of hildi, literally 'followers'. I formerly assumed that Hildorien consisted of Hlldor 'Men' plus -len 'land'. But Lost Road pg. 245 shows that Hlldorien was once contemporaneous with hlldl. Therefore the first element can't be the plural Hlldor, although -ien 'land' still works as the final element. The or which follows hard on the heels of Hild- may be ore 'a rising', which also occurs in anarore 'sunrise'. OL defines ore as 'the dawn, Sunrise, East'. So Hild(i)-or(e)-ien is 'The Eastern Land of Men', or if you interpret ore more generally as 'a rising', then it's 'Land of the Rising of Men'. Certainly ore alludes to the ~rise as well, since "At the first rising of the Sun above the earth the younger children fa the world awoke in the land of Hlldorien" (LR pg. 245), so Hlldorlen also means 'The Sunrise Land of Men'. Here we see the Elvish love of subtle multiple meanings. The singular of hildi is hil, as shown by its use in Tarkll, from *tara-khil.

U'r-anar : 'the red Sun'. Which element means 'red' and which 'Sun' is ambiguous, since Anar and Ul\r both occur in the corpus as solar names. No UR- derivatives occur with the meaning 'red', but there are piles of them meaning 'hot', 'fiery', 'blazing', etc. NAR- 'flame, fire' has color-oriented derivatives: 0 narwB 'fiery red', N narw, naru 'red' (note NarodOm 'The Red Vale' and Narosir 'The River Redway' in Return of the Shadow). Still, given the use of Anar as 'Sun' in line 14, and considering our poet's love of consistency, -anar here is probably intended as 'Sun', and U'r- as 'red hot' or 'fiery red'. Meter:

How do you stress a hyphenated word like U'r-anar? It makes the most sense to regard it as a single word: O'ranar. Treating it as two words, with the main stress falling on the first syllable of anar, raises hob with the meter. Treating hyphenated forms as a single word means that i-mar in line 8 and inarqellon in line 10 receive a main stress on the definite article: Imar, Inarqellon. This strikes me as a little odd. In line 5 we again have the juxtaposition of a weak and a main stress:_ k.s'rier I'sil. If this weak stress can be used metrically, we have a line of seven feet:

trochee

,

trochee

,

,

Eldain I en kalrier IISil, I nan hilldin Or-Ianar. 1

23

4

5

6

If this weak stress cannot be used, that yields another line of trochee

anapeest

,

,

anapeest

,

7

six feet:

,

Eldain I en kalrier Iisil, nan hilldin Or-Ianar. 1

2

3

4

5

6

Emendation to line 5: En karielto eldain Isil, hildin U'r-anar. Tolkien changed karier to karielto and omitted nan. He also juggled the word order a bit and tidied up the meter, which is now seven iambic feet:

29

,

,

,

"

En kalriellto elldain IlsH, hill din Or-Ianar. 2

3

4

5

6

7

Line 6 Toi frimar. IIqainen antar annar lestanen "which are beautiful. To all they gave in measure the gifts" Toi : 'which'.

Tolkien's translation indicates that tol can be used as a relative pronoun. But the transcription of the Quenya, with a period after U'r-anar and Tol capitalized, implies that Tol irlmar is an independent sentence rather than a subordinate clause, i.e. 'They are beautiful'. By using 'which' instead of 'they', Tolkien may have intended to make it clear that the poet is referring to the Moon and Sun as beautiful and not to Men, Elves, or the Valar. However, the Quenya still remains ambiguous as to the referent of tol, which may be intentional. Certainly the poet would not disagree that Men, Elves, and the Gods were indeed irimar.

frimar : 'beautiful'. 'Are' is merely implied. Here we have a plural adjective formed with -r rather than a vowel shift, irlma > plural irlme. Also note ralkar, plural of ralka 'bent', in the second draft of the Eressean Fragment. Lalqall occurs as the plural of lalqa 'green' in "Earendel". You can probably form adjectives using any of these three methods: frlma > frlme, irlmar, or irlmeli (cf. va n I mtlion < vanlma). I wonder if you can form plural adjectives using the dual endings: (rlmat eldu 'two beautiful Elves'? Bu the Third Age it apparently was usual to use the vowel-shift method, and -r and -II tended to be reserved for the plural adjectives used substantively. Are there any examples of a vowel-shift plural adjective used substantively? In "Narqellon" there seem to be plural adjectives ending in -ai, for example mallnal pI. of mallna 'yellow', and slldal plural of silda 'gleaming'. Paul may be correct that these are accusatives, but they could be nominatives as well, Book Quenya or archaic forms which led to the later vowel-shift forms: malinai > maline. I doubt umeal in lines 3 and 17 is the plural of umea 'evil', given the pastoral, if somewhat melancholy, tone of the poem, with its description fo the Noldorin folk dancing (IIIta lie noldorlnwa) to the music of pipes playing (rotser slmpetalla) while a fine grey rain (hlswa tlmpe) flows through the trees (sirilla ter I-aldar). It may be a variant form of uvea 'abundant, in very great number, very large' « U B'abound'). Line 3, ve sangar voro umeal, may mean 'like ever-abundant throngs' (of leaves, lasser, given in line 2).

'Like ever-evil throngs' just doesn't cut it.

In line 5 IIntulllnd(ov)a might derive from lin- 'many' and tuilindo 'swallow', plus the adjectival suffix -va seen in turuva 'wooden' and uruva 'like fire', and so mean 'having many swallows' or 'like many swallows': AI IIntuilindova Lasselanta 'Ah! The falling of the leaves, like many swallows .. .' Compare this with the description of falling elm-leaves in lines 83-85 of "Kortirion among the Trees" (BoLT I, pg. 34):

And wanly borne on wings of amber pale (Oikta ramavoite malinai?) They beat the wide airs of the fading vale And fly like birds across the misty meres. Getting back to frlma,

r should note that

it appears in Unfinished Tales as the basis for the "right name" of

Tar-Meneldur : "rlmon, 'The Beautiful One'.

30

IIqainen : 'To all'.

This cannot be the instrumental plural of the noun IIqa 'everything', which is all-inclusive in its singular form and unlikely to have a plural. The translation 'to all' indicates a noun IIqa Ine

'every~', which stands in contrast to IIqa 'every1bl.o..g.'. It appears here in the dative. 6

antar : 'they gave'. annar : 'the gifts'. Accusative

plural of anna 'gift', which looks like a past participle 'given' used

substantively as 'a thing given'.

lestanen : 'in measure'. Evidently the instrumental of a noun lesta 'measure', which does not occur elsewhere. Under the root ELED- 'go, depart, leave' "The Etymologies" give lesta- 'to leave', which Tolkien rejected in favor of IInna 'go' as the present tense fo lende. He also gives a root LETH- 'set free', related to LED- 'go, fare, travel'.

Could any of these forms be related to lesta 'measure'? 7

Meter: Seven iambic feet:

,

,

,

,

,

Toi ilrimar. IlIqailnen anltar anlnar lesltanen 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Emendation to line 6: Toi irimar. lIyain antalto annar lestanen. Tolkien emended antar to antalto and replaced ilqainen with i Iyain, dative plural of ilya 'all, the whole', used here substantively as 'for everyone'. The emended line presents the too-familiar problem of weak stress followed by I'lyain. main stress: j'rimar. 6 This iIqaine seems rather ad hoc albeit possible.

It may be that plural iIqai is used to

distinguish 'each one' receiving in her or his particular measure vs. the collective ilqa 'all' receiving in the measure of the whole group. insturmental ilqainen. instrumental

This would then require a syntactic explanation of the use of

The best I can devise is that we have an appositive connection with the

lestanen or that ilqainen is the "instrument" of the verb underlying lesta- 'measure',

i.e. 'to all in measure'

= in

the degree to which each one measures up.

syntactically "difficult" enough to motivate the revision of the line.

Either construction may have been It is perhaps worth mentioning that

our only direct evidence for labelling the case forms in -nen, -inen as instrumental is the abbreviation "I." used by Tolkien in the Book Quenya declension of cirya (see Beyond Bree,March '89) and, as Paul Nolan Hyde reminds us, this could as easily stand for instructive which is one of the 15 cases of Finnish.

In Sir Charles N. Eliot's Finnish Grammar (Oxford 1890, p. 160), he says "The

instructive is used to express the instrument or the manner in which an action is performed." Whitney's Teach Yourself Finnish in Lesson 11 calls this "The Instructive or Instrumental Case".

Arthur H. So the

significant point is not precisely what T. meant by "I." but rather that the related concepts of instrument, manner, means can be expressed consistently by the same inflected form.

C.G.

7 We may have a (Mannish?) euphemism here for 'death' as 'departure', with metaphoric reference to its limitation or "measuring'" of Man's life. the idea of antar annar here.

Compare the allusion to mortality as the "Gift of Men" with

A cliche use of lesta 'departure' = 'death' may have contributed to its

suppletion by linna in the conjugation of the literal verb 'to go'.

31

C. G.

,

,

trochee

,

Toi ilrimar. Illyain I antallto anlnar lesltanen 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

or:

,

anapmst

,

anapest

,

,

,

Toi ilrimar. IIlyain antallto anlnar lesltanen 1

2

3

4

5

6

Line 7

lIuvataren. lIu vanya, fanya, eari, "of lIuvatar. The World is fair, the sky, the seas,"

lIuvataren : 'of lIuvatar.'

The examples you brought to my attention of Finnish subject nouns in the genitive/dative -n have convinced me of two things: 1) There is a connection between the Quenya genitive singular -n and the dative -no You can see the semantic similarity in a sentence such as Makll tanya na Elwen; 'That sword is Elwe's' and 'That sword is for Elwe' express very similar concepts. Perhaps genitive -n arose from a specialized use of the dative. 2) The mysterious subjects marked by -n (vean et at.) are related to the genitive/dative -no I lay no claims to understand this relationship yet; and while not ordinarily clairvoyant I do foresee a lot of Finnish grammar-study in my future. You have also set me to thinking about the structure of the Quenya genitive plural and its similarity to that of Finnish.

I have previously assumed that the genitive plural broke down as follows:

Stem + Plural marker + GenitiV'e. m. + Plural m. 8

kiryaron 'of ships' = lassion 'of ships' =

kirya + lass +

r

o o

+ +

+ +

n n

However, the Finnish genitive plural is constructed differently:

maiden 'of the lands'

=

Stem + Plural m. + Linking element9 + Gen. m. ma- + i + de (te) + n

If Quenya follows the Finnish example, we may reanalyze klryaren, lasslen thus:

kiryaron 'of ships' = lassion 'of ships' = 8 As in -lIe.!l. -ssen..

Stem + Plural m. + Linking element + Gen. m. r kirya + + 0 + n

lass

+

+

0

+

n

[P.W.]

9 So called in Teach Yourself Finnish, implying -fa- bears no semantic significance. hyupothesizes that -fa- is "apparently" the nominative plural -f.

32

Your grammar

In this interpretation 0 merely serves to link the genitive marker to the plural in such a way as to avoid confusion with the dative plural (Iassln) or to avoid producing a form difficult to pronounce (ciryarn). I'm not sure what you intended by bringing to my attention the elision of -te- in some Finnish genitive plurals, such as jalka-iten > jalkojen. Perhaps in Quenya plural subject nouns ending in -n are genitive plurals in which the linking element has been elided: oromandion, wlngildion > oromandl'n, wingildi'n? Finally, compare lIuvataren with Hinl lIuvataro 'Children of lIuvatar' (Silm., pg. 400).

Is the short

a in lIuvataro a typographical error, the correct form being *lIuvataro?

lIu : 'The World'. vanya : 'is fair'. Again, tanya : 'the sky'. This Fanyamar

"is" is merely implied.

gloss of fanya seems unique. Elsewhere Tolkien defines it as "cloud". 'Cloudland' was the cosmographic term for the upper region of Vista 'Air', so this poetic

extension of meaning seems reasonable.

eari : 'the seas'.

Plural of ear 'sea'.

Meter: Seven feet: trochee

,

,

\

IIQlvatalren. Illu vanlya, fanlya, elari, 123

4

5

67

Line 8 i-mar, ar i1qa (men. I'rima ye Numenor. "the earth, and all that is in them. Lovely is Numenor." i-mar : 'the earth'. We find prefixed articles in I-mar and l-narq-uQllon but not in i tyel. Wtty? The reason might be metrical. The stresses in imar and inarqellon may have suited our poet's purposes better than those in unhyphenated I mar and i narqelion.

ar : 'and'. ilqa : 'all'. (men : 'that is in them'.

This is kith and kin with simen 'here' in line 9. The element -men in both must be men 'place, spot', so simen is literally 'in this spot'. The first element in imen is probably the "deictic particle" 1- 'that' or one of its derivatives I 'which' or I 'the', so that fmen is literally 'in which place'.

I'rima : 'Lovely'. ye : 'is'. Quenya has

a veritable swarm of "beN's There is na, which besides functioning as a copula also means 'exist'. Anwa 'real, actual, true' derives from ANA- 'be, exist' and seems to be a past participle 'been, existed' (compare vanwa 'gone', past participle of vanya- 'go'). Is it significant that both roots for na, ANA- and NA., are identical to roots meaning 'to, towards'? does this relate to na's function as copula of joining a subject to, towards a predicate complement? Na also appears cognate with the past participle ending ·na and may also be related to the past-tense marker -ne. In this last regard I note you translated ns as "has been". Next comes ea, which has emphatic overtones. Again I note your translation, "is (for sure)". The Sindarin equivalent may occur in the Unpublished Epilogue, in the phrase I sennul Panthael estathar aen 'who

33

should rather be called Fullwise'. The earlier draft has ge instead of aen. My interpretation is that sennul is an adverb 'rather' (derivation unknown), estathar is a passive infinitive 'to be named' (note Quenya esta'to name'). and aen/ge is 'is'. Therefore a more literal rendition of the phrase is 'who is rather to be named Fullwise'. The use of an emphatic form of 'to be' in this context makes sense. Etymologically, Tolkien seemed to be hesitating between two original roots:

* A VA- > O. ea, Sind. aen *GAV A- > O. ea, Sind. ge Note the similarity with the roots for 'sea' and their derivatives:

* A V AR- > O. ear, Sind. aear, aer *GAVA 'awe, dread' > O. ear, Sind. gaer Ea and aen/ge might also be related to the root AYAN- 'holy' and its derivatives alnu/aini 'holy one, pagan god' and alna/alre 'holy'. I read recently that Old Norse ass 'god' and the name of the Celtic divinity Aesus both derive from the Indo-European root meaning 'to be'. Then there is yeo There may be a connection with ye 'Io!', which is perhaps literally 'There it is!' Also related may be QL's yeta 'look at'. If you can look at a thing, it must be or exist. In that case ye could also mean 'Look!' Ye's interesting habit of suffixing itself to other words means that from now on we'll have to examine all forms ending in -Ie with ye in mind. Is ye the source of the gerundiallifinitive ending -Ie? I like your idea that the latter element in Inye and elye is ye 'is'. Quenya also has two negative verbs, 'to not be', derived form the negative stems UGU- and UMU-. The first-person singular present-tense forms are uln, umln 'I do not, am not'. Two third-person singular present-tense forms occur, uye in line 9 and ume in the compound laume 'no indead not, on the contrary' (literally 'no, it is not'). The past tense is ume, and the future tense uva occurs in line 12.

Numenor : 'Westland', Meter:

Seven feet: trochee

,

,

,

,

,

i-mar, I ar illqa ilmen. ilrima I ye NOlmenor. 1

234

5

6

7

Emendation to line 8: Tolkien wrote Vinya ("the Young") above Numenor as an alternative, but this would not work metrically unless substantial changes were made to the rest of the line as well. Line 9 Nan uye sere indo-ninya simen, ullume; "But my heart resteth not here for ever;" Nan: 'But'. uye sere indo-ninya : 'my heart resteth not'. Finnish "verb of negation" (en.

I'm sure you are familiar with the

et. e/. and friends) and how it is used with the stem of a verb to form the

34

negative in the present tense. The stem of 'to rest' is lepa(t)a-, and so 'it does not rest' is se ei lepaa. Line 9 seems to use this same construction, with indo-ninya 'my heart' being subject and the negative verb uye 'is not, does not' being followed by sere, apparently the stem of the verb 'to rest' (as in serin 'I rest'. For a structurally similar stem with a long vowel and final -e, note lute in "Ollima Markirya": Man kiluva kirya . . . lute 'Who shall see a ship leave?'). Until recently I assumed that you form the negative of a verb in Quenya simply by prefixing u- to the affirmative form. That's the way it's done in Sindarin: u-chebin 'I have not kept.' And so you saw uhirielto 'they did not find' in the sample form my "Darkening of Valinor" translation. 10 But having searched I cannot find an example of u- used this way in Quenya; it only appears there as a prefix in nouns and adjectives. Now I think uhirlelto may be incorrect, and that a form using the verb of negation should be used. The present tense of 'they do not find' would be uyelto hira.

But what would the past-tense form be?

You have probably noticed that the Finnish and Quenya verbs of negation differ in one major respect: the Finnish forms only convey the semantic concepts of negativity and person (en 'I-not', et 'you-not'), whereas the Quenya forms also convey the concept 'to be' (or 'not to be', if you will). Therefore Q uin is sufficient in itself to mean 'I am not', while Finn. en requires the addition of the stem of the verb 'to be', o/e-. This also means that the Quenya forms can inflect for tense (uva, ume) while Finnish forms do not. In Finnish negative constructions it is the auxiiary verb which indicates the tense rather than the verb of negation: en syo 'I don't eat', en syonyt 'I wasn't eating' (in the latter case the aux. verb is the active past participle). I think that Quenya would deviate from the Finnish model on this point, and that the verb of negation would indicate tense while the auxiliary verb remained the same (i.e. the stem). So I shall emend uhirielto to umlelto hira.

The future tense 'they will not find' would be uvalto hira.

There is another possible way to interpret uye sere Indo-ninya. "The Etymologies" list the noun sere 'rest'. If we assume sere in line 9 t be this noun, we encounter a problem: 'there is not peace my heart' or 'my heart is not rest' is nonsense. You could surmount this problem by reinterpreting indo-ninya as 'for my heart', i.e. Indo + dative -n + -inya 'my'. Finnish possessive pronoun suffixes are similarly added after the case ending: talo 'house' > talossa 'in the house' > talossanl 'in my house'. This is not the usual noun + possessive pronoun + case ending order seen in Quenya, as in tlelyanna 'upon thy path'. However, what is usual in a language is far narrower than what is allowable, especially in poetry. You're unlikely to hear someone say "Today I saw friends three" in ordinary cnversation, and_ yet we unblinkingly accept as grammatical the line "and he called for his fiddlers three" in "Old King Cole". Metrically indo-nfnya is-far more suitable than indonyan.

simen : 'here'. ullume : 'for ever'.

Clearly related is another time-word in line 11, yallume 'at last', which may be a form of yalume 'former times'. This suggests that -Iume in ullume and yallume is lume 'time' or some derivative of the root LU-. The first element ullume might be one of the negative stems UGU- or UMU-, in which case ullume literally means 'timeless'.

Meter: seven iambic feet:

,

,

,

,

"

Nan Cllye selre inldo-ninlya silmen, uiliume; 1

23

4

5

6

7

Emendations ot line 9: The original version had hondo-ninya instead of indo-n inya. Hondo-' is the inflectional stem of hon 'heart (physical)'. The word also had a broader metaphorical application, as seen by its use in Huore 'Heart-vigour' (intended as 'Courage' rather than 'Having

10 Readers:

Look for this next issue! -

Editor

35

a Healthy Cardio-Vascular System'), slneahonda 'flint-hearted', and hon-maren, 'heart of the house', the fire which always burned (as a heart never ceases to beat while life endures) in the house of Elendil. Sinea 'flint' above brings to mind slnqe in "Narqellon". You will recall that sinea was originally tlnga 'flint' in Treebeard's epithet, a form related to tlnwe 'spark' and tlneo 'metal', all from TIN- 'sparkle'. "The Etymologies" state that TIN- is "a variant of and in any case affected by THIN-", a root with derivatives referring to dim grey light: slnde 'grey', sinye 'evening', sinta- 'fade'. Sinqe might belong in this group, perhaps derived from THIN- as tlnwe from TIN-: *thln-kwe > slnqe 'pale grey spark, glimmer'. It could be a verb, either a past-tense form in -e or one fa those present-tense forms ending in -e (note the preference for forms ending in -e : slnde, sinye; and from TIN-, tine 'it glints'). Eldamar could be the subject in that line: V'ematte slnqe Eldamar 'like something glimmers Eldamar'. Slnqe might even be an adjective modifying Eldamar : slnq' Eldamar 'pallid Eldamar'. Also note slnqltalla in line 14, which looks like the present participle of a verb slnqit-, as simpetalla in line 9 is probably the participle of simpet- 'to pipe', and slrilla in line 11 is of sir- 'to flow'. Laiqanlnwa 'green-blue' might act as an adverb modifying slnqltalla : 'gleaming palely green and blue'?

* * * April 2, '89

Line 10 ten ye tyelma, yeva tyel ar i-narqelion, "for here is ending, and there will be an end and the Fading,"

sa

ten : 'for', That is, 'for this reason, because'. This probably derives from TE3-/TEN- 'line, direction' in the sense of 'reason for the direction of events'. Tenna 'unto, up to, as far as' must also derive from this root: *te3-nna, *tefi-nna 'toward the direction'. The etymological reasoning resembles that of mennal 'until', literally 'toward the place that'. s! : 'here'. "The Etymologies" give si, sin as 'now' rather than 'here', and si is 'now' in Galadriel's Lament as well. Elsewhere the word for 'here' is simen (line 9) and sinome (simane in the early drafts of Aragorn's oath). However, in Sindarin Sl is usually the word for 'here', leading me to suspect that here in line 10 we have a Sindarinism which has crept into Numen6rean Quenya. th_e .form a 'and' used before a word beginning with a consonant (except h) may be another borrowing from Sindarin.

ye : 'is' tyelma : 'ending',

The noun-ending -rna most often occurs in words referring to concrete objects (Nancy Martsch once equated -rna with rna 'hand', giving it the sense 'thing that can be held or touched Withe hand'): kalma 'lamp', tarma 'pillar', tyulma 'mast' etc, Yet here we have an example showing -rna appears in abstract nouns as well; tyelma 'ending', I.e. 'the process of coming to an end' rather than 'the physical endpart of an object' (the word one would use for 'end-part' would appear to be telle 'rear'). Another example of an abstract use of -rna which comes to mind is alma 'good fortune, weal, wealth', and there are probably others.

yeva : 'and there will be',

'And' does not occur in the Quenya. Given the long vowel in yeva, one might expect the present tense to be *ye, a fa ns. Was the vowel shortened to distinguish ye when used as 'it is' from its use as an exclamation ya 'Look! There it is!'? Note that ye is like anta in that it forms the future tense with -va rather than -uva (**yeuva is certainly phonetically possible; cf. leuka 'snake', neuma 'snare', etc.) Might ye also mimic anta in having a past-tense form identical to the present: ye 'it was'?

tyel : 'an end'. ar : 'and', i-narqelion : 'the Fading',

"The Etymologies" define this as 'fire-fading, autumn', the first

36

element being nar(e) 'flame' with short vowel in a closed syllable. Oelion 'fading' derives from KWEL'fade, wither'. The ending -Ion here may be a gerundial suffix; cf. Narquelle 'Sun-fading', the name used in Third-Age Quenya for October, which ends in the gerundial suffix -Ie. Oellon might also derive from *qele 'fading' (cf. quelle 'fading' in T.A. Quenya) plus the augmentive suffix -on 'great'. In any case, narqellon is used in this line as a euphemism for death, the flame nare which is fading being Anar the Sun, used in this poem (and probably in Numen6rean thought in general) as a symbol of mortal man's span of life upon the earth. It is to be remembered that Men awoke in Hlld6rlen only at the first rising of the Sun. Note how the use of narqelion in this line is echoed in line 14: (re anarlnya qeluva 'when my Sun faileth'. Herendil's comment on hearing the last line of this poem is: "Melka cometh back, they say, and the king shall give us the Sun forever." (LR-63).

Meter:

Seven iambic feet

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

ten si I ye tyellma, yelva tyell ar i-Inarqellion, 1

2

3

4

5

67

Line 11 ire ilqa yeva not ina, hostainieva, yallume: "when all is counted, and all numbered at last,"

ire : 'when'. The element -re occurs as a suffix in many words referring to time: ire 'when', tare 'then', enyare 'in that day', and yare 'former days'. This element is probably one and the same with re, the word for the Eldarin solar day. Note that enyare and yare are glossed as 'in that day' and 'former days', respectively. Likewise, tare might be literally glossed as 'in that day' « TA- 'that') and ire as 'in which day' « deictic particle 1-; compare this with (men, discussed in line 8). The Sindarin equivalent of (re appears in Luthien's song in Lays of Beleriand pg. 354: Ir Ithil am men Eruchfn I menel-vir sila diriel, When the Moon shines silver, a heavenly jewel for us, the Children of God, (and) has watched over (us) .. .'

ilqa : 'all' yeva : 'will be' notina : 'counted'.

This is the past participle of not· 'reckon' (LR-378) and is morphologically in perfect accord with the various past participles seen in the latest version of Oilima Markirya, which Christopher Tolkien writes "comes ... from the last decade of my father's life". That is, we see lengthening of the stem vowel and the addition of -ina, hence not- > n6tina and rak 'break' > rakina 'broken'. We are not given the uninflected stem of rukina 'confused, shattered, disordered', but it is very likely to be ruk-. Tolkien translates yeva n6tlna as "is counted", but yeva is in the future tense 'will be' and so a more literal translation would be 'will be counted' or 'will have been counted'. What we have here is a compound tense, a future passive periphrastic (watch those Quettar-readers head for the bushes).

hostain ieva : 'and all numbered'. 'And' is not present in the Quenya, and lJqa 'all' only occurs previously in the line before yeva n6tlna. Hostalnleva is another future passive periphrastic verb, this time with the auxiliary yeva attached in suffix form -leva to the past participle hostalna 'numbered', with a literal meaning of 'will be numbered' or 'will have been numbered'. The verb hosta- is only defined elsewhere (MC-223, LR-364) as 'gather, collect, assemble' rather than 'to number', but in "The Etymologies" the derivative noun hosta is defined as 'large number'. Note that the final a in the verb stem hosta- is 37

retained in the participle hostalna, and compare this with the stems not-, rak-, which have no final vowels, and their participles n6t1na, raklna.

yallume : 'at last'. See the discussion of ullume in line 9. I will add here that the double I in yallume may derive from a proto-form *yira-Iume 'former-time' (yara 'ancient, belonging to or descending from former times', LR-399), which contracted to *yarlume and then to yallume (as ullume may derive from earlier *uglume or *umlume). If yallume does indeed have a meaning similar to yalume 'former times', one might cock an eyebrow at its use in a sentence referring to events in the distant future. But it should be remembered that yaya n6tlna and hostalnlaya may be future perfect passive verbs, referring to events which will have been completed, over and done with, at some time in the future: 'when all will have been counted, and all will have been numbered in former times.'

Meter:

Thanks for the info on the significance of the underposed dots.

Elision of the final e in ire is an

absolute necessity for this line to work metrically:

,

,

,

anapaest

,

anapaest

,

,

"

ire illqa yelva noltina, hosltainielva, yailiume: 1

2

4

3

5

6

7

Without the elision you end up with a line of eight feet, the first four of which are trochaic. I agree completely with your comment that "the elision is optional on the part of the songster, or else ruledetermined with nonelision (or hiatus) optional." Assuming the transcriptions of lines 1, 2, 13, and 14 given in LR-63 represent an accurate record of what Elendil and Herendil heard on that occasion, we can see that Firiel herself chose to sing the song without any elision at all in lines 1 and 14 (Le. on pg. 63 we see no underposed dots or apsotrophes).

Line 12

ananta uva tare farea, ufarea! "but yet it will not be enough, not enough."

ananta : 'but yet'. "The Etymologies" give this (LR-375) in hyphenated form a-nanta with the additional definition 'and yet', making it clear that the initial a- is the short form of ar 'and' discussed in line 1. The middle element is of course na, nan 'but, on the contrary, on the other hand'. The final element might be ta 'that, it' (LR-389), giving ananta the literal meaning 'and on the contrary that .. .' Another possibility is the allative suffix -nta seen in some of the "Secret Vice" poems, e.g. tollallnta 'upon hills' (MC-214) and sapsanta 'into a grave' (MC-221), hence ananta = 'and to the contrary'.

uva : 'it will not be'.

Future tense of the negative verb.

See the discussion of ye in line 8 and uye

sere indo-nlnya in line 9.

tare : 'then'. For the etymology of this word see ire in line 11. 'Then' is not included in Tolkien's English translation of this line, and neither is it included in the translation of line 13 in which tare also occurs, casting some doubt on this interpretation. Another possibility is that tare is a demonstrative pronoun < T A= 'that (thing or person),. Way back when in your letter of Oct. 27, 1988 (commenting on the translation of Tom Peterson's title inscription) you compared ten sf ye tyelma 'for here is ending' and yeya tyel 'there will be an end' as subjectless clauses with ananta uya hire tarea 'but yet it will not be enough' as a subjectless clause (if it is indeed subjectless).11

11 What I said was:

There is an important difference between the first two

"There is the pronoun tar 'thither' in Etymologies under T A -.

38

I suppose you have

clauses and the last clause, namely ten si ye tyelma and yeva tyel involve predicate nouns whe reas ananta uva tare farea has instead a predicate adjective, farea 'enough, sufficient' < fare 'sufficiency, plenitude'. It is clear from ye tyelma and yeva tyel that in Quenya the copula used alone with a predicate noun and no explicit subject is a perfectly grammatical construction. However, it may be that the copula used with a predicate adjective does require the presence of an explicit subject, and that may be the function tare serves in this instance. This is precisely the case in Esperanto. If you wish to use the adjective sullt;a 'farea' in translating 'it will not be enough' you must provide an explicit subject: flo ne estos sulifa; tio = 'that thing' or 'that state of affairs'. You can omit the explicit subject, but in that case you cannot use the adjective suflfa but instead must use the adverbial form sufife: ne estos sulife, 'it will not be enough'. There is marie 'it is good' in line 4 to be contended with in this regard. As noted in my discussion fo line 4, this appears to be a suffixed form of the copula ye added to the adjective mara. It would appear, however, that the clause Mardello Melko lende which precedes marie acts as its subject (a fact which you point out in your most recent letter: "However we view the morphology of the verb the subject is whatever noun ends the previous clause ... or the clause itself in the case fo marie, where the preceding word is the verb in that clause.") The subject function of Mardello Melko lende in relation to marie is apparently what Tolkien meant to indicate by the colon after len de - 'Melko has gone from earth, (which) is good'; and likewise with Valion : numessier 'of the Lords, (who) are in the West' and morion : talantie 'the dark one, (who) is fallen' .

farea, ufarea : 'enough, not enough', fare 'sufficiency, plenitude, all that is wanted'.

As noted above the adj. farea derives from the noun "The Etymologies" give the form as farea with short a. The

short u in ufarea is puzzling as well (cf. un6time).

Meter:

All iambic, seven feet:

noticed ore as a temporal ending in the "pronoun" ire 'when' = '(at) which time'.

So tare would be '(at)

that time' = 'then', and uva tare farea translated 'it will not be enough' is literally 'will not be then enough',

We could argue that tare corresponds to 'it' in the translation (and perhaps it does serve a ..,.

similar function) but it is just a marker here, as say in it is raining; it will be sunny; it was a dark and stormy night; it is I.

It does not stand for anything, but simply allows the copula with a predicate

(nominative or adjective) to constitute a sentence.

In other constructions there serves the same marking

function: there is enough for everyone; there will be rain tomorrow; there is no fool like an old fool. This is the way yeva tyel is translated, 'there will be ending' with nothing corresponding to 'there' in the Quenya.

There are historical reasons peculiar to English no doubt, but nothing logically imperative

in pronouns with the meanings of it and there being used as these kinds of abstract markers.

Because

Quenya has verbs inflected for each person it does not even require a separate word subject in every clause (which

~

the grammatical "reason" that it or there fill the subject slot in these subjectless

clauses in English, which does.) "But there might be situations in Quenya where a grammatical gap needs to be filled by a word without a seemingly essential meaning,

In ten sf ye tyelma, yeva tyel both clauses are subjectless.

But ananta uva tare farea which is subjectless follows a clause whose subject is iIqa. use of tare 'then',

placing~

Perhaps the

the clause in the time-frame of yallume 'forever', helps to indicate that the

"subject" has changed, the absense of explicit subject not referring back to ilqa, but indicating another pure predicate clause."

C.G,

39

ananlta alva talre falrea, I ufalrea! 2

3

4

5

6

7

Line 13

Man tare antava nin lIuvatar, lIuvatar "What will the Father, 0 Father, give me"

Man : 'What'. This interrogative pronoun also occurs in man-Ie 'What is it?' and E man antavaro 'What will he give indeed?' In Galadriel's Lament it is used as 'who?' : si man I yulma nln evquantuva? 'Now who will refill the cup for me?' In most cases context would be sufficient to indicate which meaning was intended.

tare :

As in the peceding line, tare here presents us with more than a single possibility. It may mean 'then', in which case this line reads 'What then will the Father, 0 Father, give me.' If tare is a demonstrative pronoun, what purpose does it serve in this sentence? It may be to prevent confusion - Man antava nin alone could easily be misinterpreted as 'Who will give me?' (and if laire is 'then', it would seem that the line could still be easily misinterpreted as "Who will then give me?") After reading your comments on the use of word-order in Quenya to distinguish subject from object, I would agree that besides the "standard" S-V-O order Quenya also made use of O-S-V (the purpose of course being to emphasize the object by giving it primacy of place), as seen in line 1: lIu lIuvatar en kare 'God made the World .. .' Tare may be used in this line as a stand-in for the subject (later specified as lIuvatar) so that the object (man) - subject (Ure) - verb (antava) order wil make it clear that man is the object and not the subject. 12

antava : 'will give'. See discussion of antar6ta in line 2. nin : 'me'. This is a dative form ni-n, literally 'for me' or 'to me'. lIuvatar, lIuvatar : 'The Father, 0 Father'. The first

lIuvatar is the subject fa antava (or at least acts as a further specification of tare), whereas the second is considered a vocative, '0 Father!', i.e. a direct address to lIuvatar. This gives the line an interesting doubre ·implication. Man tare anniva nin lIuvatar 'What will the Father give me?' is an impersonal rhetorical question; but the addition of the second, vocative lIuvatar has the effect of implying a direct question or plea to God, "What will you give me, 0 Father!" without expressing this plea directly or overtly. Typical Numen6rean restraint in such matters of religion, as you pointed out in a previous letter with regard to Cirion's Oath and the sidelong way in which it refers to the Valar and lIuvatar. In fact, if tare is indeed a demonstrative pronoun, its use in this line as a sort of unspecified subject the exact nature of which is clarified later on in the sentence is reminiscent of the use of -nte in Cirion's Oath, where it acts as the unspecified subject of tlruvantes (i.e. there is no previous referent to clarify who -nte refers to), the specific identity of which is provided afterwards: I harar '(those) who sit' and I Eru 'the One'. Of course lIuvatar is previously referred to in Ffriel's Song in lines 1 an 7, but by the time line 13 rolls around it would no longer be apparent that lIuvatar was the referent of tare.

Meter:

I am as wary as you (well, almost) when it comes to assuming the texts as we have them contain typos and/or other errors, but I think there is great merit in your hypothesis that the underposed dot in enyare in line 14 actually belongs in line 13 under the final e in tare. This would yield a perfectly iambic line: 12 Another sentence in which the customary nature of the O-S-V order is relied on to distinguish subject from object is Hul oilima man klluva 'Who shall see the last evening?' (MC-214).

40

[P.W.]

Man tare I antalva nin IIiOlvatar, IIiOlvatar 4 5 6 7 The line still works metrically without the elided e (and this appears to be the way Ffriel herself chose to

2

3

render the line), save that the second foot becomes an anapaest: anapaest

Man tarle antalva nin IIiOlvatar, IIiOlvatar 2

4

3

5

6

7

Line 14

enyare tar i tyel, Ire Anarinya qeluva? "in that day beyond the end when mt Sun faileth?"

enyare : 'in that day'. There is merit in your theory that this form derives from the future element en plus yare 'former days' to mean literally 'future former days'. This would parallel the use of a form of yalume 'former times' with verbs in the future passive perfect in line 11. Just as Quenya sometimes uses a word referring to the past with a verb in the future tense to imply the future perfect: enyare ire Anarinya qeluva 'in that (former) day when my sun will have failed.' There are other etymological scenarios as well. The first element might be enya 'middle', with the sense being extended to 'in the middle of' and thence to simply 'in'. It could also be an adjective *enya 'that' derived form EN- 'over there, yonder' (an alternative form to enta 'that yonder'). The latter element could be either the temporal suffix -re as in ire, or it could also be are 'day'. It is interesting to note that if you reverst the elements from enya-are to are-enya and submit this latter to the standard vowel shifts observable in the development of Sindarin words from Common Elvish forms, you end up with the form erin, and of course erin 'on the day' is indeed a Sindarin word occurrig in the Unpublished Epilogue.

tar : 'beyond'.

In LT2-347 (entry Tarulthorn, Taruktarna 'Oxford') is found the root TARA with Qenya derivatives tara- 'cross, go athwart' and tarna 'crossing, passage'.· The preposition tar 'beyO'fld' must derive from this root as well. "The Etymologies" do not give the root TARA, but in the entry for the root TA- 'that' one finds the form tar 'thither', a word which ends in the locative/allative suffix -r seen elsewhere in such words as mir 'to the inside, into' (LR-373), ranar 'in the moon' (MC-213, 214), and yar 'to whom' (MC-215). It is possible that tar 'beyond' is merely tar 'thither' used in a special prepositional sense; at any rate it seems likely that TARA '(go) across' is derived from or related to TA- 'that', in the sense of 'go over to that place'. "The Etymologies" also give a root THAR- 'across, beyond', which is clearly related to TARA, but tar cannot derive from the former since Common Elvish th yielded s in Quenya and so one would expect *sar. Also note the preposition ala 'beyond, after' (MC-214, 221) and the postposition pella 'beyond' (perhaps derived from "pelala, present participle of pel- 'go around'?)

i tyel : 'the end'. Ire: 'when' Anarinya : 'my Sun'. This is a metaphor for "my Life". See discussion of I-narqellon in line 10. qeluva : 'faileth'. Tolkien translates this as present tense when it is in fact future tense: 'will fade' or 'will wither'.

It will be noted that anta- 'give' has the future form antava whereas

qel- 'fade' has

qeluva. 13 It may be a rule that verbs with stems ending in a vowel form the future tense simply by the addition of -va (w/lengthening of the final stem-vowel), hence hosta- 'to collect' > "hostava (also note the 13 qel- is not given in the corpus, alas.

But it seems likely, given the root KWEL-.

41

retention of the stem-vowel in hostalnleva}; whereas verbs with stems ending in a consonant form the future tense by the addition of -uva, hence slr- 'to flow' > *siruva. Meter: As noted in the metrical analysis of line 13, the underposed dot in enyare may be an error. At any rate there seems no good reason to elide this e, since the following word begins with a consonant rather than a vowel and the line will not work out as iambic with this e elided. The e in ire, on the other hand, is followed by a word beginning with a vowel and its elision is necessary to maintaining the iambic meter:

,

,

,

,

enyalre tar I i tyel, I ire Alnarinlya qelluva? 2 And

now,

Analysis.

I

believe

it or not, we

5

4

3

6

are almost at the

7

end of the

Excruciating

say "almost", because there are still a few things which should be

noted about Ffriel's song as a whole. First of all, the structure of the poem gives strong evidence of a Numen6rean belief in numerology. It is significant that this poem has 14 lines, and that all the lines have 14 syllables, except for line 11 which has 16 syllables (and assuming one may elide the final e in tare in line 13, which was necessary to yield 14 syllables). There are several references in The Hobbit which indicate that it was a common belief among the races of Middle-earth that 14 is a lucky number. The number fa members or Thorin's expedition to Erebor was carefully chosen to total 14; when the dwarves show reluctance to accept Bilbo as a companion, Gandalf acidly comments: "You asked me to find the fourteenth man for your expedition ... Just let anyone say I chose the wrong man or the wrong house, and you can stop at thirteen and have all the bad luck you like" (H-27). In his conversation with Smaug, Bilbo says of himself, "I was chosen for the lucky number (H-235), and later on Smaug says "Why not say 'us fourteen' and be done with it, Mr. Lucky Number?" (H-237). Evidently the belief in lucky 14 was so wide spread even dragons were aware of it. Tolkien was wont to insert bits of Elvish lore into his Father Christmas letters, and on the third page of the Introduction t Fe Letters (I cannot believe they didn't number the pages in that book), beneath the drawin~ of the reindeer-drawn sleigh "Father Christmas" makes an interesting remark: "I am coming from the north you see - & note NOT with 12 pair of deer, as you will see in some books. I usually use 7 pair (14 is such a nice number)." Where did this belief originate? It certainly must derive from the fact that the Valar were 14 in number: "The Lords of the Valar are seven; and the Valier, the Queens of the Valar, are seven also." (S-25). Under the entry Valar in the appendix to Lost Tales 1 (LT-272) it is said that the Qenya words valin, valimo 'happy' and vald- 'blessedness, happiness' derive from the same root VALA as Valar, Vall. Similar connections between the Valar and luck are given in GL, including the expression i-walt ne Vanion 'the luck of the Valar'. By modelling his poem on 14, our poet probably hoped to acquire some of I-walt ne Vanion for himself ant to quiet his troubled heart, perhaps even his lifespan. Line 11

with its anomalous 16 syllables could be a corruption of an original

14-syllable line.

The likeliest reading of this original line is: ", , ,,, ", , '\

ire illqa yelva noltina, I hostailna, yailiume: 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

'when all will be counted, (and) numbered, at last,'14

---------------------14 Isn't it ironic that the sale flaw in the

numerical structure of the poem would occur in a line referring to

42

which achieves its 14 syllables by omission of the copula suffix -h~va fro m hostain iE~va. The insertion of this superfluous copula into this line may have been due to scribal error or was the addition of a later bard who meant to "correct" the grammar of the line while failing to comprehend the numerological importance of maintaining 14 syllables per line (Ffriel herself does not seem to comprehend this, singing lines 1, 13, and 14 without elision and hence with 15 syllables each).15 Who wrote Ffriel's Song, and when? Clearly Ffriel did not write it, for it is said to have been "made by men, long ago" (LR-62) and it is clear from the way the song is referred to in LR-62-63 that by F(riel's time the song was a "golden oldie" familiar to every Numen6rean. The song expresses discontent over Man's mortality, and yet there is no trace of bitterness in the references to the Valar or the Elves. It is therefore most likely that it was composed sometime during the reigh of Tar-Minastir, for as it says in LotR, \11-316: "The first sign of the shadow that was to fall upon them appeared in the days of Tar-Minastir, eleventh king ... . He loved the Eldar but envied them. The Numen6reans ... began to yearn for the West and the forbidden waters; and the more joyful was their life, the more they began to long for the immortality of the Eldar." According ot "The Line of Elros" in Unfinished Tales (U-220), Tar-Minastir's reign lasted from Second Age 1731 - 1869. The year 1731 given as the first of Tar-Minastir's reign conflicts with information given elsewhere. "The Tale of Years" has Tar-Minastir on the throne in S.A. 1700, stating that is the year in which "Tar-Min astir sends a great navy from Numenor to Lindon." (111-364). "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn" puts him on the throne even earlier: "In 1695, when Sauron invaded Eriador, Gil-galad called on Numenor for aid. Then Tar-Minastir the King sent out a great navy ... " (UT-239). So the most accurate date we can put to the composition of Ffriel Song is to say that it was probably sometime during the period S.A. 1695 - 1869. "The Line of Elros" also has this to say about how Tar-Minastir came by his royal name (U-220): "This name he had because he built a high tower upon the hill of Dromet, nigh to Andunie and the west shores, and thence would spend great part of his days gazing westward." Is it possible that Minastir himself was the author of Ffriel's Song, written as he sat in his tower gazing yearningly to the West? Ffriel's Song is referred to as "an even-song" (LR-62), and one can see the poignancy of singing it at sunset, when Anar, used by the poet as a symbol fo Man's life, fades away and dies in the West, where dwell the enviable Elves and Valar in immortal bliss. Finally, there evidently was an altered version of Ffriel's Song current in the days of Elendil and Herendil, a version with far darker implications than the ancient original (Elendil says on LR-66 that Sauron has been in Numenor for 44 years; "The Tale of Years" dates Sauron's coming to Numenor as S.A. 3262, which would indicate the events in "The Lost Road" take place in S.A. 3306. This fits in with "The Tale of Years" which states: "3262 - 3310 Sauron seduces the King and corrupts the Numen6reans.") Herendil refers to this altered song in LR-63: "They sing it otherwise now. Melko cometh back, they say, and the king shall give us the Sun forever." Also note Elendil's comment in LR-68: "The old songs are forgotten or altered; twisted into other meanings. It

Here ends the EXCRUCIATING ANALYSIS. If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, well that's just the sort of thing you've come to expect from me anyway. everything being counted and numbered?

15

Another

grammatical

emmendation

would

presumably

be

ire

ilqa

notina,

hostainiha,

yallume, i.e. 'when all counted, will have been assembled, at last'. This has the "advantage" of being syntactically subtle, ambiguous as to when the 'counting' takes place, and so susceptible to scribal or bardic "clarification" by repeating the yeva from the previous clause.

43

C.G.

to understand; to give some idea of how different the languages are, compare these two sentences, both meaning "He is going back to Wales on a bicycle": Breton: Mont a ra deus Bro-Gembre war warc'h-houarn. Welsh: Mae e'n mynd i Gymru ar ben beic. Even so, as you point out, it is a great deal easier for someone with a knowledge of Welsh to learn Breton from scratch than for an English-speaker without any Welsh.

David Doughan

[My thanks for the correction: I do hate to spread misinformation. What I should have meant to say was "!lQ..U1lS. cause lenition in the following adjective if the noun is feminine" and certainly added that this is not all there is to lenition in Welsh. This would not have illustrated the point I was making quite so straightforwardly, but still it is true that Welsh lenition depends in part on grammatical gender, which must simply be memorized for most nouns. I was expressing the hope that "mutationis" mutandis Tolkien might have kept the grammatical changes of consonants in Sindarin free of rules that we could never learn to apply properly simply from the select examples of Sindarin included in his writings. - C.G.]

First, congratulations on PE 7, which not only looks good, but is full of thought-provoking matter about Elvish languages. For now, I'll just comment on a couple of things involving the Welsh language. On pg. 37 you remark that "adjectives cause lenition in the following noun if that noun is feminine". Sorry, no. In normal modern Welsh, an attributive adjective invariable follows the noun (the only exceptions being hen [= 'old'], priJ [= 'main, chief], and unig [= 'only'], all of which cause lenition in a following noun, whatever its gender). Attributive adjectives following a feminine noun do 1enit, e.g. dyn mawr ('a big man'), gwraig Jawr ('a big woman'). However, just to confuse the issue, the situation is quite different in medieval Welsh (as well as some forms of deliberately archaic modem Welsh, such as "strict metre poetry"). There it is more usual (though by no means invariable) for the adjective to precede the moun, in which case the noun always lenits (mawr ddyn, Jawr wraig) ... confused? You will be when you learn that adjectives used precatively always lenit after the particle yn (again irrespective of gender), and lenition also occurs in the direct object of a simple-form verb, e.g. gwelais ddyn (= 'I saw a man') - cf. Sindarin lasto beth lammen. This all goes to show that lenition/soft mutation in Welsh is a large and complex subject - as it is also, mutatis mutandis, in Sindarin, Goldogrin, etc. You rightly note (pg.31) the claims and counter-claims about the mutual intelligibility of Welsh and Breton. I personally have heard some Welsh-speakers hold forth about the days of their youth (the 1920's and 1930's) when the the valleys of South Wales were regularly visited by "Sioni Wynons" (= "Johnny Onions") - Breton onion-sellers on bicycles - whose Breton , it is claimed, could be understood quite easily by the locals. However, since the poeple who make these claims usually have considerate difficulty themsel~es in understainding even simple Breton, I strongly suspect that the "Sioni Wynons" were actually attempting to speak Welsh ... Cetainly, I as a fluent (non-native) Welsh-speaker fmd Breton difficult

Jenny Coombs Thank you for the Parma and your letter; they were both very interesting. Is the elen sile lumesse omentiemman which you quoted from the early manuscripts as published in "Return of the Shadow"? I very much enjoyed -Parma; it's beautifully presented,.,}Vith all those typefaces and letter styles! Concerning Corma Laire Quenyasse. I agree Quenyasse does mean literaly "in Quenya", but would seriously question its suitability here! The locative surely refers to physical situation, as in mahalmasse = "on a throne"; the chances of its happening to correspond to an English idiomatic phrase with no physical reference are fairly remote. In what sense can a poem be said to be in, at or on an intangible concept like language? I suggest the instrumental instead, i.e. Quenyanen. This suggests "by means of, using Quenya". There are precedents for using the instrumental to translate nonphysical "in". ego surinen = 'in the wind'; likewise in Latin, the ablative (which is frequently instrumental in sense) is often appropriate, as in lingua Latina = 'in Latin'. I assume "allative" in the second line of Parma p.26 to be a misprint for "dative", which ham in clearly is both in form and sense. I find toia rather clumsy for 'their', and also ambiguous; it could refer either to the dwarf-lords or the halls of stone,

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turieneninya = 'by the ruling of me', 'by my being ruled' (using the "form of a suffix -inya [which the 1st. pers. sing. takes] when added to a consonant stem", as given in your "First Person Pronoun Possessive in High-Elven"). I don't know how seriously one should take those; I admit they were getting progressively more unlikely. Still, it's a thought, and you've got to expect some monsters like ***turieneninya when you translate five English words into one Quenya! By the way, is nute te, in the penultimate line of the poem, a misprint for nutie, or have I missed its significance? Thanks again for Parma; I look forward to the next issue!

although I suppose common sense would imply the latter. Patrick Wynne's suggestion seems neater, and more in keeping with the spirit of Quenya, which rejoices in forming great long compounds with twenty suffixes at the end! (Ondo-rondo-nta-sse-n = 'stone-cave-their-in (pl.)' is really rather splendid.) Does not Tolkien's comment that the verb suffix -nte is used "where no subject is previously mentioned" apply equally to the other person suffixes? Where there is a subject, the bare stem of the verb is used (eg. Firiel linta); where there is no subject, the personal inflection is used (eg. lintarye). Where this would lead to ambiguity, the personal pronoun itself could be used in apposition to the noun, as you have explained in "1m Naitho"; so I might say lintanye (where the suffix makes the person clear), but inye Yenne linta (the pronoun showing that I am making an observation about myself). This does not affect the use of the possessive nya suffix with nouns; so might not possessive -nta be legitimate? I admire the way you and Jorge have tackled the "to find them" etc. phrases; I had wondered how you would do that. But I find myself tending to agree with Patrick Wynne about the use of the dative. I can't really see that enyalien's being subordinate to a verb rather than to a noun makes much difference. And all the gerunds in the Corma Laire govern direct objects (te), as enyalien does, so there is no difference there. Mine Corma hirien te does not seem to me to be ambiguous; 'for one ring to find them' would rather be mine Corman (dat.) hirien teo If the gerunds are nominative, then the phrases would have to be understood 'one ring the finding of them' etc., where the gerund is in apposition to the noun: 'one ring (being) the finding of them'. 'One ring for the rmding of them' makes better sense, to me at least; although admittedly the whole ring poem does not contain one complete sentence in any case. To complicate matters a little further while I'm about it, what about incorporating the direct objects into the gerunds? The object of a finite verb is of course incorporated as a suffix (eg. u-tuv-ie-nye-s = 'I have found it'), and although gerunds are rather special, operating both as verbs and as nouns, I don't know of a compelling reason why they shouldn't be able to incorporate object sufixes after the usual case endings; the case endings would take the place of the person endings in a finite verb. It would certainly make it tidier. I suggest turient(e) = 'for the ruling of them', etc. SiJpilarly with other cases and objects : turiot = 'of the ruling of them both', 'of their both being ruled' (I'm a bit uncertain about the formation of a genitive from nominative -ie, but never mind),

[Jenny's argument that Carma Laire Ouenyanen would be 'the Ring Poem in Quenya' in is quite compelling, and had Jorge suggested it for his title I would not have disagreed in my position as his assistant and "corrector" in rendering that English poem into Quenya. But at the same time I do not feel comfortable with idea that the locative in Q. only "refers to physical situation", as she seems to suggest. So I did not feel compelled to insist that Jorge ought to change it. Certainly as separate theoretical question this deserves study. We know that a noun that can have "nonphysical" reference does not thereby lose any of its case·formations in the paradigms of its language. And we know from considering English alone that the analogy whereby the grammatical parrallel between say I conveyed an Idea In latin and I ferried a passenger In my boat emerged in the history ot our tongue, is obviously independ~nt of specific "idiom", because it is a natural characteristic of sentient expression. In Sanskrit, which like Quenya has both a specific instrumental and locative case-form, the later combines among its many uses, reference to the place of an action, the time of an action (cf. Q lumesse), or the circumstances in which an action takes place. I feel that the question ought to be, given the existence of forms Ouenyanen vS. Ouenyasse, what would the difference be used for? - C.G.]

Craig M arnock Comment on : Corma Laire Quenyasse TITLE : Corma Laire :: I don't like these two words just placed together like this, though I can't give any good reason why. In English The Ring Poem' means 'the Poem about the Rings', which I think would be better expressed via some Q. inflection, though it's hard to say which one since, as noted directly below, it is easy to make good

46

(Hist. Middle-earth, Vol. 4) and refers to a specific area in the sky. Although the comparison is not of course exact, it is as if we said "Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the mesosphere'. Menel would appear to be the most accurate replacemant 3

cases for just about every one in just about every situation. 1 Quenyasse :: I'd prefer Quenyanen here, as it is 'The Ring Poem (written) in Quenya', i.e. using Quenya, though the instrumental is the "tricksiest" case to implement.

Line 2 (Otso Nauco·heruin toia ondorondossen): beruin :: Misprint here, either heru or her, not **heru.4 toia :: An awful lot of the stuff appearing in LR & other places is inconsistent with "Classical" Quenya, and this is one of them. I can't imagine why you {Chris} should object to *-nta from ·nte, paralleling -Ima & • Ime. The point that "no subject is previously mentioned" has been brought up before (Quettar #28, p. 8) but not answered. It may be that noninflected forms were used (i.e. the subject-verb-object arrangement rather than verb + subject + object), though textual criticism would be necessary to back this up.

Line 1 (Nelde Cormar Elda-harnin nu elenarda): haran :: As noted in my accompanying letter, I don't like using words from another "variety" of Eldarin where a paraphrase (or construction) is possible or (even worse) where a perfectly good word already exists (Le. is extant) for that variety. This element does of course appear in the canon for "Classical" {LotR} Q. as a part of haranye (and with closely related word in harma), but whether this means 'lord or king of a specified region' (see TA, Etym.) is open to great doubt, especially as the related S. forms begin with arm, and we have many examples of Quenya words which also begin with arm. Since no base ** ARoccurs in Etym. (all forms coming form GHAR{3AR- I'd suggest that the (Q.) forms in har- have the meaning of 'something (to be) treasured', whilst those with royal & kingly connotations were transferred to base ...jAR, the two being mutually exclusive. There is a wide selection of possible alternatives (aran, cano/u, her, heru, &c.) depending on the connotation required. 2 elenarda:: This is actually a proper name given in the list of cosmological words following the "Ambarkanta"

3 The reason mesosphere sounds unusual here is the fact that it uses a modem borrowing of the ancient Greek meso-which most English speakers would have to "look up" to understand its meaning, and even realizing that mesosphere = 'middle sphere' does not pin down what the word refers to. On the other hand any Quenya speaker would know that elenarda = elen + arda = 'star-realm' and that it refers to the sky. To take an example closer to home if in a different sphere, the compound black·bird would mean something much more specific to a bird-watcher than it does to the average English speaker for whom it is generic and refers to any black bird.. To treat elenarda as a strictly teclJ.pical term like English mesosphere is to impose a modem (specializing) view of vocabulary usage that need not apply to Quenya at all. Editor 4 Not a misprint. The thinking behind this form was that if one were to form an ablative say from Mr one would have to supply some connecting vowel before the ending ·110. Generally this vowel is assumed to be e whence ·Mr~1I0, on the evidence of nom. ear 'sea', abl. Ear~lIo; nom. Endor, End6re 'Middle-earth', allative Endor~nna. But even if the vast majority of ·consonantstem" nominatives show connecting vowel e in other cases we would expect some exceptions. For example riel 'crowned maiden' seems to have connecting vowel a, judging by the genitive Altarlello. If the connecting vowel were e we would get "rielleo. Risky to guess which nouns are the exceptions, but her is certainly unusual in having an alternative nominative heru with this particular final vowel. I consequently posit abl. herullo, dative plural heruln, etc. Other solutions to the original problem might be proposed, and indeed Jorge and I went back and forth on this one. In the end we split the difference. (See line 4 of the poem.) -Editor

n,

1 There are some Quenya proper names that consist of 2 nouns

simply juxtaposed. For example Caron Ololaire 'Mound (o~ Eversummer', with no cases. - Editor 2 This is interesting speculation on the meta-history of these words in the hypothetical conception of the author, but I find the conception displayed in Etymologies too subtle and realistic to hastily assume that T. abandoned it when no unequivocal evidence of a new conception is forthcoming. You gloss over the fact that under the entry 3AR 'have, hold' he also mentions that the "related GAR, GARAT, GARAD were much blended in Eldarin", and he gives alongside of and coexisting with the Q. forms in har·, including harma, haryon '(heir), prince', haran, several Q. forms in ar·, including arda 'realm', armar 'goods', aryan 'heir'. I see nothing in "Classical" Quenya or Sindarin to contradict the hypothesis that Q *aran derives from haran by analogy with related arda, aryOnlharyon. I would accept AR· as a Quenya and Sindarin root, and harm as a Quenya stem that developed a sense more or less as you describe, in harma at least. But the idea that historically these various forms all derive from primitive roots 3AR·/GAR· as explained in Etymologies, still seems plausible to me.- Editor

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A problem that I have encountered before is possible ambiguity in the texts, taken to mean whichever backs up the speaker, but I think your "'inflection' (Tolkien does not call it a 'pronoun')" comment is the most outrageous instance of this that I have seen! The element is clearly given as a pronoun, and the following phrase (i h3rar) is clearly dependent upon it for meaning, so the "passive marker" bit is out All the justification you give would appear to have no rationale other than that you dislike *-nta and prefer *toia, but as far as this writer is concerned, -nta wins, hands down. "Ondorondontassen" is a bit lolloping, though ondomardintassen might be more wieldy.5

Line 3: (Nerte Atanin fairenen umbartar) :: When I first read this, it came out as "Nine for men fated by the phantom". Mortal men doomed to die" is a pleonasm in any case.6 Atanin :: I'd have thought the more obvious translation here for 'mortal men' was firima (QS, Ch. 12), giving firimain here. 7 reference to mannar Vallon 'into the hands of the Lords' in the preceding sentence, and 'the Moon and the Sun' referring to the earlier objects Isil and U'r-anar), is a usage of a pronoun that we have been searching for ever since we leamed that ·nte was used specifically when the subject has !1Q1 yet been mentioned. Since there is no conflicting evidence for a different 3rd person plural pronoun comparable in meaning and usage to toi attested in later Quenya I cannot imagine why you {Craig} assume Tolkien abandoned this one. As for my emphasis on Tolkien's use of the word "inflection" in his explanation of ·nte, I was not trying to infer that "inflection" excluded the possibility of a pronominal inflection. I assumed that the reader would know such an inference is specious. Since one of the ways Patrick's proposal of ·nta differed from mine of tala was that his was an infiection and mine was not, I was concemed with the opposite question of whether pronouns could come in both inflectional aru1 noninflectional forms in Quenya, and if so how extensively. If elye were exceptional, then Tolkien might unambiguously refer to a pronominal inflection like -nte generically as a "pronoun" (the same way Patrick, Craig and I all do on occasion.) Tolkien's sticking to the altemative generic "inflection" might p"o~sibly corroborate the existenc2 of unrecorded pronouns that were not inflections. The case for this might be stronger if ·nte were only inCidentally pronominal in this context, since this would enhance the plausibility of some alternative or other. Hence my brief allusion to what else the suffix -nte might mean in parallel contexts. Rnally as to Craig's suggestion that word order is supposed to distinguish between whether the noun the pronoun refers to comes before or after, I think the logical conslusion is that ·Ita = 'their' somebody mentioned and -nta = 'their' sombody about to be mentioned, is the obvious interpretation of everything Tolkien wrote, insofar as it relates to possessive 3 plural inflection in Q(u)enya. This would leave the word free itself in its own sentence, to be placed anywhere required by the sentence syntax. -C.G. 6 I agree this is a valid second interpretation of the line, a sort of "subliminal" key to the spell, insofar as it worked on Mortal Men. Sauron of course is the "phantom". - C.G. 7 I thought it best to avoid the redundancy of "mortal" and "to die". One of the things that makes this tolerable in the English is that the alliteration of mortal men and Iloomed to Ille

5 Appearances can be deceiving. I do not dislike *-nta per se. I would be willing to accept a phrase like *tlrienmnen I harar'in their keeping who sit upon' as a valid parallel to t1ruvantes I harar , they will keep it who sit upon'. But given this possibility, it is remarkable that Cirion does D2t use this locution, even though T. gives the exact English equivalent in his idiomatic translation of the Quenya. Adifference in Quenya and English idiom is not surprising, and Tolkien seems habitually to display such differences. But their im plications should be studied, not glossed over with statements like "I can't imagine why" . I assumed (precipitously) that any student of Quenya pronouns reading Cirion's oath would have noticed Cirion's disfavoring of *·nta, and perhaps too tersely (and apparently unconvincingly) offered my own explanation. It is a mistake to view the evidence of Quenya from The Lord of the Rings and later writing as the self-contained display of a complete grammatical system. There are too many gaps, as has been thoroughly demonstrated by analysis starting with An Introduction to Elvish and continuing from futher evidence, in the pages of Quettar and currently in Beyond Bree. Once the "deductive" ingenuity of the purists has panned out, the only place left to turn to for further insight into Tolkjen's grammatical conception is to the pre-LotR evidence. Their caveats are well-taken, and we certainly should not assume that every piece of Q(u)enya penned by Tolkien is consistent with LotR. But the opposite approach is also oversimplistic. Even if "an awful lot of the stuff ... is inconsistent", the objective student will not dismiss evidence merely on the suspicion of inconsistency. Craig does not give any specifics regarding the inconsistency he finds in tal 'they (are), which (are),. The phonetic shape is valid: compare nal for diphthong in a monosyllable. The possibility of separate-word subject pronoun~ is guaranteed by elye 'even thou'. The use of a third plural pronoun simply to repeat or reference some plural noun from the previous discourse (for the two uses of tal at LR :72, the subjects are 'the Lords' in

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fairenen :: Faire appears in the Classical Q. corpus ("The Last Ark") as 'phantom, disembodied spirit', so I'd object to the use of a homonym here, in any case. 8

Mordor :: (groan) [thank-you]. No wonder Jorge needed convincing! I'd prefer something else in here (from the Classical corpus), but that's just personal taste.

umbartar :: Even after looking at the notes I still see this as a verb-fonn. Some pleonasm or other is required to fill up this line, though, along the lines of 'doom, fate'. I'd prefer ambartime here (i.e. whole line Nerte Firimain ambartime) since their fate is not evil in any

Line 6 (Mine Corma turie te ilye, Mina Corma hirie te) : turie :: I'd agree with your last note (No.4) about this, though I'd say this was infinitive, rather than gerundial. hirie :: ¥ou missed an opportunity here, I think. We can't rhyme find/bind them, but if you used tuvie here, you'd have three of the four verb-fonns used in lines 6 & 7 as tu*ie.

way, just supremely indifferent (to them).9 Line 4 : (Mine Morna Heren morna mahalmasse) : mine :: I'd agree with the use of mine here (as opposed to deriv. of "ER) due to minya.

Line 7 (Mine Corma tucie te ilye ar mi mornie nute te) : nute :: typo, nutie.

(Whole line):: Very good; sonorous, very nearly a perfect iambic metre.

Comment on "First Person Possessive in High Elven"

Line 5, 8 : (Mi Nore Mornandor yasse Mordor caitar) : Nore :: A[nother] way round the "Land of Blackland" problem you cite in your footnote would be to use arda, since you're as much referring to the region as the people. Mornandor :: Since this is a name, it would always be stressed on the second syllable, which I don't like. Also, the use of the -ndor fonn would indicate the antiquity of a name, which I don't feel likely here. Taking both of the above into account, I'd have said M 0 rna nor, Mornanore. lO

I found the article interesting, though this may have been for personal reasons as much as anything else. (I recently discovered that my surname, Marnock, contains such an "embedded possessive" as you hypothesise for senya). The article basically comes down to a simple question: is senya literally "my child", or is "my child" merely a way of idiomatically translating the Quenya? I would opt for the latter, i.e. that senya is as adequately translated by "dear child" or "beloved child" as by "my child". The evidence you give for your point of view is based on a possible contraction of *yondo·nya to yonya. Yonya is not a piece of evidence on which I should like to base a theory about final-ior~ (LotR) Quenya - the two w'7>rds following yonya (which is explicitly glossed as 'my son') are inye tye-mela, which are plainly not final Q., though there are close resemblances. This is the value of "The History of Middle-earth"; to provide us with additional infonnation about the Eldarin languages of the final stage - if that is what we are studying; if not, they link to provide a greater field of study - but they are not the same thing, and to (implicitly) say they are is incorrect. No where is yonya said to be a possible parallel, rather than "the real thing". I don't object to the use of LR &c.

splits the line into two units that the readers perceive as sequential and saying more than what they would perceive from mortal men doomed by mortality, which says nothing more than men doomed by their mortality. In terms of how the alliteration would strike the Quenya listener, saying 1irlmain 1airenen umbartar with two related words next to each other, would have been like saying mortals by mortality doomed or giers to f!.Ying fated. I preferred the sort of mirroring of sounds in ner1e atanln and falrenen umbatlar with the center words not to closely associated in sense or derivation. - C.G. S'Nhy? Do you believe Quenya has no homonyms? 9 Whatever ambarta· is in turun' ambartanen 'by doom mastered' (looks like a noun to me), that is what umbarta· is intended to be here, with just the negative prefix added. I think where you go wrong is the assumption that a verb in phonetic form cannot also be the form of a noun: cf. lanta·, both noun and verb stem. As for the fate of men being evil, we were trying to present the picture as Sauron would paint it: death an evil to be avoided by accepting a Ring, the subtext being subserviance to the evil spirit of Sauron himself. I think this represents him as the devious liar he must have been in person. - C.G.

10 "Taking both of the above into account" is no more than taking either one individually. We do not regret chOOSing a three syllable name that is stressed in the fashion of only a minority of such words in Quenya. We assume that Sauron was capable of imitating (and affecting) the antiquity implied by using -ndor: the specific analogies are Valandor and Numendor possibly the latter another suggestion by Sauron in imitation of the former. - Editor

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shorten the base vowel by analogy over time, but the matter of onya is left largely unexamined. Under the "haplology" you propose, the form of the substantive would have to be **6n, a word which I ftnd unlikely. It couldn't be **6na or **6ne since for your haplology you would require the epenthetic -i-, i.e. that the word was originally *oniniii, so that the second -ni- could be

to back up theories - I do it myself - but this piece of evidence is analogical, not actual, which is the way it's presented. 11 I've said rather more on yonya that I meant to, but I think "admissability" of the HME evidence is an important (and contentious) point. What does it for me, though, is Erusen. This clearly shows a long vowel which is most unusual for Quenya (palantir is the only other I can immediately summon to mind, though there are probably one or two others). This form clearly shows the long vowel in monosyllables which Jan van Breda (Quettar, No. 24) calls "the ftrst vowel lengthening rule", which is seen more often in Sindarin than in Quenya The vowel in senya is short, which suggests to me that the elemant in senya is not the same as that in Erusen, though they are of course Closely related. Long vowels are not found in Q. syllables which end in two consonants; cpo are & asta, both from ...JAS. The fact that senya shows a short vowel suggests that it is a separate form, and not a contraction of *seninya. This is not particularly strong

syncopated. 13 In summary, I think that both senya and onya are derived in the way you suggest at the end of footnote 4 (p. 14) where you say that, "Possibly onya ... was modelled directly on the verb stem on- 'beget' and the shape of the word yonya," i.e. that it contains -ya, the "suffix of endearment". (Undo my view, expressed above.) 14

like primitive ·h~r vs. ·heru with short vowel whenever the root was manifest in a word of more than one syllable. This means that the oldest pattem for senya to conform to if primitive is the short vowel in ·sen-ini-A since this is not a monosyllable. But we should consider if we explore this issue noncentral to my theory, and ask ourselves why Erus~n is plural. A possibility is preLotR "plural m" given in Etymologies under ...J30- as part of the explanation of Q. partitive ending -on, clearly retained in Quenya genitive plural endings like aldaron and elenion, with phonological principle (PQ m > Q word-final n) also displayed in sandastan 'shield-barrier' < ·thandA 'shield' and ·stama- 'bar, exclude'. But this would suggest singular ·se> ·sA > Q ·se 'child', whence the interpretation of senya as se + -nya would be a natural source of analogy. But the rarity of plural forms like ·sen (if Erusen is idiomatic and not an archaism in Q.) might lead to a collective sense like EngHsh offspring has and coincidental interpretation of sen-va as sen + -va. This is all compatible with my thesis - C. G. 13 We should not confuse phonologically determined syncopation with isolated and analogical haplology. Leonard Bloomfield (Language) gives as an example of haplology, Latin stipendiurn < •stipl-pendiurn where the repetition pi pe is simplified to one syllable even where the vowels in the two syllables differ, or else we can view this as shortening of ip ip, in which case ono-nya might be a source for onya. But I do bQl want to suggest that I agree with you that *6n is "unlikely" as a Quenya word-C.G.

evidence,12 since such a syncopation would probably

11 The word yonya was quite clearly identified as evidence from Lost Road, at the very beginning of my article, so as to avoid any confusion or specious inference on the part of the reader, such as Craig rather cantankerously suggests. The article is not, in any case, "a theory about final-form Quenya", as Craig supposes out of thin air. Rather, as indicated in my first footnote, I examine all the evidence in parallel, hypothesizing a unified conception "for the sake of argument", which means to find out what logical deductions follow from the possibility that Tolkien had developed a conception of the 1st person possessive in writing The Lost Road which he retained in LotR and later. It is Craig who misleads the reader when he mentions things like "inye tye-mela, which are plainly not final Q'" This plainly is inappropriate. The present verb-form mel a 'love' is ~ the same grammatical conception as sUa 'shines', the conjunctive pronoun inye 'I too' is probably the same conception as elye 'even thou', and for 2nd person object pronoun tye there is no late evidence one way or another. Where is the plain inconSistency that Craig'S words infer? There is incidental evidence from Sindarin to corroborate the retention of yonya in Tolkien's later conception, namely Gildor IngloriQn and ErelniQn 'Scion of Kings' (usually known by his sumame Gil-galad). That *Ion is 'scion' or 'son' here is confirmed by the unpublished epilogue to LotR (on display at Marquette during Mythcon 1987) with the word lonnath used by Aragom to refer to the 'sons' of Samwise . ..:.. C.G. 12 This is really ghost evidence. I think Craig realized his reasoning was leading back to my theory when he changed subject. The theory of Jan van Breda would imply altemations

14 The problem with Craig's explanations taken as a whole at this point, is that by separating "Classical" Quenya, as a different conception from what went before, we cannot use Anardllxa as an explanation of yonya and yet with identical context and semantics to later senya, onya we would naturally assume the same syntactic "explanation" or an intemal connection, even if there is a partial external difference. This suggests that T. had an explanation for yonya, senya, onya before

51

You raise an interesting point with regard to Tarinya, and one which I had not previously considered. I'd agree with you here that the fIrst element is the titulus of the Numenorean Rulers, but why it should be used for the ruler's consort (the fIrst Ruling Queen was of course yet to be born) is a question that needs responding to; in origin it is probably the mode of address for the King ("my liege" is probably the closest we can get to it in English), and it later became the norm for addressing (probably) the immediate Royal Family, though it was perhaps reserved for the Monarch and his/her Consort (and the Heir Elect?). Something I've noted about your writing before is the mass of sources you tie to something from all stages of the development of the Eldarin languages, and present them as being related internally rather than externally as different manifestations of the same idea. 15 This is true for the

part of your article running from the last two lines on p.17., to the paragraph break in the second column on p.18., where you bring in aran as 'lord of a region' to set up your translation of atar aranya. I would disagree entirely with your process where you class aran as a later form of haran by analogy with arda. Arda is from --JGAR, whence also S gar, gardh, gardhon (S ard is from --JGHAR, or possibly --JGHA'RAT, whence also arth, I think); harm a, har-, haranye are from *--JKHAR (I fmd the gh. (3-) > h· sequence evidenced in the Etymologies a highly unlikely one for "Classical" Quenya); aran is a bona fide Quanya word from --JAR, whence also arna - the fact that the only derivative of an extension of --JAR, --JARAT, is Quenya (arato) surely gives the lie to your etymologies. No nastiness intended! These happenings & re-modellings are external, not internal.1 6 Actually, I think one of the more interesting aspects of arar aranya was missed, the arrangement of it. Reading it brought to mind one of the comments in the note to the oath in "Cirion & Eorl", where it is said "adjectives used as a 'title' or frequently used attribute of a name are placed after the name, and as is usual in Quenya in the case of two declinable names in apposition only the last is declined." This clearly has implications for atar aranya. Although aran is not an adjective, it would clearly (1 seem to be using the word "clearly" an awful lot} appear to be an attribute of atar. Although -ya is not part of the nominal declension system, the same "rule" for words in apposition would appear to hold, so I'd say "(my) dear father and Qng"

he thought of -ya used as mark of "endeannenr added to proper names. Since he translates yonya 'my son', even if the idea of endeannent, clear in context, is primary (and it could be secondary), he is aware of the sense of 'my' and so must have thought of its relation to Atarlnya 'my father' and Indo-nlnya 'my heart'. For me the possibility of analogy underlying the internal shifts in inflection is an interesting one because we know of its abundant use in real languages but cannot always be certain of the plausibility of specific instances. I am naturally interested in how traditional or intuitive Tolkien's ideas in this area are as illustrated by Quenya. This body of evidence has all the earmarks of a breeding ground for analogy: duplication of sound and ambiguity of meaning. The sequence yenda : yo~ : atari.llYi > yooma> yOOY.a : yoni!D :: II'IdoDY,a >I~ is such adassic and typical example of this kind of change (if correct), that alternative possibilities without equal verve pale. This becomes an especially attractive analogy when it can be supported by a perceived ·nlnya < dative nln + adjectival-ya = 'of mine'. I assume an intersecting internal development, a possibility T. seemed to relish-C.G. 15 So long as we stick to the words Tolkien actually wrote, then I think an honest but humble assessment of the relative linguistic skill of professor and student, will assume that a pattern which the latter observes existed in the mind of the maker. It is when we resort to paraphrase and analogy on our own that we must reserve attribution to the author, though merely to the extent his own words can be better interpretted. To take those words and divide them in half and say everything written before 1940 should be assumed abandoned unless positively proven otherwise, and claim that any theory based solely on post1940 evidence is thereby more "likely· to be true: this sort of methodology would be misdirected, and misconstrue Tolkien's own methods of conservation and evolution of ideas, as well as the

m

was more appropriate a translation than "milord father". 17 general laws of probability, absent a showing that he threw out more Elvish words than he retained. I think the most logical methodology is to gather all the evidence on a particular subject before deciding if some of that evidence is invalid - C. G. 16 This is a distinction without a difference. There are no "remodellingt internal or external. The only paradoxical change is haran » aran which hardly requires a new explanation of harma. The root ··--JKHAR· explains nothing that the previous conception did not explain. There is no Sindarin evidence to support this new etymology which therefore is unnecessary. The new word harar 'sit upon' seems to fit with the derivation of hanna from ·ghar- 'have, hold', thus 'treasure' = 'thing held'; 'sit upon, occupy' = 'hold. possess'. And I see no obstacle to viewing the new fonns aran, arna, arato as parallel in etymology to the old words arda, armar, aryon, arwa - C.G. 17 I would say that if aran is a "title" or attribute here, then 'lord father' would be a better translation than 'father and lord', which is conjunctive not attributive - C. G.

52

Comment on "Notes on the History of the Elven Languages"

'King' because of Letter #345, where Tolkien gives possible bull-names :: Aramund is glossed 'Kingly Bull', and is immediately followed by Tarmund, glossed 'NQbk Bull'. It would appear that the distinction you spend half a page pointing out was later reversed. 18 I may be

I found your response to Stanley's article excellent, a good exposition of the facts (if that's the right word!) we have concerning consonant mutation in Sindarin. It was surprising how much could be deduced from "Pedo mellon", though I can't help thinking it would have been a lot simpler if Feanor had provided his tenkele with quotation marks! I've often tried to come up with an etymology for danwedh, without much success. I liked your solution, but don't quite agree with it. NDAN- is 'backwards, contrary', as contrasted with ATCAT)- which is 'back, again'; also I had assigned WED- to being an external predecessor of *.,JWAD, whence fmal-form Quenya vanda, though your etymology sounds very good, and I can't think of anything better. Another etymological question is raised by Haudh-enNdengin, which clearly shows a singular article. I couldn't swear to it, but I think this is the only example we have of this. The Etymologies give a word dangen 'slain', but follows it with Haudh i Ndengin, clearly {that word again!} showing a plural form. I'd explain this as a plural noun which has come to be used as a singular (or at least not explicitly as a plural). I'd derive an adjective *ndakna from .,JNDAK C+ *-na, see arna, aina &c.), meaning 'slain'. This came to be used as a noun meaning 'some-one who has been slain' (the other derivatives of the n-extension would not have such a meaning: *ndakni ~ould mean 'that which slays':-'and *ndakno 'one who slays' (see in this respect the contrast between hilde & hiIdo), i.e. a lethal weapon of some sort, and a killer). This would be *dang in S., and the in plural of it gives us the required word. (It is hard to say at present whether the ending causes secondary affection, or not;20 if not, the fact that it occurs here points to the form's age as a unit.) The word's being a unit may have occurred later (as you suggest in the article), or it may have already been so at that time.

misrepresenting you, but I couldn't help feeling that you decided on your translation of atar aranya first, and then went looking for proof. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I do it all the time! 19 Finally (three pages later!), I'd like to come to -ninya. You give an ingenious origin for it but (ref. my comments about yonya) I don't think it can be placed here in a study of later forms. I feel you have been affected overmuch by the resemblance between -Ci)nya and -ya Cwhich to be sure, do share similar origins). My final table would look like this: -ya : Suffix of Endearment Anardilya, atar aranya, senya, onya

-Ci)nya : 1Sl Person Possessive hildinyar, Atarinya, Tarinya "Lost Road forms" : yonya, Anarinya, hondo/indo-ninya

18 I cannot find any reversal here. Aramund is purely metaphoric and alludes merely to the royal nomenclature of Arnor in the Third Age, where the idea of territorial kingship of lordship of a territory or people, was the only form of absolute leadership known. Tarmund does not refer to anything more than inherited "highness·. Among Men it referred to inherited divine blood, and the right to rule those Men of extended lifetime granted Numenor to live in. In their "kingdoms· in exile, the lineage of tarle had dwindled in the public knowledge to a mere legend. In the case of application to bulls, perhaps descent from the "Kine of Araw· might be the fairy-tale allusion that is suggested - C.G. 19 The meanings I earlier considered for atar aranya are on record in Parma #6, so your speculation here is idle, more revealing of your own methods than penetrating into mine. In any case one has to go back and forth between theory and evidence, until one is familiar with everything written by Tolkien and every possible connection worth considering, before one ought to stop looking for clues - C.G.

Comment on "Chart of Body Parts" I liked this - a different kind of article. Actually, looking

20 I'd say no; lack of vowel affection is partly the point of using this plural form as opposed to the more normal mutation plural. I'd say (cp. UT Index) that cerln is not fr. cOr +·In but is a later "manifestation" of the word karin appearing in BoL T1 Craig's note

53

din:: Where is this from? [The epilogue to LotR which T. decided not to include in the published text -

at it, I was surprised by just how much physical vocab. there was. It always seems that you can never find a specific word when you want it, whether or not it appears in the corpus. What annoys me, though, is the unevenness, e.g. the number of words for 'darkness, gloom' &c. -there's a multiplicity available in this or that area, but none for the others.

Ed.]

durinthi :: I don't agree with the lenition here, but it's hard to give reasons why. Line 5 : odogranaithos :: I like this. Who cares if it may not be totally exact? (I don't think you can impose those sorts of rules Qn something synthetic, in any case.)

Comments on 1m naitho

Line 7 : Nalos :: I wouldn't say this was a verbal form, as seems to be required.24

I'm not really into Sindarin (or this synthetic "LowElven" - rather a good term, I think. What about an Elvish term for it? How's about Sundarin? (ouch!)), so the following are more meta-comments (on your notes) rather than comments on the poem itself (though it does seem that most of the poem is commented on, reappearing in the notes). I think it would have been helpful were the source-text to be identified, rather than letting the reader find it for themself. 21

Line 9 : NOTES:: The S. in "The Lay of Leithian Recommensed" is annoying, in that we can't say for sure what it means. But I'd disagree with the identification of the Moon with the giIthonieI for several reasons. Firstly, the word implies making; this is the meaning of the second element, equivalent to -tal- in Tintalle, where the -n- has assimilated to the following -1-; cpo tano, Cirdan, Etym: TAN -. Secondly, the -iel element is feminine. A later alteration by Tolkien made it non-specific, but at the time of the formulation of the word it was feminine; no examples are in fact found of -iel marking male names (not as far as I can remember, anyway). So the name means "the female maker ('kindler' in this sense refers to the original making of the star, when it first began to shine, not to when they shine anew each night) of stars", which obviously excludes Rana. 25

Line 1 : 1m naitho :: I'm not quite sure what the last sentence of the comment on this phrase. I appreciate most of the other points you make, but an objective pronoun followed by an imperative looks strange whichever way you cut it. The obvious translation of 'I will lament' (though it lacks any sense of compulsion, which is I think the reason for the form shown here) is naithathon. 22 Line 3 : uf :: I think uf implies motion of some sort.

room; looked . . .the Window. Offhand I cannot think of any preposition that "implies motion". Usually they tend to be directional or relational so as to accommodate usage with a variety of verbs - C.G. 241 totally disagree with this. Tolkien gives the gloss 'sinking, setting, slope', which cleverly and clearly shows that this word is both verbal noun and "concrete" noun. The glosses show this, as one is purely verbal 'sinking', one a form whose participle/gerund has verbal (setting sun) and just barely verbal (setting of the stage/play) meaning, and one hardly verbal at all: look at the (mountain) slope. The idea of 'sinking' as if going into a deep place without being able to help it, seemed appropriate here, not only for the imagined fate of Tuor in Hells of Iron, but also echoing what happens to her father below her in a tower falling

It's not clear if this is so.23

21 I was writing for the reader who was interested in figuring out the poem as a poem rather than as a translation, for it was not intended to be an accurate or even representational "translation" of anything in English. I was trying to write as a Sindarin speaker might write, at leasure in Tol Eressea, as I tried (rather feebly) to explain in my final note - C.G. 221m is not objective, but subjective: 1m Narvi haln echant 'I Narvi made them', in the gate inscription. On the use of imperative with explicit subject, T. says that a verb-form ending in -0 is the imperative "of all persons·. We know from multiple examples that the imperative verb by itself is used for 2nd person. So the imperative in the other persons seems to require personal pronouns to distinguish them, which is what the last sentence of my comment on 1m naitho means. I would probably in any case never use nalthathon in a poem, because it sounds atrocious - e. G. 23 The glosses of this Gnomish preposition are 'out of, forth from' (BLT2, under Ufedhln). These compound prepositions in English can both be used with or without motion: walked . . .the

-e.G. 25 I too ascribed to the interpretation that Tlntalle contained tan· until the form t1nta 'cause to sparkle' was published. I assume that in Tolkien's final conception the very primitive element "ta- meant 'make'. kly phase of a "language" of speaking peoples will include the idea of creating things (and

54

given in LotR as "Limlight". Its chequered history (i.e. of the name) is discussed in note 46 to "Cirion and Eorl" (Un where it seems clear that the fIrst element is Elvish,

Line 10 : lin:: I'd agree with lin as analogous to nin, but as far as I remember the second pers. forms in I were borrowed from Quenya, used as "reverential" or some such. I doubt (if I recall correctly) if Tuor would say this to ldril.

whatever the 2nd is, or was. An earlier note would give its meaning as 'swift', which would either be understood as an epithet for Asfaloth or as an adverb, which seems suitable. Your note on hin. I'd connect this with the base given in Etymologies as SI-, being a plural, lenited form of *sen, which is < *sina 'this (adj.)' which also> Q sina. The alteration of the -e- to the -i- is probably by analogy with the adjectival ending -en (e.g. remmen, &c.), though some kind of "haplology" as you suggest in your "First Person Possessive" article may also be present. Another possibility is that the form is a unique one; the possible association with e(n) is a valid one.

The situation in S. with regard to 2llil pers. pronouns is probably like English, in that the originally plural form is used as both pI. & sing., and (although by different routes in each case - note however that each are connected with religion, something which was a concern of JRRT) the sing. forms have a "heightened" sense. 26 (lin) I found the idea that lim was 'thyself a nice one. A well-known phrase in the Glasgow dialect is "Gaun yerseU", a term coming from soccer, meaning roughly 'go for it!', 'go on!'. I would connect lim with the river-name

ideas), so an element as pervasive as this (there are numerous derived verbs in the element -ta) is logically explained by a basic idea like this. The sense that to make or 'build' a building or artifact, involves 'raising' the materials, suggests an association with the ta- words for 'high'. But the basic idea of 'make' implies both 'cause' and 'do', as well as 'create'. The variety of derivatives in tao, tan-, taro, is not surprising. The idea of 'kindling', which connects with the (extemally) old idea of the "Tale Fire" (TOn a Gwedrln), may be the intemally oldest idea that T. envisions associated with tan-. The suggestion that -lei is feminine for the post-LotR lay recommenced, is contradicted by mirlel'shining like jewels', -dlrlel 'gazing', which show that gender of derivative names is irrelevant. The word gllthanlel is uncapitalized in the Lay and could easily refer to the Moon temporarily hiding and then "rekindling" the stars as it passes with its greater light. 'th. know (and perhaps the scientifically minded Elves knew) it is only the relative intensity of the Moon that seems to dim the nearby stars and that it passes between us and those stars that it completely obscures. But to Luthien perhaps it seemed that the Moon "rekindled" the stars after snuffing them as it passed -

Line 11 : fuinon:: As far as I can make out, you're using this word adverbially. I don't know if this [is] likely or not for S(undarin), though I can't fInd any objection to it on any literal grounds. Line 13: NOTES:: I don't agree that the 'by' can be assumed from word-order. I think some particle is more likely in here. This is hard to render, though, so some other paraphrase would be a better move. Not really what about "na,,?27 din:: I think you get this from Timlviel's Song. But if it is pronominal, it would be "him" or "his" (poss. n.), not the possessive adjective, despite its suitable form. 28 Line 14 : gruinon :: I don't like the addition of -on to

27 It is not a question of what is more likely. As I said in my note "lamentation of his wife" ~ mean "lamentation by his wife". It can also mean "lamentation for/about his wife". Both meanings are possible, and neither is more likely than the other. Together 'by' and 10r' constitute the QD.!J: possible interpretations of the genitive with these particular nouns. These are facts, not assumptions: simple observation about the way the genitive works in all languages that have it - C.G. 28 I do not follow Craig'S reasoning here. But anyway I use the word the same way it is used in the unpublished material, to modify another noun. The word in the Lay occurs with a verb, si lath a galadh lasta din! something like 'now blossom and leaf listen ... !' Possibly this blank could be filled by 'to this' referring to the song itself, and conceivably this could be connected with din 'his'. But perhaps it would be likelier to connect the former din with Aman Din 'Silent Hill' (and maybe dI-nguruthas 'overwhelmed in dread of death, beneath death-horror'). The sense of lasta din would be something like 'listen in awe'- e.G.

c.G 26 I do not think that the fact that religion was a concem of Tolkien's lends much weight to the assumption that the variety of Sindarin "used by the High Elves ... marked in high style and verse by the influence of Quenya, which had been originally their normal tongue", which included the dative pronoun "Ie, the reverential 2nd person sing." (NT: 64-5) was ousted from nonreverential function by the original plural 2nd person. Since we have no example of the 2nd person plural in Sindarin, it seems pure guesswork to speculate about its interaction with the singular. In any case, though I adlT\it that J do not really know what it is like to be married to an Elf, I cannot imagine a grammatical restriction on the way Tuor talks to his beloved Idril, that requires him IlQ1 to address her with reverence - C.G.

55

.................. '" " ................ '" .... ; ~

an adjective; in both of the cases you cite, it has been added to nouns. 29 Line 15 : sein-hael :: I like this, so I'll restrain my urging to nitpick about sael being used. Line 16 : ruithant:: An interesting rationale, though there would have to be a lot of verb stems ending in -at for it to be plausible. 30 urant:: I think that uradant would sound better here, but that's just personal taste} 1 Line 18 : oronte :: I'd derive erio fro *orya-. "orie is newer than ortie, some sort of analogical reshaping" : What does this mean?32

~~

.................. :

29 I was partially supporting this by the noun ·ruin 'fire' in Orodruin - C. G. 30 It is a common misconception that linguistic analogy must be based on numerous examples. In fact a single form reinterpreted is theoretically sufficient to produce a new marker for an old category. An example comes right from English. The universal 3rd person singular present tense ending is now ·s, but the Q!ljy such form that goes back to Old English is is. The 3 sing. pres. was in all other verbs expressed by ·th or·t . The sole evidence of thelthant is sufficient "rationale" for rulthant. We know from this that the ending ·ant was used for some verbs in Sindarin. What I was trying to do in my discussion of echant was remind the reader of the implications of Etymologies about this form, and the possible source for ·ant which this information entails. Nor is this all the evidence of this kind of development in Noldorin: cf. trevant pa.t. of trevedi 'traverse' (BAT), hant pa.t. of hedi (KHAT· 'hurl'), pant 'full' beside pathro 'fill' (KWAT), atlant 'oblique, slanting' beside atlanno 'to slope, slant' (TALAT). Since we do not have to assume ·ant was universal, I think these are sufficient forms to render plausible the analogical development of teithant, orthant, gwedhant, etc. - C. G. 31 That would also destroy the scansion - Ed. 32 Because Exilic Noldorin erlo 'rise' is closest, among the Old Noldorin verbs in form and sense, to orle (but as you pOint out does not derive directly from it) there is reason to assume analogical erl-o, of which erl· comes from orle. This implies that ortle> orle is the correct chronology of these forms (unless we assume artie is a "faddish" form devised in Old Noldorin and dying out there, never competing successfully with orle), or at least the more plausible chronology. The precise analogy would be something like this: ON oro 'mountain' might suggest the divisi~n or·t6be, while orot! 'mountains' might suggest ort-6be. The simultaneous existence of these three words would suggest the altematives ort-/or·, and either of ort·le or or·le from the other by analogy - C.G.

: f·· .. ··············~~ ::

.: ::

.

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56

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Gr;shtl~kh, tAke t:\ leiter: "Four RinJS for -the. Elveh.kin:Js" •.. 110, no, no, better make 'thAT "Two R,n~s~' be "~o· ,mA~ [" Ive "lniJs ,••.

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