Friel's Song

Friel's Song
This is a long (almost 90 words) Quenya song found in LR:72 (also some
fragments in LR:63). It was written about
1940. Tolkien provided no official
title, but in the narrative for which he wrote the song, it is sung by a woman

called Friel. Hence it is universally referred to as Friel's Song. The

language of this song is what I would call
"near-LotR-style" Quenya,
or late "Qenya". It is not quite the same kind of Quenya as the
language we know from
LotR and later sources, but Tolkien was getting there. He
had already come a long road since "Qenya" in its most
primitive form
first manifested in the Qenya Lexicon a quarter of a century earlier, in 1915.
Friel's Song, with Tolkien's translation interspersed:
1. Ilu Ilvatar en kre eldain
a frimoin
The Father made the World for Elves and Mortals

2. ar antarta mannar Valion: nmessier.

and he gave it into the hands of the Lords. They are in the West.

3. Toi aina, mna, meldielto - enga morion:

They are holy, blessed, and beloved: save the dark one.

4. talantie. Melko Mardello lende: mrie.

He is fallen. Melko [Melkor] has gone from Earth: it is good.

5. En krielto eldain Isil, hildin r-anar.

For Elves they made the Moon, but for Men the red Sun;

6. Toi rimar. Ilyain antalto annar lestanen

which are beautiful. To all they gave in measure the gifts

7. Ilvatren. Ilu vanya, fanya, eari,

of Ilvatar. The World is fair, the sky, the seas,

8. i-mar, ar ilqa men. rima ye Nmenor.

the earth, and all that is in them. Lovely is Nmenor.

9. Nan ye sre indo-ninya smen, ullume;

But my hearth resteth not here for ever,

10. ten s ye tyelma, yva tyel ar i narqelion,

for here is ending, and there will be an end and the Fading,

11. re ilqa yva ntina, hostainiva, yallume:

when all is counted, and all numbered at last,

12. ananta va tre frea, ufrea!

but yet it will not be enough, not enough.

13. Man tre antva nin Ilvatar, Ilvatar

What will the Father, O Father, give me

14. enyre tar i tyel, re Anarinya qeluva?

in that day beyond the end when my Sun faileth?
Since this is not LotR-style Quenya anyway, I have not regularized the
spelling to the system Tolkien later used in
LotR. Hence we have k
rather than c, q rather than qu, and no diaereses over
final e's etc. (tre, not tr).
The text above incorporates some changes Tolkien made (mentioned, but not
directly incorporated in LR:72). The
variant readings are discussed in the
analysis below. Only one of the changes Tolkien made is here ignored: for
Melko
(Melkor) in line 4, he decided to substitute Alkar. But this name for
the diabolus of his mythos was
eventually rejected, while Melko is still
a valid alternative to Melkor in Tolkiens later Quenya (see below).
One graphic feature cannot be reproduced here: In LR:72 (but not in LR:63),
there is a dot under the final vowel of
the word kre in line 1
and of the word re in lines 11 and 14. We don't know precisely what
this is supposed to
mean. The best theory is perhaps that the dot indicates
that these final vowels are to be elided and not pronounced
(the next word
begins in a vowel in all three cases, and in such an environment, elision could
easily occur).

Word-by-word analysis
1. Ilu Ilvatar en kre eldain a frimoin "The Father
made the World for Elves and Mortals": Ilu "the World"
(the
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Quenya word seems to count as a proper name, so the article i

"the" is not required). Ilu, ilu is defined both as
"the
world" (LR:47, 56, 72), "universe" (LR:361 s.v. IL),
and as "everything, all, the whole" (of the universe also
including
God and all souls and spirits, which are not properly included in the term E;
see VT39:20). Otherwise,
the normal Quenya translation of "world"
seems to be ambar (in LotR we find the word Ambar-metta, the End
of
the World). Ilvatar is here translated "the Father", but
this is of course the normal Quenya term for "God" (the
name Eru,
The One, being reserved for the most solemn occasions). Ilvatar means
"All-father", a compound of
ilv "allness, the all"
(related to ilu) and atar "father". en is a word
that defies certain interpretation. It occurs twice
in Friel's Song, and
nowhere else. It does not seem to correspond to anything in Tolkien's English
translation. One
opinion is that en means "it", so that Ilu
Ilvatar en kre is literally "the world (-) Ilvatar it
made". But this seems
very doubtful. Naturally, there have been attempts
to connect this word en with the base EN in the Etymologies

(LR:356), defined as "over there, yonder". Etym also states (LR:399

s.v. YA) that "en yonder (...) of time points to
the
future". Anthony Appleyard takes en to mean "then", and
the suggestion has been put forward that its use in the
phrase "the Father
made the World for Elves and Mortals" indicates that the world was not to
be "used" by the Elves
and the Mortals immediately, but that some
time (actually much time) passed between creation and the appearance
of these
groups. Thus, the element en would "point to the future". kre
"made", past tense of kar- "make". This kind
of past
tense (formed by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding the ending -e) is
often found in the earliest "Qenya
Lexicon" (1915), where the form kre
is actually listed (p. 45). However, it would seem that Tolkien decided to

limit the use of this past tense formation. Lve as the past tense of lav-
"lick" made it into Namri in LotR, but the
past tense of kar-
"do, make" should rather be karne (carn) in Tolkiens
later Quenya, and this past tense is
actually mentioned in the Etymologies
(LR:362 s.v. KAR). eldain "for Elves", dative plural of
elda "elf". It seems
that elda is here used in the
general sense "Elf", though this term properly excludes the Avari. a
"and"; the text
otherwise uses ar (lines 2, 8, 10), and ar
is attested in LotR-style Quenya. It has been suggested that a is
preferred
when the next word begins in f (though it is far from certain
that this idea is valid in later Quenya). The first a in
ananta
"and yet, but yet" in line 12 may also be a prefixed conjunction
"and"; see below. frimoin "for Mortals",
dative pl.
of frimo "mortal" (noun), in turn a nominalized form of the
adjective frima "mortal" (LR:381 s.v. PHIR).
Tolkien
eventually replaced the explicitly nominalized form frimo with Frima
(nominal pl. Frimar, "those apt to
die", WJ.387); in other
words, he simply used and inflected the adjective as a noun.
2. ar antarta mannar Valion: nmessier. "and he gave it into
the hands of the Lords. They are in the West": ar
"and". antarta
"he gave it". The elements are clearly anta, the stem of the
verb "give" (mentioned in LR:341 s.v.
ANA1), -ro
pronominal suffix "he" (accented -r-), plus an ending -ta
"it" (cf. LR:389 s.v. TA). This ending may
have been replaced
by -s in LotR-style Quenya; cf. a word like utvienyes "I
have found it" (utvi-nye-s "have
found-I-it") in LotR,
not *utvienyta. Strangely, there does not seem to be any past tense
marker in antarta,
though it is translated "he gave
it". Perhaps this is actually an example of a "historic
present", antarta really
meaning "he gives it" (the
present tense marker -a would be invisible when suffixed to a stem
already ending in -a,
such as anta). mannar "into
(the) hands". This is m "hand" with the plural allative
ending -nnar (sg. -nna) "to,
into" (plural to denote
several hands). Notice that the long in m becomes short a
before the consonant cluster nn;
it seems that Quenya phonology normally
does not permit a long vowel before a cluster (it may be that ry in the

word mryat "her hands" in Namri somehow counts as a

single consonant, palatalized r, allowing to remain
long before
it). Valion "of the Lords" (Vali, Valar). In Tolkien's vision
of Quenya, the form Vali always was an
alternative to Valar as
the plural form of Vala "angelic power, god" (LR:350 s.v. BAL,
QL:99). Here, the plural
genitive ending -on has been added to express
"of the Lords" (surely Valaron would also be possible).
The Quenya
text has no article i "the" before Valion,
though an article is supplied in Tolkien's English translation of this word

("of the Lords"). It seems that Quenya does not use the
article before plural words referring to entire peoples or
"species";
cf. a much later example, the sentence Valar valuvar "the will of the
Valar will be done" (WJ:404). It will
be noted that there is not
really an article before the word "Valar" in the Quenya sentence,
though there is one in
Tolkien's translation. nmessier "they are
in the West". This word provides the first example of a remarkable

grammatical devise that is employed five times in Friel's Song: the stative
verb ending. It is indeed the most
characteristic feature of this text;
there is no trace of this ending in any other available document, except only
the
question Man-ie? "What is it?" from the narrative Friel's
Song was originally a part of (LR:59). As for nmessier,
the underlying
word is clearly nmesse, "in the West", the locative of Nmen
"West" (the final -n of Nmen being
displaced by the
locative ending -sse "in"). But to this word, an ending -ie
"is" (pl. -ier "(they) are") is added,
producing the
form nmessier "(they) are in the West" This ending -ie
clearly corresponds to the independent word
ye "is", also
found later in Friel's song (rima ye Nmenor = "lovely is
Nmenor", s ye tyelma "here is ending"; see
below). A
good example of a stative verb is provided by the word mrie "it is
good" in line 4, derived from mra
"good" (LR:371 s.v. MA3,
MAG; notice that the stative verb ending -ie seems to displace
the final vowel of a word
it is added to). Is the stative verb ending valid in LotR-style
Quenya? It has been used by at least one writer, Ivan

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Friel's Song

Derzhanski, in his poem L

ilqua i maltie kalta ("Not all that is gold shines" - notice maltie
"is gold" from malta
"gold"), published in Vinyar
Tengwar #38. However, I would not use this ending myself. As Anthony Appleyard

points out, Tolkien "likely rejected `-ie' as 'is' because `-ie' has too
many other uses, risking ambiguities". Notice
that in Namri in
LotR, the phrase "lost is" is expressed as vanwa n, not **vanwie.
Instead of Valion: nmessier "of the Lords. They are in the
West", Tolkien originally wrote Valion nmenyaron,
translated
"of the Lords of the West". The literal meaning of the word nmenyaron
would seem to be, not "of the
West", but "of (the) western
ones" - referring to people or lands. The Etymologies lists an
adjective nmenya
"western" (LR:376 s.v. ND). Here it
is inflected as a noun, with the plural ending -r and the plural
genitive ending
-on. A late source confirms that the genitive case can
be used to describe the relationship between rulers and the
ruled (people or
land): Elw, Aran Sindaron/Lestanro, "Elwe, King of the
Sindar/of Doriath)" (WJ:369).
3. Toi aina, mna, meldielto - enga morion: "They are holy,
blessed, and beloved: save the dark one": Toi "they", a

pronoun found in this song only (also in line 6). In Tolkiens later Quenya,
the word for they, them (of persons) is
t or te; in LotR we
also find te for object "them", and it may also cover subject
"they". aina "holy". mna

"blessed". meldielto *"they are beloved". This is

yet another stative verb, derived from melda "beloved, dear"

(LR:372 s.v. MEL). The ending -ie for "is, are" has been
added, regularly displacing the final vowel of melda. The
whole phrase toi
aina, mna, meldielto is perhaps a sort of abbreviation for *toi
ainielto, mnielto, meldielto, with
all the adjectives turned
into stative verbs with full pronominal inflection: The adjectives aina
and mna get a free
ride with meldielto, so to speak; it is
understood that the stative verb ending -ie and the pronominal element -lto

apply to the whole series of adjectives. This is probably also the explanation
why the adjectives aina and mna are
not inflected: Here they
ought to be plural, and in this "Qenya" variant, plural adjectives
take the ending -r:
Compare toi rimar, *"they [are]
beautiful", in line 6 (rima = "beautiful, lovely", see
line 8). When we don't have
*toi ainar, mnar here, it is certainly
because the stative verb meldielto is anticipated. The whole series may
be
taken as a kind of loose compound (*toi aina-mna-meldielto,
"they holy-blessed-beloved-are"). The ending -lto
used here,
as a (semantically superfluous) extra "they" at the end of the
sentence, is also found in LT1:114: Tulielto,
"they have
come". This word dates from the very early period (before 1920), and it is
interesting to see that the
ending -lto "they" was still valid
about twenty years later, when Friel's Song was written. However, it does not

seem that this ending made it into Tolkiens later Quenya: A post-LotR text,
Crion's Oath, points to -nte as the
pronominal ending "they"
in the later incarnations of the language (UT:305, 317), though the ending -lte
(closer to
-lto) also occurs in Tolkiens late material. enga
"save" (= except). This word is attested here only. One late essay

mentions hequa as a Quenya word for "leaving aside, not counting,

excluding, except" (WJ:365), but of course,
enga may still be
valid. morion "the dark one" (Melko, Melkor). This word is
also found in the earliest "Qenya
Lexicon" (1915), where it was
defined as "son of the dark" (p. 62), but it is not there clear what
it refers to. The
ending -ion could mean "son" also in
Friel's Song (as well as in later Quenya), but since the word is translated
"the
dark one", it is possible that Tolkien had another etymology in
mind here: *mori-on(d)-, sc. mor (mori-) "dark"
(cf.
LR:373 s.v. MOR) combined with the masculine ending -on(d)-.
4. talantie. Melko Mardello lende: mrie. "He is fallen. Melko
[Melkor] has gone from Earth: it is good". (In the
first version of the
song, the word order was Mardello Melko instead of Melko Mardello,
but this does not affect the
sense.) talantie "he is fallen".
The translation suggests that this is yet another stative verb, derived with
the nowfamiliar ending -ie "is" from an adjective *talanta
"fallen". No pronominal element actually meaning "he" seems
to
be present. However, since -ie is also the perfect tense ending, we
should consider the possibility that talantie is no
stative verb at all,
but rather the perfect tense of the stem talat- used for "slipping,
sliding, falling down"
(Letters:347). The past tense of such
a stem may be *talante with nasal infixion, and the perfect possibly talantie.

Nasal infixion does not seem to occur regularly in the perfect tense (cf. for
instance irci, not **irinci, as the
perfect tense of ric-
"twist", VT39:9). However, we do have a few examples of nasal
infixion in the perfect tense,
such as oantie as the perfect tense of auta-
"go away, leave" (WJ:365). It is possible, then, that talantie
is intended
as a perfect tense, literally meaning *"he has
fallen" rather than "he is fallen". Melko is the name of
the diabolus in
Tolkien's mythos, normally called Melkor in later texts,
but MR:350 confirms that Melko is still a valid form in
Tolkiens late
Quenya. However, Tolkien's interpretation of the name differed over the years.
In the earliest source,
the Qenya Lexicon of 1915, Melko was simply
defined as "God of Evil" (p. 60), with no etymological

considerations. In the Etymologies of the mid-thirties, the name is

derived from a stem MIL-IK having to do with
lust and greed (LR:373).
But in his later years, Tolkien stated that Melko simply means
"Mighty One" (MR:350).
The longer name Melkor means
"Mighty-rising", "He that Arises in Power". Mardello
*"from earth", the ablative
ending -llo "from" being
added to a noun mar (stem mard-) "earth", a connecting
vowel e appearing between the
stem and the ending to avoid an impossible
consonant cluster (cf. the e before -nna "to" i Elendilenna
"to Elendil",
PM:401). The noun mar "earth" also
occurs in line 8. lende "went". This irregular past tense of a
word for "go" is
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Friel's Song

attested in various places, though there are some

discrepancies concerning the present tense of this verb. In the
Etymologies,
the form lende is first given as the past tense of both lesta-
(LR:356 s.v. ELED), then as the past tense
of linna- (LR:368 s.v.
LED), both of these verbs meaning "go". The late essay Quendi
and Eldar introduces yet
another verb "go", lelya-, though
the past tense is still lende (WJ:363). - The whole phrase Melko
Mardello lende is
literally "Melko from earth went", though
Tolkien's translation reads "Melko has gone from earth"; the Qenya
text
uses the past, not the present tense. mrie "it is good",
actually simply "is good", a stative verb derived from mra

"good" (LR:371 s.v. MA3, MAG) with the ending -ie

"is".
5. En krielto eldain Isil, hildin r-anar. "For Elves they made
the Moon, but for Men the red Sun": The mysterious
word en reappears
from line 1, and in a similar context. krielto "they made".
The pronominal ending -lto "they"
reappears; cf. meldielto
in line 3 (and tulielto in LT1:114). Removing the pronominal ending, we
are left with krie
as the verb "made". In line 1, the past
tense of the verb "made" is kre instead. The stem is of
course KAR (LR:362),
so krie is formed by lengthening the
stem-vowel and adding -ie, but this looks rather like a perfect
formation (in
Tolkiens later Quenya the stem-vowel would normally be prefixed as
an augment: akrie, acri "has made").
Does krielto
really mean "they have made" rather than simply "they
made"? In a late source, Tolkien states that
"the forms of past and
perfect became progressively more closely associated in Quenya" (WJ:366),
so perhaps it is
sometimes permissible or even preferable to use an English
past tense form to render a Quenya perfect? eldain "for

Elves", dative plural of elda, as in line 1. Isil "the

Moon" (the Quenya word is a proper name and does not require
the article).
At this point, Tolkien's translation has a "but", but there is
nothing that corresponds to this word in the
Elvish text. (Cf. the
"missing" conjunction and in line 10.) hildin "for
Men", a dative plural. Hildi, "Followers", was
an Elvish
name of Mortal Men as the Second-born of Ilvatar, the Elves being the
Firstborn. Later, Tolkien used the
form Hildor instead (sg. *Hildo;
see LR:248 and WJ:387), and Hildor is used in the published Silmarillion.
The
dative plural corresponding to nominative Hildor would have been *Hildoin,
and if Tolkien had ever translated
Friel's Song into LotR-style Quenya, he
would probably have replaced hildin with this form. r-anar
"the red
Sun" (a kind of proper name, hence no article in Quenya). Anar
is the Quenya word for "sun" (cf. Anarinya "my
sun"
in the last line); the prefixed element r means "fire" (see
LR:396 s.v. UR, in the original version of this entry),
so r-anar
is literally "[the] Fire-sun". (Cf. another Quenya name of the sun, rin.)
6. Toi rimar. Ilyain antar annar lestanen "which are beautiful.
To all they gave in measure the gifts": The relative
sentence "which
are beautiful" clearly isn't a literal translation of the Elvish text; toi
rimar simply means *"they
[are] beautiful": Toi
"they", as in line 3. rimar "beautiful", plural to
agree with "they"; the sg. form rima is found
both in line 8
(there translated "lovely") and in the Etymologies (LR:361
s.v. ID, where the gloss is "lovely,
desirable"; the latter would
seem to be the etymological meaning). In this "Qenya" variant, the
plural form of
adjectives is formed with the ending -r (that is also
used to form the plural of nouns and verbs). Another example,
written about the
same time as Friel's Song, is the sentence ilya...maller raikar
"all...roads [are] bent" in LR:47 (sg.
raika "crooked,
bent, wrong" occurs in LR:383 s.v. RYAK). In many versions of
Quenya, adjectives in -a form
their plurals in - (*rim,
*raik/raic) instead of by the ending -r. Toi rimar
is a nominal sentence, *"they
beautiful"; there is not actually any
word for "is" connecting the adjective with the pronoun (and neither
is a stative
verb used here; *toi rimier or even *rimielto
would presumably have been possible constructions). An actual word
for
"is", ye, occurs in line 8. ilyain "to all".
This was an emendation; Tolkien first wrote ilqainen, a form that in

some respects makes little sense. Ilqa would seem to be the word for
"all", and line 8 of Friel's Song confirms this,
since ilqa
there appears with no ending. In later Quenya, we find ilya rather than ilqa
as the word for "all" (and
Tolkien even replaced a form of ilqa
with a form of ilya here); the Etymologies lists both ilya
and ilqa, there glossed
"all, the whole" and "everything",
respectively (LR:361 s.v. IL). The ending -inen is very surprising.
Since Tolkien's
translation reads "to all", we must interpret -inen
as a kind of dative (or conceivably allative) ending, but in LotRstyle Quenya,
-inen is the plural instrumental ending. The corresponding singular
ending -nen actually occurs in
Friel's Song, in the noun lestanen
"in (by) measure" later in this line. Other words occurring in this
song (eldain,
hildin, frimoin) demonstrate that the
dative plural in -in had already come into place in Tolkien's vision of
Quenya,
so it is not surprising that he changed ilqainen to ilyain.
One has to wonder whether he originally confused the
dative and the
instrumental, writing ilqainen where he meant ilqain. antalto
"they gave". Cf. antarta "he gave it"
in line 2.
Originally Tolkien wrote simply antar here; this would be anta-
(the stem of the verb "to give", LR:341
s.v. ANA1)
with the plural ending -r, here translated "they"; the
simplest plural ending was used instead of the
longer pronominal ending -lto,
as in krielto, meldielto in line 3 and 5. However, Tolkien
changed his mind and
brought in the longer ending for "they" after
all, emending antar to antalto. Just as in the case of antarta
"he gave
it" in line 2, it is puzzling that there seems to be no real
past tense marker in the word antar > antalto, though

Tolkien's translation once again employs a past tense form: "they gave".
In the context of Tolkiens later Quenya, I
would definitely take antar
to be a present-tense form (antalto would probably be antalt or antant
in later

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versions of Quenya, but this would still be a present tense). May

this be another example of "historic present", the
literal meaning
being "they give" rather than "they gave"? annar
"the gifts" (there isn't really any article in the
Quenya text, but
this noun is determined by the genitive Ilvatren in the next line:
"Ilvatar's gifts" = "the gifts of
Ilvatar"). Annar
is the pl. form of anna "gift" (LR:348 s.v. ANA2).
lestanen "in measure". Here we see the
instrumental ending -nen,
still valid in LotR-style Quenya. The form lestanen thus means
"in/by measure". The
noun *lesta "measure" is not
otherwise attested, unless it is to be equated with the first element of the
Quenya name
of Doriath, Lestanr (WJ:369). This means
"Girdle-land", Quenya lesta "girdle" corresponding
to Sindarin lest
(Lest Melian "the Girdle of Melian",
WJ:225). A semantic connection "girdle/border/border-line/clearly defined

boundary/measure" may be barely plausible.

7. Ilvatren. Ilu vanya, fanya, eari, "of Ilvatar. The World
is fair, the sky, the seas,": The "Qenya" genitive
Ilvatren
logically goes with the previous line, completing its meaning: annar...Ilvatren
"the gifts...of Ilvatar".
(Here the name "Ilvatar" is
also used in Tolkien's English translation of Friel's Song; in lines 1 and 13
it is
translated "the Father" or "o Father".) In this
"Qenya" variant, the genitive ending is still -n (here with a
connecting
vowel e since **Ilvatarn is impossible). In LotR-style
Quenya, -n came to be the dative ending, while the genitive
has the
ending -o instead (Tolkien did this change while he was writing LotR: in
one early variant of Namri,
"Varda's" was Vardan,
changed to Vardo). The later genitive of Ilvatar (in -o)
is actually attested; the Silmarillion
Index, entry "Children of
Ilvatar", mentions Hni Ilvataro as the Elvish equivalent of this
phrase. We might have
expected *Ilvatro with a long in the
last syllable of atar, since this noun seems to lengthen its final vowel
when
an ending is added (atr-). Cf. the old genitive (= later dative?)
form Ilvatren, and also the word Atanatri
"Fathers of
Men" (*"Manfathers") in the Silmarillion, chapter 20
(also in PM:324). However, the plural of atar is
given as atari
(not atri) in the Etymologies (LR:349 s.v. ATA), so perhaps
Tolkien was simply changing his mind
back and forth. Whatever the case, the
lengthening of the final vowel of atar does occur in the word Ilvatren
in
Friel's Song. Ilu "the World", as in line 1. vanya
"fair" (cf. the nominal pl. Vanyar as the name of the First
Clan of
the Elves). Ilu vanya is another nominal sentence, lacking any
actual word for "is": *"The world fair." fanya
"the
sky". The translation is somewhat unusual; otherwise, fanya
is glossed "cloud". In the Etymologies (LR:387 s.v.
SPAN),
the word fanya is defined as "cloud", derived from a stem
having to do with whiteness. The pl. form fanyar
in Namri is
also translated "clouds". eari "the seas", pl. of ear
"sea". Neither fanya nor eari is preceded by any

actual definite article, despite the translations: "the sky",

"the seas". Contrast i-mar in the next line.
8. i-mar, ar ilqa men. rima ye Nmenor. "the earth, and all
that is in them. Lovely is Nmenor": i-mar "the earth".

Here the definite article i "the" really appears.

Infrequently, Tolkien connects it to the following word by means of a
dot or,
as here, a hyphen. (However, Namri in LotR has i eleni, not i-eleni,
for "the stars".) Mar is the shortest
form of the noun
"earth"; the stem is mard-, seen in the ablative Mardello
in line 4. In later Quenya, the normal
word for "earth" seems to be cemen,
kemen; cf. Yavanna's title Kementri "Earth-queen". ar
"and". ilqa "all" (cf.
ilqainen "to
all"; see comment on line 6 above). men "that is in
them", literally perhaps simply "in them", or even
*"of
them". This is a most peculiar form; it cannot be related to any other 3.
person plural form in the published
corpus. Friel's Song otherwise uses the
endings -lto, -r or the independent pronoun toi for
"they"; later sources have
te and the ending -nte. My
best guess is that Tolkien intended men to be 1) a demonstrative stem -
"that" (related to
the article i "the") combined
with 2) the primitive plural element -m (turning "that" into
"those") and 3) the ending
-en, conceivably the same as the
genitive ending seen in Ilvatren "of Ilvatar" in line 7.
Hence ilqa men = *"all
of those (ones)" = "all that is
in them". But men certainly isn't a word I would recommend to
people writing in
LotR-style Quenya. rima "lovely" (pl. rimar;
see comment to line 6 above). ye "is". This is the sole
occurrence of
an independent word for "is" in Friel's Song, but it
is obviously related to the stative verb ending -ie. Furthermore,
the
word yva in lines 10 and 11 is obviously the future tense of ye.
However, it does not seem that the word ye
made it into Tolkiens later
Quenya. Instead, Tolkien reverted to his original choice for "is",
the word n. This word
occurs already in the Qenya Lexicon of 1915 (p.
64), reappeared in the Etymologies of the mid-thirties (LR:374
mentions N
as the "stem of verb 'to be' in Q") and was finally fixed as the
Quenya word for "is" by appearing in
Namri in LoTR (s
vanwa n...Valimar, "now lost is...Valimar"). Nmenor
"Nmenor" (Westernesse; nmen =
"west").
9. Nan ye sre indo-ninya smen, ullume; "But my heart resteth
not here for ever,": nan "but". In the Etymologies

(LR:375 s.v. NDAN), the Quenya word for "but" is nn

with a long vowel. In LotR-style Quenya, nn could be
interpreted
"I am" (n- + the pronominal ending -n "I"),
so when writing Quenya texts, I actually prefer the form
nan from
Friel's Song to avoid any possible confusion. ye *"is not".
This is the word ye "is" (as in rima ye
Numenor
"lovely is N." in the previous line) with the negation prefix -
"no, not" (LR:359 s.v. G). Evidently
because of this example,
many writers use this prefix to express negation in their Quenya texts (e.g. hnya
-hiruva

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Friel's Song

sre "my heart will not find rest" in a poem by Arandil

Erenion). This is also what Nancy Martsch teaches in her
Basic Quenya.
Personally I usually prefer to use the independent word l
"not" (LR:367 s.v. LA), since the prefix is
often somewhat
cumbersome. sre *"rest", noun. In LR:385 s.v. SED, a
word sre "rest, repose, peace" is listed.
The literal meaning
of the Elvish text seems to be, not really "my heart resteth not",
but rather *"there is not [any]
rest for my heart". indo-ninya
"my heart". Tolkien originally wrote hondo-ninya, with another
word for "heart".
According to LR:364 s.v. KHO-N, the Quenya
word hn (= hondo?) refers to the physical rather than the

metaphorical heart, so this may be why Tolkien decided to go for indo

instead. The word indo "heart, mood" is also
listed in the Etymologies
(LR:361 s.v. ID), but the suffixed element ninya is attested here
in Friel's Song only. It
would seem to mean "my", but in later
Quenya, the pronominal ending "my" is -nya (tatanya
"my father", UT:191,
so "my heart" would probably become indonya;
compare Anarinya "my sun" in the final line of Friel's Song
itself).
To make sense in this context, indo-ninya "my heart"
would have to be the indirect object, and in such a highly
inflected language
we would expect a dative marker to indicate the meaning "(there is no
rest) for my heart", but no
dative element seems to be present. smen
"here". This word is attested here only, but the elements are
transparently
s-, a form of the stem SI "this, here,
now" (LR:385), plus men "place, spot" (LR:372 s.v. MEN),
hence literally "this
place". (In LotR we find sinome for
"in this place", but smen may still me valid.) In line 10,
the shorter word s is
used for "here", but s is
translated "now" both in the Etymologies (LR:385 s.v. SI) and
in Namri in LotR. ullume
"not...for ever". Compare
another word having to do with time, yallume "at last" in line
11, literally *"in that time".
The Etymologies lists a word lme
"time" (LR:370 s.v. LU), and the element -lume
occurring here is surely related,
while the prefix u- is certainly more
or less identical to the negative prefix - (as in ye above).
Perhaps ullume
means something like "not [for all] time". The
double ll in ullume may suggest that the prefixed element u-
"not"
originally ended in some consonant that was later assimilated
to produce a double consonant. One negative element
UMU is mentioned in
LR:396; perhaps we are to assume that ullume represents something like *umlume?
10. ten s ye tyelma, yva tyel ar i narqelion, "for here is
ending, and there will be an end and the Fading,": ten
"for",
a word that is attested here only; Namri in LotR has an
instead (an s Tintalle...mryat ortan "for now the
Kindler...has
uplifted her hands"). s "here". As noted above, this
word is used for "now" in other sources, and line 9
has smen
for "here". Writers probably should not use s for
"here", since it would normally be understood as "now".
ye
"is", as in line 8 (rima ye Nmenor). tyelma
"ending", a word that is attested here only. However, it is obviously

derived from the stem KYEL "come to an end" (LR:366); original

KY became ty in Quenya. Tyelma could be
regularly derived
from *kyelm (*kjelm), but the ending -m is somewhat
surprising, for it is normally used to
derive nouns denoting concrete things,
often implements (WJ:416). By its etymology, tyelma would most likely

mean "thing used to end (something)", not "ending" as an

abstract. This is far from conclusive, but one has to
wonder whether tyelma
is a misreading for tyelme, since -me is a well attested abstract
ending. It would not be the
first case of e and a being confused
by editors trying to read Tolkien's handwriting. yva "there will
be", literally
simply *"will be". (Before "there will
be", Tolkien inserts a conjunction "and" in his translation, but
there is no
conjunction in the Elvish text - only a comma.) Yva is the
future tense of ye "is"; see the comment on antva in
line
13 for a possible reconstruction of the grammatical rules Tolkien held in
mind when writing Friel's Song, and for
my opinion on how they relate to the
system used in LotR-style Quenya. The verb yva can be suffixed as a
stative
verb ending, -iva, seen in hostainiva in line 11. tyel
"an end" - literally simply "end"; Quenya has no indefinite

article "a, an", and when translating Quenya to English you simply
have to supply an indefinite article where
English grammar demands one.
(Compare the beginning of the Elvish greeting "a star shines upon the hour
of our
meeting": elen sla... "[a] star shines...") The
noun tyel "end" is obviously related to tyelma
"ending"; unlike tyelma
it is listed in the Etymologies
(LR:366 s.v. KYEL), there with an alternative, longer form tyelde.
The word tyel also
occurs in the last line of Friel's Song. ar
"and", i "the", narqelion "Fading".
In the Etymologies (LR:366 s.v.
KWEL), the more literal gloss
"fire-fading" is provided, the prefixed element nar-
"fire" evidently referring to the
warmth of the Sun (Quenya Anar).
The Etymologies provides the additional gloss "autumn". In
Friel's Song, this
word normally used for "autumn" seems to be used
with a wider reference: the "autumn" or "fading" of the
world,
the End drawing near. In LotR Appendix D, we find Narqueli as
the name of the month October; this may be the
LotR-style Quenya equivalent of narqelion.
(An abstract word in -ion would be most unusual in LotR-style Quenya,

while abstracts in -i are common.)

11. re ilqa yva ntina, hostainiva, yallume: "when all is
counted, and all numbered at last,": re "when" (not as a

question word, but used to point to a specific time: "when all is

counted" here, and "when my Sun faileth" in the last
line). To
writers, this is perhaps the most valuable vocabulary item Friel's Song
provides; it is attested here only.
Anthony Appleyard has pointed out that re
seems to contain the element -re, -r "day" (final
element in many
similar compounds - cf. for instance mettar, in LotR
Appendix D said to be the name of the last day of the year,
transparently
meaning "end-day", since metta means "end"). It may
be that re ilqa yva ntina is literally *"the day
all will
be counted". However, writers have used re for "when" in
the most general sense, and until we have any
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Friel's Song

evidence either way, there is

little reason to criticize this. ilqa "all", or
"everything"; see comment on ilqainen
(changed to ilyain)
in line 6 above. yva "is", or literally "will be",
as in line 10: we are talking about future events.
ntina
"counted". This is the past participle of a verb not-
"count". This verb is listed in the Etymologies (LR:378
s.v. NOT),
there glossed "reckon", but the stem NOT itself if defined
"count, reckon". Cf. also the related word
ntim
"uncountable, numberless" in Namri in LotR. The past
participle is regularly formed with the ending -ina
and lengthening of
the stem-vowel: o becomes . (This lengthening does not occur
when there is a consonant cluster
following the stem-vowel, cf. *hostaina
in the following discussion - not **hstaina.) hostainiva "[will
be]
numbered". This is the sole example of a future-tense stative
verb. The underlying word is clearly a past participle
*hostaina, formed
(with the same ending -ina as in ntina) from a verb hosta-.
This verb is listed in the Etymologies
(LR 364 s.v. KHOTH), there
glossed "to collect". *Hostaina would then mean
"collected"; here the translation is
"numbered" instead,
but the semantic gap between these glosses isn't too wide. *Hostaina is
then turned into a
stative verb by suffixing -iva, the future-tense
variant of the stative verb ending, with the same relationship to the

independent word yva as the present-tense ending -ie has to the

independent word ye. Like the ending -ie, -iva
displaces
the final vowel of a word it is added to: hostainiva, not **hostainaiva.
yallume "at last". This word is
attested here only. As noted
above, the final element must be related to lme "time"
(LR:370 s.v. LU). Indeed a very
similar word, yalme, is listed
in the Etymologies - but this word means "former times" (LR:399
s.v. YA). Yallume
must be assumed to be lme
"time" with a prefixed element that would mean something like
"that", hence "at that
time" = "at last". The Etymologies
does provide a word yana "that" (LR:399 s.v. YA), but
it is there said that with
reference to time, this word refers to the past:
"the former". Yallume could be derived from yana-lme
> yan-lme,
but according to the information provided in the Etymologies,
this ought to mean "that time (in the past)". In Friel's
Song, yallume
clearly refers to the future. It would seem that Tolkien, at the time he wrote
this song, did not assume
that yana had past rather than future
reference. I would not recommend the word yallume "at last" to
writers,
especially since safer alternatives are easy to construct (e.g. *mettass,
"in (the) end", locative of metta "end").
12. ananta va tre frea, ufrea! "but yet it will not be
enough, not enough": ananta "but yet". The Etymologies

gives a-nanta with a hyphen, glossed "and yet, but yet" (LR375
s.v. NDAN). It would seem that the prefixed
element a means
"and" (compare a in line 1), while nanta means
"yet", though we don't know whether this word
can be used
independently. va "it will not be", literally simply
*"will not be". This seems to be the future tense of
the same
negative verb that in the Etymologies is listed in the first person
aorist: uin, "I do not, am not" (the ending
-i-
denoting aorist and the pronominal suffix -n meaning "I",
leaving u- as the stem; for the future formation va,
compare yva
from ye). tre *"(in) that day". There is nothing
corresponding to this word in Tolkien's translation,
but it seems to combine ta
"that" (LR:389 s.v. TA) and are "day" (LR:349
s.v. AR1). Another word for the same is
enyre in line
14. frea "enough". The word occurs in the Etymologies (LR:381
s.v. PHAR), but there the first
vowel is short: farea
"enough, sufficient". ufrea "not enough". This is
simply frea "enough" with the common
negation prefix, though
it usually appears with a long vowel: -. Perhaps Tolkien did not want
to have two long
vowels following one another, though this occurs in Namri
in LotR (ntima "uncountable, numberless" - hence I
think we
should read frea for "not enough").
13. Man tre antva nin Ilvatar, Ilvatar "What will the
Father, O Father, give me": man "what". This word is
used
for "what" here and in Elendil's question in LR:61 (immediately
following Friel's Song in the narrative): E
man antavro? "What
will he give indeed?" In later sources, the word man is used for
"who": cf. the question s
man i yulma nin enquantuva?
"who now shall refill the cup for me?" in Namri in LotR. The
word man = "who"
also occurs many times in the Markirya
poem. While we cannot be absolutely certain that man doesn't cover both

"who" and "what", the word is only attested with the

meaning "who" in LotR-style Quenya. PM:395, 402 seems to
indicate
that Tolkien later decided that the Quenya word for "what" is
actually mana. Thus, man may now be
unambiguous, meaning
"who" only. tre *"in that day". Here, as in the
previous line, this word is not actually
translated by Tolkien. Another word
for "in that day", enyre, occurs in the next line, and that
word is translated;
perhaps Tolkien wanted to avoid repetition. antva
"will...give", the future tense of the verb anta-
"give"; other
forms occur in lines 2 and 6. When Tolkien wrote
Friel's Song, he seems to have used the following grammatical
rules when
forming future tenses: If the stem of the verb ends in a vowel, lengthen it and
add the ending -va: hence
antva from anta here, and yva
(-iva) "will be" from ye (-ie) "is"
in lines 10 and 11. If the stem of the verb ends in
a consonant, add the ending
-uva, as in qeluva from qel- in line 14 (see below for
meaning). In his later forms of
Quenya, Tolkien seems to have expanded the use
of the longer ending -uva, and it is not certain that the shorter
ending
-va survived into later Quenya at all (perhaps because Tolkien didn't
want it to be confused with the ending
of the possessive case?) It LotR, we
find laituva as the future tense of a verb laita-, while the
rules apparently used
in Friel's Song would have produced *laitva
instead. The new rules, as far as we can figure them out, seem to be

simplified: 'The future tense is formed with the ending -uva. If the
stem of the verb ends in a vowel, this vowel is

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Friel's Song

dropped before -uva is

added.' So in LotR-style Quenya, we should perhaps read *antuva for antva,
following the
pattern of laituva. nin "me" (= dative,
*"to me"). This is ni "I" with the dative ending -n.
This pronoun also occurs
in the question s man i yulma nin enquantuva?
"now who shall refill the cup for me?" in Namri in LotR.
Ilvatar
"the Father", literally "All-father" - see the comments on
line 1. Ilvatar "o Father". The divine epithet is
repeated;
Tolkien's translation suggests that the second occurrence is to be understood
as a vocative: God is
addressed directly. (The vocative particle "o"
is in Quenya a, but it is not used here, though Tolkien's translation

reads "o Father".)

14. enyre tar i tyel, re Anarinya qeluva? "in that day beyond
the end when my Sun faileth?": enyre "in that day".
This
word is attested here only. It seems to be a compound of *enya and are.
The latter means "day" (see note on
tre in line 12), while *enya
is evidently an adjective formed from the base EN (not to be confused
with the attested
adjective enya < endya "middle"
from the distinct stem NED). As noted above, Etym states (LR:399 s.v. YA,
cf.
LR:356 s.v. EN) that "en yonder (...) of time points to
the future". So *enya-are > enyre is evidently
"(on) that
(future) day". tar "beyond". This word is
found here only; Namri in LotR has pella instead, placed after
the noun
as a postposition (Andn pella, "beyond the West";
cf. also elenillor pella "from beyond the stars" in the Markirya

poem). Whether tar is still a valid word for "beyond" in LotR-style

Quenya is therefore uncertain and perhaps
doubtful. i "the", tyel
"end", as in line 10. re "when", as in line 11. Anarinya
"my Sun". This is Anar "sun"
(LR:348 s.v. ANR)
with the ending -nya "my", that seems to prefer i as
its connecting vowel when it is added to a
noun-stem ending in a consonant
(other pronominal endings should perhaps have e as the connecting vowel,
though
we lack good examples). qeluva "faileth", actually
future tense *"will fail": This verb as such is not listed in the
Etymologies,
but it must surely be referred the stem KWEL- "fade, wither"
(LR:366). This stem could yield a
Quenya verb qel- (or quel-
according to Tolkien's later spelling). Here it appears with the future-tense
ending -uva.
Since Tolkien elsewhere in Friel's Song uses the shorter
ending -va, it may be that he thought of qeluva as the stem
qel-
with the ending -va + a connecting vowel u when he wrote this
song. The longer ending -uva seems to have
become universal in his later
conception of Quenya (see the comments on antva in line 13). In any
case, the form
qeluva (queluva) would certainly be valid in LotR-style
Quenya.

Updating the Song

Speaking of LotR-style Quenya, how would Friel's Song go in that language?
Well, here is my rather tentative
suggestion (I deliberately try to use words
known from later sources, and in some cases bring the Quenya wording
closer to
Tolkien's translation):
Ilu Ilvatar carn Eldain ar
Frimain
The Father made the World for Elves and Mortals
ar antanses mnnar Valaron: alt Nmess.
and he gave it into the hands of the Lords. They are in the West.
Nalt ain, mn ar meld - hequa morion:
They are holy, blessed, and beloved: save the dark one.
alanties. Melkor Mardello lend: ns mra.
He is [/has] fallen. Melkor has gone from Earth: it is good.
Carnelt Eldain Isil, Hildoin r-anar,
For Elves they made the Moon, but for Men the red Sun,
yar nar rim. Ilyain antanelt lestanen i annar
which are beautiful. To all they gave in measure the gifts
Ilvataro. Ilu n vanya, fanya, ari,
of Ilvatar. The World is fair, the sky, the seas,
i cemen, ar ilya ya a taiss. rima n Nmenor.
the earth, and all that is in them. Beautiful is Nmenor.
Nan l a sre indonyan sinom tennoio,
But my heart resteth not [lit. there is not rest for my heart] here for
ever,
an sinom a tyelma, ar euva metta ar i narqueli,
for here is ending, and there will be an end and the Fading,
r ilya nauva ntina, ar ilya hostaina, i mettass:
when all is counted, and all numbered at last,
ananta va tr fra, fra!
but yet it will not be enough, not enough.
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Friel's Song

Mana tr antuva nin Ilvatar, Ilvatar

What will the Father, O Father,
enyr i metta pella, r Anarinya queluva?
give me in that day beyond the end when my Sun faileth?
(The word tr *"in that day" is still left untranslated.)
Ardalambion Index

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