Q. sí ar lúmessë ya firuvammë: násië “now and at the hour of our death: Amen”
The seventh line of Aia María, Tolkien’s translation of the Ave Maria prayer. The first few words are sí ar lúmessë “now and at [the] hour”, the last being a combination of the noun lúmë¹ “time” (“hour”) and the locative suffix -ssë¹ “at, in, on”. The next two words are a subordinate clause: ya firuvammë “*when we will die”, the latter being future 1st-person-plural-exclusive form of the verb fir- “to die”. The last word, násië “Amen”, is also used by Tolkien in the Quenya prayer Átaremma.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
sí ar lúme-ssë ya fir-uva-mmë: násië = “*now and time-at when die-(future)-we: amen”
Less literally: “*now and at the time when we will die”.
Conceptual Development: The first few words sí ar lúmesse are the nearly same in all versions of the prayer, except (a) the accents are omitted from si and lumesse in version I and (b) Tolkien considered and rejected a variant form are for ar “and” (as he did in line four).
In the first two versions of the prayer Tolkien used a Quenya word for “of our death”: fíriemmo (I) and effíriemmo (II). In both cases, the noun is (ef)fírie “death” with the first person plural exclusive possessive suffix -mma² “our” and the genitive suffix -o “of”. In the version I, these forms were preceded by some incomplete and difficult-to-decipher forms; for details see VT43/27, 34-35.
The word násië “Amen” appears only in the last two versions of the prayer (III-IV).
I | II | III | IV | |
---|---|---|---|---|
si | sí | |||
ar | {are >>} ar | ar | ||
lumesse | lúmesse | |||
{urtulm >> urt >> menya >>} | i fíriemmo | effíriemmo | yá firuvamme | ya firuvamme |
násie |
References ✧ VT43/26-28
Variations
Elements
sí | “now” | ✧ VT43/34 (si); VT43/34 | |
ar | “and” | ✧ VT43/34 (are); VT43/34 | |
lúmë¹ | “time, period of time, hour” | locative | ✧ VT43/34 (lúmesse) |
yá | “when” | ✧ VT43/34; VT43/34 (ya) | |
fir- | “to die, fade, †expire, breathe forth” | future 1st-pl-exclusive | ✧ VT43/34 (firuvamme) |
násië | “*amen, (lit.) may it be so” | ✧ VT43/35 | |
i¹ | “the” | ✧ VT43/35 | |
?urtu | “death” | ? | ✧ VT43/34 (urtulm) |
menya | “*our (emphatic possessive exclusive)” | ✧ VT43/35 (menya) | |
fírië | “death (of Men), *natural death” | 1st-pl-exclusive-poss genitive | ✧ VT43/34 (fíriemmo); VT43/34 (effíriemmo) |
Element In