Also called: Galadriel's Lament
Wrongly (?) called: Song of the Elves beyond the Sea
Namárië is the longest Quenya text in LotR. Together with the Markirya poem in MC:220-221 it is our main example of a text in "mature" or LotR-style Quenya. Among students of Elvish the song is almost invariably referred to as Namárië, "Farewell", this being the title Tolkien used of it in The Road Goes Ever On. However, it is also known as Galadriel's Lament. Some have also referred to this lament as Song of the Elves beyond the Sea, a title they evidently found in the index to LotR. However, this must actually be the title of another song, the one sung by Galadriel earlier in this chapter ("I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and golden leaves there grew"...) In one edition of LotR, the Index does include an entry "Song of the Elves beyond the Sea" that refers to the page where Namárië is found - but in the published material, Tolkien nowhere refers to this song by any such title.
In The Road Goes Ever On (RGEO) the poem is given in three versions. The first is Namárië written in Tengwar, our only substantial example of a Quenya text in Elvish writing. The two other versions are given in RGEO:66-67. One is (nearly) identical to the text in LotR, but Tolkien has added accent marks, denoting all major and minor stresses. It is followed by a version with an interlinear translation. The latter version differs somewhat from the other texts, mainly in word order, because Tolkien re-arranged it to "a clearer and more normal style". He explained that the text in LotR has a "poetic" word-order and style, making concessions to metre.
One very early version of Namárië, only the first line of which survived into LotR, was published in TI:284-285: Ai! laurie lantar lassi súrinen / inyalemíne rámar aldaron / inyali ettulielle turme márien / anduniesse la míruvórion / Varda telúmen falmar kírien / laurealassion ómar mailinon. / Elentári Vardan Oiolossëan / Tintallen máli ortelúmenen / arkandavá-le qantamalle túlier / e falmalillon morne sindanórie / no mírinoite kallasilya Valimar. Most of the words can be identified, but a running translation is difficult to give, and this may not be 100 % mature Quenya anyway. This early version is not further discussed here. (For a near-exhaustive discussion of the various stages and variants of the Lament, see David Salo's article in Tyalië Tyelelliéva #12.)
NAMÁRIË, with Tolkien's translation interspersed (most lines translate the Quenya text above them, but in some cases the lines cannot be matched perfectly with the translation, since the word order is not the same):
Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
long years numberless as the wings of trees!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
The long years have passed like swift draughts
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva
of the sweet mead in lofty halls
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
beyond the West, beneath the blue vaults of Varda
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
wherein the stars tremble
in the voice of her song, holy and queenly.
Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?
Who now shall refill the cup for me?
An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo
For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the stars,
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë
from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds
ar ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë
and all paths are drowned deep in shadow;
ar sindanóriello caita mornië
and out of a grey country darkness lies
i falmalinnar imbë met,
on the foaming waves between us,
ar hísië untúpa Calaciryo míri oialë.
and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.
Sí vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar!
Now lost, lost to those of the East is Valimar!
Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar!
Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar!
Nai elyë hiruva! Namárië!
Maybe even thou shalt find it! Farewell!
In the Tengwar version of the song that is found in RGEO, it has the superscript Namárië. Altariello Nainië Lóriendessë ("Farewell. Galadriel's Lament in Lorien").
Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen "ah! like gold fall the leaves": Ai! interjection of grief, here translated "ah!"; the interlinear translation in RGEO:66 has "alas!" laurië "golden" (here translated "like gold"), the plural form of the adjective laurëa (pl. to agree with lassi "leaves", see below). In a number of passages, Tolkien stated that the corresponding noun laurë does not refer to the metal gold, but to golden colour or light. lantar: a form of the verb lanta- "to fall", here in the plural aorist tense, English "fall" (as opposed to the present tense *lantëar "are falling" - the Quenya aorist often corresponds to the English simple present tense, as opposed to the "is/are ...-ing" construction). In the case of an "A-stem" verb like this, the aorist as such is identical to the verbal stem with no additions. Here the verb also receives the plural ending -r: The verb is plural to agree with its subject, namely lassi: pl. of lassë "leaf", cf. the final element of the name Legolas "Greenleaf" (itself a sample of a dialectal variant of Sindarin). súrinen "in the wind", súrë "wind" (MC:222) + the instrumental ending -nen "by, with", here denoting what makes the verbal action happen (what makes the leaves fall). "By the wind" would be a more literal translation than Tolkien's "in the wind". It is not quite clear why the final ë of súrë becomes i when the ending -nen is added; perhaps i is preferred when there is a long vowel in the preceding syllable, like ú in this case. By another, perhaps more probable theory, súrë may earlier have been *súri, since the word-final short -i of Primitive Elvish became -ë in Quenya. However, primitive *i was unchanged when not final, as when grammatical endings are added after it.
SD:415 provides another example of a word in -ë that changes this vowel to -i- when an ending is added: the noun lómë "night" is said to have the stem lómi-, so its instrumental form would evidently be *lóminen.
In the prose version, Tolkien emended the word order to Ai! lassi lantar laurië súrinen, "ah! [the] leaves fall golden in [the] wind". Note that the subject lassi here stands before its verb lantar; this is apparently the normal, "non-poetic" order.
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron "long years numberless as the wings of trees": yéni: pl. of yén. By Tolkien, yéni was rather tentatively translated "long years". A yén is the Quenya word for a period of 144 solar years, an Elvish "century" - the Elves often used a duodecimal counting system, in which 144 is the first three-digit number, like our 100. In earlier works, though, it seems that Tolkien intended yén to mean a normal solar year: see the entry YEN in the Etymologies. (In this entry it is also stated that the noun yén has the stem-form yen-, so that its plural would be *yeni rather than yéni as in the text before us; Tolkien would seem to have revised this.) únótimë "uncountable": prefix ú- "un", not- "count" and the adjectival ending -ima, here in the plural form -imë, that often has the meaning "-able". When used in this sense and added to a basic verbal stem, this ending causes the stem-vowel to become long, hence not- > -nót-. In the interlinear translation given in The Road Goes Ever On, Tolkien did not explicitly say that únótimë is a plural adjective, though he did so in the case of other plural verbs and adjectives. Because of this, the authors of An Introduction to Elvish (1978) concluded that the ending -imë is both singular and plural (p. 32). This is wrong; the singular form -ima is now well attested (though the singular form *únótima will rarely be encountered except in a dictionary; for obvious semantic reasons, an adjective meaning "uncountable" will usually be plural in a textual context). ve "like". rámar pl. of ráma "wing". aldaron "of trees", genitive plural of alda "tree". This word has a double plural marking: the nominative plural is aldar, to which is appended the genitive ending -o, that requires yet another plural marker -n when it is suffixed to a plural noun. This is the same plural genitive ending -on as in Silmarillion, "(the Story) of the Silmarils".
In the prose version, Tolkien emended the word order to yéni únótime ve aldaron rámar, with the genitive aldaron preceding rámar "wings", the word it governs. Hence literally "trees' wings".
yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier "[the] long years have passed like swifts draughts": yéni "long years" again. ve "like" again. lintë "swift", pl. of the adjective *linta, not otherwise attested as a Quenya word. However, this word goes back to Tolkien's childhood; in the primitive Nevbosh language he and some other kids made, lint meant "quick, clever, nimble" (MC:205). Lintë is plural to agree with yuldar pl. of *yulda "draught". avánier "have passed away", the rather irregular perfect tense of the verb auta- "pass", that also occurs in the cry heard before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad: Auta i lómë! "The night is passing!" (Silmarillion ch. 20). Despite the irregularities, avánier has the ending -ië that is characteristic of perfects (here with the plural ending -r to agree with its plural subject yéni). It also has the prefixed augment: The stem-vowel (here a) is reduplicated at the beginning of the word (compare utúlië as the perfect of tul- "come"). The stem-vowel itself is lengthened if it is not followed by a consonant cluster; hence the long á of avánier.
I suspect that when Tolkien wrote Namárië, he thought of avánier - or rather the augment-less form vánier, that was the reading in the first edition of LotR - as the perfect tense of a verb found in the Etymologies: vanya- "go, depart, disappear" (LR:397, stem WAN). Only later did the verb auta- and its irregular conjugation appear; see WJ:366.
In a recorded version of Namárië, the poem being read by Tolkien himself, a variant reading occurs: Inyar únóti nar ve rámar aldaron! Inyar ve lintë yulmar vánier... *"Years uncountable are like wings of trees! Years like swift cups have passed..." (See An Introduction to Elvish p. 5.) Here another word for "years", inyar, occurs, and there is a verb nar "are", useful for writers.
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva Andúnë pella "[draughts...] in high halls of the sweet mead": mi "in the". In the Etymologies, stem MI, the preposition mi is simply glossed "in, within" (LR:373), not "in the". The Namárië text in RGEO:66 has mí with a long vowel (twice, so this is not a misprint). Since "the" is i, the form mí would seem to represent mi i, suggesting that the correct reading should be mi = "in" and mí = "in the". (But in UT:317, mi with a short vowel is again stated to mean "in the".) oromardi "high halls". The element oro- is evidently the part translated "high"; cf. the stem ORO "up; rise; high; etc." in the Etymologies (LR:379). Mardi could be the plural of an otherwise unattested word *mardë "hall"; it may also be a form of mar "home" (as in Eldamar "Elvenhome"), assuming that this has a stem mard- (cf. sar "stone", pl. sardi). lissë-miruvóreva "of the sweet mead". Lissë is clearly the element translated "sweet"; the Etymologies gives lis "honey", dative sg. lissen (LR:369, stem LIS). Miruvóreva is the possessive form of miruvórë, here translated "mead". According to RGEO:69, miruvórë was "a word derived from the language of the Valar; the name that they gave to the drink poured out at their festivals" (see mirub- in the wordlist appended to the article about Valarin for further information). The possessive case, or "possessive-adjectival" genitive as Tolkien calls it in WJ:369, is here used adjectivally - to denote what something is made or composed of. (This case was indeed called "compositive" while this was the only example we had.) Miruvóreva "of the sweet mead" refers back to the lintë yuldar or "swift draughts" in the previous line: "swift draughts of the sweet mead". Andúnë "West", derived from the same stem NDU as the more usual word Númen (cf. Númenor = Westernesse). In the Etymologies, Andúnë is glossed "sunset" (LR:376), while it is used to mean "evening" in the Markirya poem (MC:222 cf. 214-215). pella "beyond"; note that in Quenya, this seems to be a postposition rather than a preposition: Andúnë pella "(the) West beyond". Compare elenillor pella, "from stars beyond" = "from beyond (the) stars" in the Markirya poem.
Vardo tellumar nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni ómaryo airetári-lírinen "under Varda's blue vaults wherein the stars tremble in the voice of her song, holy and queenly": Vardo is the genitive of Varda; the genitive ending -o displaces final -a; another example from Namárië is Calaciryo "Calacirya's, of Calacirya" (for *Calaciryao - see below). tellumar "vaults", pl. of telluma. WJ:399 explains that this word is altered from an original Quenya form telumë "dome, especially of heaven" (cf. LR:391, stem TEL, TELU). It was changed to telluma under the influence of Valarin delgûmâ. The new word telluma was especially applied to the "Dome of Varda" over Valinor; it was also used of the domes of the mansion of Manwë and Varda upon Taniquetil. The former meaning seems to be relevant here. nu "under". luini "blue", plural to agree with tellumar; the sg. form is either *luin or *luinë. The word order makes great concessions to metre; indeed the text threatens to break down in nonsense ("Varda's domes under blue" for "under Varda's blue domes"). yassen "wherein" or *"in which": relative pronoun ya "which" + the ending -ssen for plural locative (plural to agree with the tellumar or "vaults"; the singular form would be *yassë, e.g. *Vardo telluma yassë... "Varda's vault wherein...") tintilar "tremble", more literally "twinkle" (so in the interlinear translation in RGEO:67). Apparently an A-stem *tintila- (here functioning as the aorist tense) + the plural ending -r to agree with the following plural subject, "the stars". May *tintila- actually be a passive or reflexive stem of tinta- "cause to sparkle; kindle" - the form tintilar implying that the stars *"are caused to sparkle" or *"are causing themselves to sparkle"? i "the". eleni "stars", pl. of elen "star"; the phrase i eleni is the subject of tintilar. ómaryo "of her voice", genitive of ómarya "her voice" (as in Vardo "Varda's", the genitive ending -o displaces final -a). ómarya is óma "voice" with an ending -rya "her, his". In Quenya, pronouns - even possessive pronouns like "my", "your" or "her" - are usually expressed as endings, not as separate words. It was long thought that the ending -rya only meant "her", but in WJ:369 there are two examples of this ending, meaning "his" in one case and "her" in the other. The context determines the gender. This ending occurs once more in Namárië, in the word máryat "her hands"; see below. airetári-lírinen, "by holyqueen-song", sc. by the holy queen's (= Varda's) song". This is the word governed by the preceding genitive, so that ómaryo airetári-lírinen literally means "by her voice's holyqueen-song", or as Tolkien translated it: "in the voice of her song, holy and queenly". Airetári is tári "queen" with a prefixed element airë, here translated "holy"; Tolkien further explained it in PM:364: "The adjective aira was the nearest equivalent to 'holy'; and the noun airë to 'sanctity'. Airë was used by the Eldar as a title of address to the Valar and the greater Máyar [Maiar]. Varda would be addressed as Airë Tári. (Cf. Galadriel's Lament, where it is said that the stars trembled at the sound of the holy queen's voice: the prose or normal form of which would have been tintilar lirinen ómaryo Airë-tário.)" -PM:364.
In the prose version in The Road Goes Ever On, Tolkien used the word order yéni avánier ve lintë yuldar lisse-miruvóreva mí oromardi Andúnë pella Vardo nu luini tellumar, yassen tintilar i eleni ómaryo lírinen aire-tário. *"Long years have passed like swift draughts of sweet-mead in the high halls beyond the West under Varda's blue vaults, in which the stars twinkle by the song of her voice (, the) holy-queen's." Note especially that the phrase lintë yuldar lisse-miruvóreva "swift draughts of sweet-mead" is no longer interrupted by mí oromardi "in high halls". The word order of the phrase "under the blue vaults of Varda" is very strange: Vardo nu luini tellumar, "Varda's under blue vaults". It has been suggested that in Quenya, a genitive is not allowed to come between a preposition and the noun-phrase it governs. However, the prose version of Namárië also has ve aldaron rámar "like trees' wings" with the word order we would expect, not *aldaron ve rámar, so this cannot be an absolute rule. One change amounts to more than altering the word order: The rather clumsy compound airetári-lírinen "by holyqueen-song" is now dissolved into a genitive aire-tário "holy-queen's" governing the instrumental noun lírinen "by song", hence "by (the) holy queen's song". We have already quoted yet another "prose or normal form", namely the one that is given in PM:364: lirinen [read lírinen] ómaryo Airë-tário, sc. *"by (the) song of her voice, (the) holy queen's".
The first half of the poem ends in the question sí man i yulma nin enquantuva? "who now shall refill the cup for me": sí "now", man "who", i "the", yulma "cup", nin "for me" (ni "I" + dative ending -n "for"), enquantuva "shall refill". The word enquantuva consists of en- "re", a stem quat- "fill" and the future ending -uva. The stem here appears in a nasal-infixed form: quant-. Indeed it has traditionally been thought that the stem of the verb "fill" is quant- or *quanta-, that would be inflected something like this: aorist tense *quanta "fills", present tense *quantëa "is filling", past tense *quantanë "filled" (cf. ortanë from orta-), perfect *aquantië "has filled", future tense quantuva. However, WJ:392 suggests that *quanta- may not be the stem of the verb at all: In the essay Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien may seem to be saying that the stem of the Quenya verb "fill" is quat-. Taken together with the future-tense form quantuva, this would seem to indicate that this class of verbs undergoes nasal infixion in the future tense. If so, we must assume that the conjugation is not the one sketched above, but rather that of a "strong" of basic verb: aorist *quatë (quati-) "fills", present tense *quáta "is filling", past tense *quantë "filled", perfect aquátië "has filled", future tense quantuva "will fill" (which, it would seem, is here attested with the prefix en-). If Tolkien's idea was that this class of verbs show nasal infixion in the future tense, then this idea may be late; indeed there is a Tengwar inscription of this line that seems to read enquatuva instead (see Vinyar Tengwar #21, p. 6). But it is also possible that the Quenya verb "to fill" can be both quat- and quanta-; if so, quatuva is the future tense of the former variant, while quantuva is the future tense of the latter.
An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo "For now [the] Kindler, Varda, from Mount Everwhite..." an "for". sí "now", as in the previous line. Tintallë "[the] Kindler", a title of Varda who kindled the stars: the verbal stem tinta- "kindle" with a suffix -llë, evidently a feminine agental ending. Varda "the Sublime, the Lofty", name of the Queen of the Valar, spouse of Manwë. Oiolossëo "from Mount Everwhite". Actually there is no element meaning "Mount", but all Elves knew that Oiolossë was a mountain. The morphemes are oio- "ever", lossë "snow" or "snow-white", and -o, that is usually the genitive ending but is here used in the ablativic sense "from". This appears to be an exceptional use of the genitive, though the ending -o is actually descended from a Primitive Quendian element HO "from". Likely, Oiolossëo is used instead of the normal ablative *Oiolossello because the latter would not fit the metre of the poem. As it stands, Varda Oiolossëo might just as well be understood as **"Varda of Oiolossë".
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë "...like clouds her hands [the] Starqueen uplifted": ve "like". fanyar: pl. of fanya "cloud". máryat "her hands", sc. má "hand" + -rya "his/her" + the dual ending -t, denoting a pair or hands. As noted above, pronouns - even possessive pronouns like "my", "your" or "her" - are usually expressed as endings, not as separate words. We have already met the ending -rya "his/her" in ómaryo, genitive of ómarya "her voice". Elentári "Star-queen, the Queen of the Stars" (elen "star" + tári "queen"). ortanë: the past tense of orta- "rise, raise" (LR:379, stem ORO). (Back in 1978, in An Introduction to Elvish p. 37, the stem of this word was though to be **ortan- with a past tense ending -ë; this misdivision was based on the theory that -ë was the more or less universal past tense ending. This theory was wrong, but seemed reasonable from the very small corpus then available.)
ar ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë: ar "and". ilyë the pl. of ilya "all" (LR:361 stem IL), here used adjectivally and must therefore agree with the plural word that follows: tier pl. of tië "path" (LR:391 stem TE3). undulávë literally "down-licked" (undu + lávë); lávë is an unusual kind of past tense, formed by lengthening the stem-vowel of the stem lav- "lick" and adding -ë. lumbulë "shadow". The line is translated "and all paths are drowned deep in shadow", literally *"and all paths shadow (has) licked down (on)".
ar sindanóriello caita mornië i falmalinnar imbë met "and out of a grey country darkness lies upon the foaming waves between us": ar "and". sindanóriello the ablative of sindanórië, a compound of sinda "grey" (cf. Sindar = *"Greys", Grey-elves; Sindarin "Grey-elven") and nórië "country", apparently a variant of nórë "land"; nórië is not otherwise attested. caita "lies", a verb attested here only, though it is plainly derived from the stem KAY "lie" occurring in the Etymologies. The ending -ta is often used to derive verbs; the verbal stem caita here functions as an aorist. mornië "darkness" (apparently an abstract formation based of the adjective morna "black, dark"). i "the", falmalinnar "upon the foaming waves". The elements are falma "foaming or crested wave" (primitive *phalmâ, my reconstruction, would mean something like "foam-thing"), -li for partitive plural, -nna for allative "to" or "upon", and an extra (actually optional) plural ending -r. Why the partitive plural is used, or indeed what the function of the partitive plural is, is not fully understood. I imagine that it is used where English would have some + a plural form. Combined with the article i "the" as it is here, it may denote many: that we are talking about a great number of waves. Interestingly, Tolkien analyzed falmalinnar as falma-li-nnar in the interlinear translation in RGEO:67 and glossed the middle element as "many". imbë "between". met: the pronoun me "us" with the dual ending -t that we have already met in máryat "her [two] hands". Met is exclusive "us", sc. "I and another one", not inclusive "I and thou": Galadriel is referring to herself and Varda, not to herself and Frodo, her audience for the song (he will be addressed as "thou" in the final lines of the song).
In the prose version, these lines read an sí Varda, Tintallë, Elentári ortanë máryat Oiolossëo ve fanyar, ar lumbulë undulávë ilyë tier; ar sindanóriello mornië caita i falmalinnar imbë met. The word order is here always subject-verb, while verbs often precede their subjects in the poetic version (cf. lantar lassi becoming lassi lantar "leaves fall" in the first line of the poem). Note especially that lumbulë "shadow" is here clearly the subject and ilyë tier "all paths" is clearly the object of the verb undulávë, rather than vice versa. In the poetic version, confusion is prevented only by the fact that the verb is singular while ilyë tier is plural and hence cannot be its subject.
ar hísië untúpa Calaciryo míri oialë "and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya forever": ar "and", hísië "mist", untúpa "down-roofs", sc. "covers". The prefix un- is apparently the part meaning "down" (cf. nu "under"); túpa may be the present (or "continuative") tense of a stem *tup- "cover", formed by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -a. The Etymologies lists the variant root TOP- "cover", whence tópa- "to roof". If this is to be an A-stem verb in its own right, and it was later altered to túpa-, the verb occurring in the poem may actually be an aorist (not present tense) form. Tolkien's interlinear translation "down-roofs" (RGEO:67), not "is down-roofing", may point in the same direction.
Calaciryo "Calacirya's, of Calacirya"; as in the case of Varda vs. the genitive form Vardo, the genitive ending -o displaces final -a. míri, "jewels", pl. of mírë "jewel". oialë is here translated "forever"; according to the Etymologies, entry OY, it is a noun meaning "everlasting age" (actually the word "age" was not certainly legible, but the form of the word itself seems to confirm Christopher Tolkien's reading). Here, oialë is used adverbially: "(into an) everlasting age".
Si vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar "now lost is, from [the] East lost, Valimar": sí "now", a word we have met twice before. vanwa "lost, gone", the irregular past participle of the verb auta- "go away, leave", the perfect form of which, avánier, also occurs in this poem (see WJ:366). ná "is", our sole attestation of this important verb in an actual text. LR:374 lists NÂ as the "stem of verb 'to be' in Q", though. Rómello "from (the) East", ablative of Rómen "(the) East", the final -n is elided when the ending -llo "from" is suffixed, since the cluster **nll is impossible. (Alternatively a vowel could have been inserted: *Rómenello.) vanwa "lost" again. Valimar properly name of the City of the Valar in the Blessed Realm; it means "Vali-home", Vali being a variant of Valar (also in Valinor). In the Silmarillion, the shorter form Valmar is used. In this song, Valimar is used in a wide sense and seems to include all of Valinor.
Namárie! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar: "Farewell! Maybe thou shall find Valimar!" Namárië! "Farewell!" (I guess this is incorporates *márië "goodness, well being", an otherwise unattested abstract formation based on the adjective mára "good"; compare mornië "darkness" from morna "dark". Cf. English Farewell = fare, or travel, well.) Nai: here translated "maybe", but nai followed by a future tense-verb as here constitutes an optative or "wishing" formula. In the interlinear rendering in RGEO:67, Tolkien translated nai as "be it that", and the whole phrase nai hiruvalyë means "be it that thou wilt find" (or *"mayest thou find"). hiruvalyë "thou wilt find": hir- stem "find" + the future-tense ending -uva + the pronominal ending -lyë "thou". Unlike English "thou" (but like modern English "you") -lyë may not show number; if so, it could also be plural "you". According to PM:42-43, Tolkien wrote: "All these languages, Mannish and Elvish, had, or originally had, no distinction between the singular and plural of the second person pronouns." But whether this idea is valid at all (and in particular later) stages of Tolkien's conception of Elvish, we cannot know. Valimar occurs again, here the object of hiruvalyë.
Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië! "Maybe even thou shalt find [it]." Nai "be it that". elyë "thou", the only independent pronoun in this text. It is of course related to the ending -lyë in the previous sentence. Here the independent form is used because the pronoun is emphatic: "Maybe thou wilt find" - or as Tolkien translates it, "maybe even thou wilt find". It is assumed that most independent pronouns are derived like elyë: by prefixing e- to the corresponding pronominal ending. (However, the independent form of -nyë "I" seems to be inyë rather than *enyë.) hiruva "wilt find", as in hiruvalyë, but here without the ending -lyë, since the pronoun has already been expressed as a separate word. The poem ends in a second namárië, "farewell!"