Quenya
ar mi cemen rainë i hínin
and on earth peace, good will toward men
Element in
Elements
Word Gloss ar “and, and; [ᴱQ., ᴹQ.] but” mi “in, in, [ᴹQ.] within” cemen “the earth; earth, the earth; earth, [ᴹQ.] soil” rainë “*peace, good will” i “the” hína “child” Variations
- ar mi cemen raine i hínin ✧ VT44/32 (ar mi cemen raine i hínin); VT44/33
- ar kemende {r... >>} síve fírimonnar ✧ VT44/32
- ar mi kemen {sére >>} raine {fírimonnar >> híniryannar >>} i hinin ✧ VT44/32
The second line of Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun, Tolkien’s translation of the Gloria in Excelsis Deo prayer. The first word is ar “and”, followed by mi cemen “on earth”, more literally “✱in earth”. The fourth word is rainë “peace, good will” followed by i hínin “toward men”, more literally “✱to the children”, with hínin being the dative plural of hína “child”.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> ar mi cemen rainë i hín(a)-i-n = “✱and in earth [be] peace the child-(plural)-to”
Conceptual Development: In version I, Tolkien used the assimilated locative of kemende “on earth” instead of mi cemen as in versions II-III. He also wrote an incomplete form r... for “peace” in version I before revising it to sívë. In version II, he first wrote sérë for “peace” before changing it to rainë, the form that was also used in version III.
For “towards men”, Tolkien wrote fírimonnar in version I, the allative plural of Fírimo “mortals”, literally “✱towards mortals”. This form also appeared in version II, but it was rejected, replaced first by híniryannar, the 3rd-sg-possessive (-rya “his”) allative (-nna “towards”) plural of hína = “✱towards his children”. This in turn was replaced by i hinin with a short i (probably a slip) in version II, which was corrected to the form i hínin in version III.
| I |II|III| |ar| |kemende|mi kemen|mi cemen| |{r... >>} síve|{sére >>} raine|raine| |fírimonnar|{fírimonnar >> híniryannar >>} i hinin|i hínin|
The development for the word for “peace” was the basis for Arden Smith’s suggestion that version I might follow version II-III (VT44/33). The form sérë was the earliest of these words for “peace”, appearing in The Etymologies from the 1930s as ᴹQ. sére “peace”. Taken together with the incomplete form r... in version I, a plausible development would be:
> {sére >>} raine (II-III) >> {r... >>} síve (I)
However, the development of the phrase “towards men” makes more sense if the order of development were the same as the order in the page:
> fírimonnar (I) >> {fírimonnar >> híniryannar >>} i hinin (II) >> i hínin (III)
For this reason, I assume (as did Arden Smith) that the order in the page matches the order of development.