Quenya
atar meneldëa eru órava (o)messë
God the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us
Element in
Variations
- Atar meneldea Eru órava {ómen >>} (o)messe ✧ VT44/12
atar meneldëa eru órava (o)messë
God the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us
Element in
Variations
- Atar meneldea Eru órava {ómen >>} (o)messe ✧ VT44/12
The sixth line of Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Litany of Loreto prayer (VT44/12). The first word is the noun atar “father”. The second word meneldea is the assimilated locative form menelde of menel “heaven”, with an adjective suffix -a added to give the sense “of Heaven”; a similar construction was used in versions IIb-IV of the first line of the Átaremma prayer (VT43/10-11). The third word Eru is Tolkien’s usual Quenya name for God. The phrase órava (o)messe “have mercy on us” is essentially the same as in the first line of this prayer; see that entry for discussion.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> Atar menel-de-a Eru (o)me-sse = “✱Father heaven-in-of God have-mercy us-on”
Conceptual Development: As in the first line, Tolkien first used the dative ómen for “on us” before revising it to the locative (o)messe (VT44/12, notes on line 6).