mark

noun. ripe juice, sap, ooze, moisture

A word in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s glossed “ripe juice, sap, ooze, moisture” and derived from the early root ᴱ√MṚKṚ (QL/63).

markirya

noun. ark

oilima markirya

The Last Ark

A Quenya poem that Tolkien presented in conjugation with his talk on “A Secret Vice” in 1931 (MC/213-5). The poem itself was written somewhat earlier, and there are ten extant drafts, as discussed in the Early Qenya Poetry article in PE16 (PE16/53-87).

The Qenya text and translation presented here are from the version of the poem on MC/213-5, with each phrase corresponding to a line of the poem. My analysis follows closely after the editors of the Early Qenya Poetry article: Gilson, Welden, and Hostetter (PE16/81-87). Detailed analysis appears in the discussion of individual phrases.

Conceptual Development: As discussed in the Early Qenya Poetry article, there were a number of drafts leading up to the Early Qenya poem presented here. The editors of the article divided the drafts up into two groups, which they label OM1a-g leading up to OM1, and OM2a preceding OM2, the last of these being the version presented here.

The first six drafts, OM1a-f, are clearly incremental developments of the same poem. For the most part, they are additions and refinements on the same text without major modifications. Accompanying the fourth draft (OM1d) is an English translation, which the editors labeled LA1a (PE16/68), which closely matches that iteration of the poem. At this point is seems that Tolkien began to work seperately on the Qenya and English versions of the poem. The next two Qenya drafts, OM1e and OM1f built on OM1d, but the following three English translations, labeled LA2a-c by the editors of the Early Qenya Poetry article (PE16/69-71) diverged into what was essentially an entirely new poem, albeit addressing the same subject matter.

At this point Tolkien produced one final draft based on the original Qenya development, labeled OM1 by the editors, along with a new English translation of that version. The final draft of this version of the poem was published by Christopher Tolkien as the “first version of Oilima Markirya” in an addendum to the “A Secret Vice” essay (MC/220-221).

Tolkien then cleaned up the divergent English poem and translated it back into Qenya, thereby producing a “second version” which he presented in his 1931 talk. There is also one draft of this second version, label OM2a by the editors of the Early Qenya Poetry article (PE16/81), but it is nearly identical to the version appearing with the essay.

I discuss the structure and development of the first version of the poem in a separate entry: Oilima Markirya (First Version), including a discussion of the first six drafts leading up to it: OM1a-f. Note that the seventh draft of the original Qenya poem, labeled OM1g by the editors of the Early Qenya Poetry article (PE16/77), does not match either the first or second versions of the poem, or any of the English translations, and seems to be an experimental bridge between the first and second versions. I labeled that draft as Oilima Markirya (Intermediate Version) and discuss it in its own, seperate entry.

Four decades later, Tolkien produced yet another version of this poem based on his conceptions of the Quenya language towards the end of his life, and this version is discussed in the entry for the Q. Markirya poem.

teke-

verb. to mark; to write on, write

tet

noun. spot, mark

met

noun. mark, aim, object

nyas

noun. scratch, score, line, mark

ripta-

verb. to cut in strips, tear up; to stripe, mark in parallel lines; to flay, flog

maksa-

verb. to cook

A verb appearing as ᴱQ. maksa- “cook” in the Qenya Lexicon under the early root ᴱ√M(B)ASA “cook, bake” (QL/59). A nearby alternate form mark- was added and then deleted.

Neo-Quenya: The root √MBAS continued to appear in Tolkien’s later writings, so I would retain ᴺQ. maxa- “cook” for purposes of Neo-Quenya from primitive ✱mbaskā-. The verbal suffix -kā is very unusual, and maxa- might instead be derived from an ancient noun or adjective.

sar-

verb. to write

A verb appearing as ᴱQ. sar- “write” in Early Qenya Word-lists from the 1920s. Hints at its later validity may be seen in Q. sarat, the names of the letters in the Sarati alphabet, and the root √SAR “score, incise; write”, both mentioned in the Quendi and Eldar essay of 1959-60.

Neo-Quenya: Most Neo-Quenya writers use [ᴹQ.] tec- as the ordinary word for write, given its obvious association to Q. tehta and Q. tengwa. One of the challenges with sar- for “write” is that in Tolkien’s later writings, √SAR is also associated with “stone”, as in S. sarn/Q. sar “(small) stone”. In a discussion on the Vinyë Lambengolmor Discord Server (VLDS) in April 2022, Röandil suggested restoring ᴺQ. sar- with the sense “to mark (i.e. by incision), notch, score; (by later extension) to write”. Based on this I invented the following (fan-based) etymology:

Given its derivatives, it seems likely that √SAR is associated with stone but also with marks, probably originally marks in stone but generalized from there to marks on other substances. From this sar- was used as the basis for the earliest system of writing, both as a verb and in the name sarati. However, with the introduction of Feanor’s tengwar alphabet, this word no longer seemed suitable for as a general writing word, and was displaced by tec-, originally also meaning “make a mark”, but not specifically associated with stone.

Since tec- now usually meant “write”, the archaic sense “mark, score” was restored to sar-. This was aided by the fact that sar- was primarily a transitive verb, and used some awkward constructions. In particular, with the verb sar-, the direct object was always the thing written on, rather than the thing written. Thus with sar-, the proper way to say “write a sentence on paper” was actually sare hyalin quettalénen “write [on] paper with a sentence [instrumental]”, a construction that still survives, though now somewhat archaic. Meanwhile, the direct object of tec- is the thing written, so one would say tece quettale hyalinesse “write a sentence on paper”.

Note that this last construction [sare hyalin quettalénen] is inspired by Tolkien’s usage of the ᴱQ. verb teke- from the 1910s (QL/90), and essentially reverses of the Early Qenya paradigm of the 1910s and 20s, switching the roles of tek- and sar-. There is no evidence that the above Neo-Quenya discussion matches Tolkien’s own thoughts on the subject, so it should be considered “etymological fan-fiction”.

tekta-

verb. to write

maksar

noun. cook

A word appearing as ᴱQ. maksar “cook” in the Qenya Lexicon based on maksa- “to cook” (QL/59).

Neo-Quenya: Since I retain ᴺQ. maxa- “to cook” for purposes of Neo-Quenya, I would also retain the noun ᴺQ. maxar “cook” as an agental formation.