Beware, older languages below! The languages below were invented during Tolkien's earlier period and should be used with caution. Remember to never, ever mix words from different languages!

Early Quenya

oilima markirya (intermediate version)

Oilima Markirya (Intermediate Version)

This is the seventh draft of the Oilima Markirya poem (OM1g). As noted in the entry for that poem, this draft seems to be a bridge between the first version of the poem and the version presented with Tolkien’s “A Secret Vice” essay. It is sufficiently different from the other versions that I am discussing it in its own entry.

The Qenya text presented here is from PE16/77, but most of the couplets have been combined to produce more complete phrases. The original poem used an unusual, Finnish-like orthography for the Qenya; I've normalized back to more ordinary Qenya spelling (the originals appear in the discussion of the individual phrases). The translations are my own, which I cherry-picked from the various English translations of the poem based on what seems to fit is best. My analysis largely follows that of the editors of the Early Qenya Poetry article: Gilson, Welden, and Hostetter (PE16/77-80).