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Sarati

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Ai! laurie lantar lassi súrinen.
Inyalemíne rámar aldaron
inyali ettulielle turme márien.
Anduniesse la míruvórion
Varda telúmen falmar kírien
laurealassion ómar mailinon.

Enlentári Vardan Oiolossëan
Tintallen máli ortelúmenen
arkandavá-le qantamalle túlier
e falmalillon morne sindanórie
no mírinoite kallasilya Valimar.
Alas! like gold fall the leaves in the wind.
Years numberless like the wings of trees
- you many years have run away in the lands.
In the West, without meads,
Varda from the vaults clove the waves,
the voices of the golden leaves are thirsting [?for Varda].

Enlentári Varda from Oiolossë,
Tintallë of the yellow wings
then uplifted and ?-? all paths truly ?became
many black waves from a grey country
under the jewels ?worn by Valimar.

Commentary
This early version of Galadriel’s lament has been published in The Treason of Isengard pp. 284-285. There are others; the development of the text has been studied by David Salo in Tyalië Tyelleliéva n° 12. Many words can be understood, but there remains enough obscurities to make a secure translation difficult. We here give the interpretation propounded by Édouard Kloczko in the first volume of his Dictionnaire des langues elfiques.

The text is transcribed in sarati or “letters of Rúmil”, written vertically from top to bottom and from left to right. The signs are used according to Tolkien’s valuation for Quenya. We made use of Måns Björkman Berg’s typeface Sarati Eldamar.  Open this mode in Glaemscribe

References
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. The Treason of Isengard: The History of The Lord of the Rings, part two. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2002. 504 p. (The History of Middle-earth; VII). ISBN 0-261-10220-6.
Kloczko, Édouard. Dictionnaire des langues elfiques, volume 1 : Dictionnaire Quenya-Français-Anglais. Toulon : Tamise productions, 1995. 214 p. (Encyclopédie de la Terre du Milieu; 1). ISBN 2-910681-03-3.

The works of John Ronald Reuel and Christopher Tolkien are under the copyright of their authors and/or rights holders, including their publishers and the Tolkien Estate.
Quotations from other authors, editors and translators mentioned in the bibliography are under the copyright of their publishers, except for those whose copyright term has ended.
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