Post b3JTS4Ujsga

Tamas Ferencz Jan 13, 2015 (14:41)

This is the second stanza of Yeats's The Two Trees in Sindarin:

Na cheledh haer avo diro,
ah i guru chall în in Ylynn
Eriar nef men reniol,
Egor tiro trî lû gidinn;
*An auth nagel tuia ’nnas
I gâd i dhaw nan alagos,
Gylf *rengin ar laiss vyrn,
Thynd berthyrin nuin loss.
An prestathar naid bain neithennin
Vi heledh dholl i hebir in Ylynn.
I cheledh e-*lôf *edui,
Echannen io, *ias *lorn Hêr,
Ennas reviar trî gylf rengin
I chrebain en-nauth benidh;
Reviol, nallol ennas a sí,
Gamp maug a lanc *haeg,
Egor derir hain, *thostar i ‘waew,
Rithar hain raifn nerchennin în,
Prestar úvel hent vilui lín,
Avo diro na cheledh haer.

[Edited per Gabor's and Bjorn's comments]

Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass

-----
*an: conj. "for, because", cf. Q an
*rengin: pt. ppl. pl. of http://middangeard.org.uk/vqp/doku.php/ns:rag *lôf: n. "weariness" LUB- cf. the adj. lom (VT45)
*edui: adj. "outer" from ed- (not happy with this but can't think of better)
*lorn: adj. "asleep" LOS- VT45; asterisked because the form was deleted by Tolkien

All comments welcome.

Lőrinczi Gábor Jan 14, 2015 (14:49)

Some remarks:

1. I think dhagel (5th verse) and vaug (16th verse) should be rather nagel and maug, respectively.
2. Is nostor (17th verse) a typo for nostar?
3. What is Hêr (12th verse)? An archaic form of Hîr?
4. Three words, *ias (12th verse), *saig (16th verse) and *nosta- (17th verse) are also NA.

Tamas Ferencz Jan 14, 2015 (15:20)

+Lőrinczi Gábor

1. true
2. yes, nostar (they smell)
3. Should be Hîr of course, although i-Cherdir could point to Hêr being an existing form?
4. indeed!

Thanks for the corrections!

Lőrinczi Gábor Jan 14, 2015 (17:21)

AFAIK her- only occurs as the first element in compounds. I guess this is because the original (unablauted) stem vowel e is retained in these cases.

Björn Fromén Jan 17, 2015 (17:36)

A few more comments and questions:

 line 2: is ah attested with the meaning '(provided) with'? Wouldn't nan be less ambiguous?
 lines 3,13,15: **revia- is a hypercorrection of N rhenio. Its proper Sindarization is renia-.
 line 5: why present participle dagel instead of dagol? I thought only verbs with root vowel i could take the ending_-el_ (as tiriel).
 line 6: nan alagos ?
 line 10: i hebir like i gâd (l. 6)? (No mutation is needed when the pronoun is the object of the verb.)
 line 16: I think the S counterpart of saik- (QL) would be *saeg.
 line 17: why nosta- for 'smell'? Don't you mean thosta-? (VT 46:19)?
 line 18: nerthennin looks like p.p. of nartha- 'kindle', but the sense doesn't seem to fit . Could you please explain?

Tamas Ferencz Jan 17, 2015 (18:21)

+Björn Fromén thanks for the comments & corrections!
line 2: I always felt na has an instrumental sense, not the comitative sense I was looking for here; ah, if coming from AR(A)-, fits my bill better
**revia: point taken
line 5: my rusty Sindarin grammar told me primitive verbs had their active participle formed with -el; I may be mistaken
line 10: OK
line 16: OK (word worth adding to VQP)
line 17: the initial n "bled" from my Quenya vocabulary, I guess
line 18: should be ner*c*hennin "rent"

Lőrinczi Gábor Jan 18, 2015 (01:32)

thosta- means "stink", not "smell"

Hjalmar Holm Jan 27, 2015 (13:02)

I also think saeg would be worth adding.
Apart from that I did not understand all words, I had problems understanding the poem since I tend to read  lines such as Vi heledh dholl i hebir in Ylynn "in the cloudy glasswhere [where] they keep the demons". I am perhaps not too well-versed in S syntax.