A Quenya poem that appears in The Monsters and the Critics (MC/221-2). It is a late revision of an earlier poem, Oilima Markirya “The Last Ark”, written prior to 1931. Over three decades later, Tolkien wrote the later version, after the linguistic concepts of his languages had developed considerably. There are two Late Quenya drafts of the poem, but both are very similar, as noted by Christopher Tolkien (MC/222).

The Late Quenya version of the poem had no title, but in the literature it is usually referred to as the Markirya poem, since the word ᴱQ. oilima “last” is unlikely to be valid in later Quenya, but Markirya could be (“home-ship?”). The Quenya words in the text presented here are from the second Late Quenya draft of the poem on MC/221-2, with the revisions noted by Christopher Tolkien (MC/222). In the first line, I editorially changed the words men >> man and fáne >> fána for consistency with the rest of the poem.

As noted by Christopher Tolkien (MC/223), while the Elvish text was almost completely revised from the Early Qenya poem, its meaning was nearly identical to the version from three decades earlier. The English glosses here are from the translation of the Early Qenya version of the poem on MC/214, with the modifications in lines 33-34 as indicated by Christopher Tolkien in note #8, MC/220 (“green rocks” >> “dark rocks”, “red skies” >> “ruined skies”).

The text is divided into phrases for each line of the poem, except for lines 29-30 (elenillor pella talta-taltala) which are combined to make a more complete phrase. Other modifications and textual history are discussed in the entries for individual phrases.

I consulted Helge Fauskanger’s article on the poem (AL/Markirya) when working on my own analysis, and agree with him on essentially all points.

Conceptual Development: See the discussion in the entry for ᴱQ. Oilima Markirya for the conceptual development of the earlier versions of the poem.

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.

The first version of the Oilima Markirya poem (MC/220-221). It was preceded by six drafts, discussed in PE16 (PE16/53-76), labeled OM1a to OM1f by the editors of the Early Qenya Poetry article (Gilson, Welden, and Hostetter). A seventh draft, labeled OM1g in the article (PE16/77-80), is sufficiently different that I treat it as a separate poem: Oilima Markirya (Intermediate Version).

The text and translation presented here is the one accompanying the publication of Tolkien’s “A Secret Vice” essay (MC/220-221), presumably the final draft before Tolkien rewrote the poem as discussed in the entry on Oilima Markirya.

The text is divided into phrases for each line of the poem, except for lines 15-16 (mandulómi anta móri Ambalar), 17-18 (telumen tollanta naiko lunganar), 19-20 (kaire laiqa’ondoisen kirya), and 20-22 (karnevaite úri kilde hísen níe nienaite) which are combined to make more complete phrases. The textual history is discussed in the entries for individual phrases.

My analysis of this poem is based almost entirely on the work of the editors of the Early Qenya Poetry article: Gilson, Welden, and Hostetter (PE16/53-76).

See ᴱQ. Oilima Markirya for further discussion.

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).