Míriel (a Parody)

Carni-mírie effírie pella
Nért Míriello pempeu ilvanya(r).
Ma ece men save Serindeo fóle
I anes yando quile-maitar?

Red-jewelled beyond death
were Míriel's perfect lips.
May we believe in the Broideress' secret
that she also was a color-artist?

This is a parody of a poem by Christina Rossetti. Can you find out which one?

‹ Tirne Losille (a Fib) ›
Submitted by oreramar on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 19:03
Tags:
»

Comments

1

Aran:

Regarding grammar:
- *Effirie as a gerund should have a short vowel.
- I think that the dual should rather go with singular adjectives, cf. eleni atta, but elenion nelde. It also avoids the ambiguitiy of nér meaning 'man'.
- The genitive of Míriel is attested in Namna Finwe Míriello (MR:258).

06/16/2012 - 07:13
2

oreramar:

Thanks for the genitive of Míriel.

Regarding the dual inflection, as far as I know we do not have any example with an adjective. That "atta" goes with singular nouns, does not necessarily mean that an adjective would also be uninflected. But given "elen atta siluvat", it should probably be "nét" instead of "nér".

06/17/2012 - 18:16
3

Aran:

It's actually also like that in Goldogrin: Adjectives go unlenited and remain in the singular after dual nouns, e.g.:
talwi i'loss ar gwandra nan·Idril 'the beautiful white feet of Idril'
where talwi 'feet' is dual, but
talin i'lossi ar gwandron nan·Idril 'the beautiful white feet of Idril'
where talin is plural.

06/22/2012 - 16:46
4

Findegil:

I'm a bit puzzled by your dual *pempeu. It looks like a mix of peu 'the 2 lips' and pempi 'the lips = the edges of the mouth-opening'. The latter is apparently a plural in spite of referring to a natural pair; so using pempi could be a way to avoid the problem of dual agreement in adjectives.

(Another example of a plural form denoting a natural pair is probably ónoni 'twins'.)

06/18/2012 - 15:32
5

Aran:

Pempi still shows reduplication, however - I'm guessing it comes from *peŋpeŋ-. So it might appear like a grammatical plural, but could still be a dual semantically.
In ónoni, ó- seems to play the role of a dual prefix, similar to yúneke 'dual of 6 enek' (VT48:10). In Sindarin, gwanûn is glossed 'a pair of twins', but in PM:365 we also have the pluralized version gwenyn. If they are compatible, additional pluralization might be optional (or obligatory in Quenya with dual prefixes?).

06/21/2012 - 22:19
6

Findegil:

Aran wrote:
- *Effirie as a gerund should have a short vowel.

That would be expected, but actually effírie is the attested form (Aia María II).

06/16/2012 - 23:49