In the narrative frame of The Notion Club Papers, these fragments with others in Adûnaic are heard in dream by Alwin Arundel Lowdham; they are evidently extracts of a lament about the fall of Númenor. The translation is composed after the interlinear glosses of the source.

The development of these texts is very complex; we give the final version from Sauron Defeated p. 247. The same book gives earlier versions at pp. 310-311. Besides, The Lost Road, Tolkien’s unfinished novel, of which The Notion Club Papers are an expanded rewriting, includes very similar bits of Qenya and in the same context.

We heartily recommend to those who wish to delve deeper in these matters Aleš Bičan’s excellent essay The Atalante Fragments, that can be downloaded from his website (Elm) and is available too in the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship's article selection.

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