Glǽmscrafu - King’s letter

  ⸱  	Elessar Telcontar: Aragorn Arathornion	Elessar Telcontar: Aragorn Arathorn’s son
 ⸱     	Edhelharn, aran Gondor ar Hîr i Mbair	Elfstone, King of Gondor and Lord of the
 ⸱   	Annui, anglennatha i Varanduiniant erin	Westlands, will approach the Bridge of Baranduin
  ⸱   	dolothen Ethuil, egor ben genediad	on the eighth day of Spring, or in the Shire-
    :   	Drannail erin Gwirith edwen. Ar e aníra	reckoning the second day of April. And he desires
     ⸱	ennas suilannad mhellyn în phain:	to greet there all his friends:
     	edregol e aníra tírad i Cherdir Perhael	in especial he desires to see Master Samwise
(    ) 	(i sennui Panthael estathar aen) Condir	(who ought to be called Fullwise), Mayor of the
 ⸱     ⸱   ⸱	i Drann, ar Meril bess dîn; ar Elanor,	Shire, and Rose his wife; and Elanor,
 ⸱  ⸱     ⸱	Meril, Glorfinniel, ar Eirien sellath dîn;	Rose, Goldilocks, and Daisy his daughters;
  ⸱  ⸱  ⸱   ⸱	ar Iorhael, Gelir, Cordof, ar Baravorn,	and Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Hamfast,
  ⸱:⸱	ionnath dîn.	his sons.

    	A Pherhael ar am Meril	To Samwise and Rose
     	suilad uin aran o Minas Tirith	the King’s greeting from Minas Tirith,
   ⸱:⸱	nelchaenen uin Echuir.	the thirty-first day of the Stirring.

Commentary

The King’s letter should be part of an Epilogue Tolkien had thought of for The Lord of the Rings but the idea was rejected before it was published. It is the longest Sindarin text we have. There are several version of it, some in tengwar, with a few small variants. We retain here the version transcribed into the Latin alphabet; the translation is adapted from J. R. R. Tolkien’s (Sauron Defeated pp. 128-129).

The parenthese may be well understood only if one remembers that Samwise, the full name of Sam, actually means “half-wise” (from the Old English sámwís). The same wordplay is found in Sindarin between Perhael et Panthael.

Elessar Telcontar is not Sindarin, but Aragorn’s royal name in Quenya; it means “Elfstone Strider”.

The text is transcribed in tengwar or “letters of Fëanor” according to the general use of the Third Age created by Tolkien. An instance of its application to Sindarin is found in the third manuscript of the King’s Letter, published in Sauron Defeated p. 131. We made use of Johan Winge’s typeface Tengwar Annatar. Open this mode in Glaemscribe