aire, adjective holy: na aire esselya *may thy name (be) holy, aire María holy Mary. One’s first assumption would be that this is the same element aire as in Namárië, in the compound airetári-lírinen in…her song, holy and queenly (literally rather *"by holy-queen-song"). In the prose version of Namárië, Tolkien rephrased this into lírinen aire-tário, rendered song-in holy-queen’s in his interlinear translation (RGEO:67). Here one cannot avoid getting the impression that aire is the word for holy (and as I shall demonstrate, this is probably what Tolkien originally intended). However, in a post-LotR source this adjective is given as aira instead: PM:363. The primitive form is not quoted there, but we can evidently find it in WJ:400: gairâ awful, fearful said to come from the stem gay- astound, make aghast, clearly the same as gaya awe, dread in PM:363. (The fact that this stem may be glossed both as a noun and a verb should not be allowed to trouble us, since the glosses of a primitive root-word often cannot be "exact": Rather than being a useable word itself, the root is raw-material for actual words, so the glosses only hint at the general meaning: The glosses "astound, make aghast" and "awe, dread" obviously revolve around the same theme.) The phonetic development gairâ > aira is simple enough, and the semantic development from awful, fearful to holy is not implausible either, if what is holy is that which is "awful" in the true sense of the word: awe-inspiring, object of reverent fear. (In trying to explain why primitive gairâ > Quenya aira came to acquire a more elevated sense, Tolkien also let the "loremasters" invoke the influence from Valarin ayanu- or ayanûz. See aia above.) In gairâ, we see the relatively well-attested adjectival ending -râ (cf. for instance such a primitive form as ubrâ abundant from ub- abound, LR:396, or indeed primitive gaisrâ dreadful from gáyas- fear in LR:358: very similar to gairâ in both form and meaning). Yet all of this may in a way be beside the point, for an ancestral form gairâ is only capable of yielding Q aira, and in the text before us the word appears as aire instead. Aire could of course be the plural form of aira (in such a case representing older *airai), but it cannot be plural here, since the nouns it modifies – "thy name" and "Mary" – are both singulars occurring separately. It could also be a nominal form of aira: "The adjective aira was the nearest equivalent to holy, and the noun airë to sanctity. Airë was used by the Eldar as a title of address to the Valar and the greater Máyar. Varda would be addressed as Airë Tári. (Cf. Galadriel’s Lament, where it is said that the stars trembled at the sound of the holy queen’s voice…)" (PM:363-364, reproducing a source no earlier than February 1968, cf. PM:331.) This, then, is how Tolkien now wanted to explain the element aire in airetári-lírinen in Namárië. Yet the text before us, certainly written long before 1968, gives away that this was not his original idea. True, aire María for holy Mary could be explained as a construction similar to Airë Tári Holy Queen, or literally *(your) sanctity/holiness, (the) Queen. If Varda (Elbereth) can be addressed as Airë or "Sanctity", we must assume that this title is equally applicable to Mary as she appears in Catholic thought: Indeed Tolkien stated that the good peoples of Middle-earth "may call on a Vala (as Elbereth), as a Catholic might on a Saint" (Letters:193, footnote). Yet we cannot explain na aire esselya in the same way; assuming that this is literally *"may thy name [be] a sanctity" seems rather far-fetched. The conclusion that Tolkien when writing the texts before us thought of aire as an adjective and not as a noun may not be literally inescapable, but it is overwhelmingly probable. Originally Tolkien seems to have imagined a different etymology. The past participle aistana blessed (see below) may very well be related to aire holy; if so it gives away that the r of the latter word was originally s: In Quenya, s in certain positions became voiced to z, in turn becoming r; however, in front of an unvoiced plosive like t (as in aistana, q.v.), it could not change. If aire was once *aize < *aise, we may assume an even earlier, primitive form *gaisi that would allow us to connect this adjective with gais-, cited in LR:358 as one primitive incarnation of the stem gáyas- fear. We have already pointed out that this could be merely a variant of the gay- astound, make aghast or gaya awe, dread that appears in later sources (PM:363, WJ:400) – exactly the stem(s) from which Tolkien would later derive the word for "holy". We need not doubt that the primitive adjective ended in -i; this is evident from the past tense verb airitáne hallowed, occurring in the Ms. Tolkien Drawing 91, 41v, dating to ca. 1966 and now at the Bodleian (see Vinyar Tengwar #32, November 1993, page 7, where Carl F. Hostetter volunteers this information from an unpublished manuscript). This probably represents primitive *gaisitâ-nê, the verb *gaisitâ- hallow being constructed from *gaisi- holy with the verbal ending -tâ, here causative: hence make holy = hallow. As for the adjectival ending -i in *gaisi (becoming Quenya -e when final), compare primitive karani red yielding Quenya karne (LR:362 s.v. karán-). If we dare to start speculating why Tolkien eventually decided to change the adjective holy from aire to aira, the very word karne (carne) may – perhaps – provide a hint. In the first edition of LotR, the Ent Bregalad in a song used the word carnemírië of his rowans (LotR Volume 2, Book Three, chapter IV). In Letters:224, Tolkien explained that this word means "with adornment of red jewels", literally rather *red-jeweled. The adjective carne-, descended from older karani, here appears as a prefix. Yet the change of primitive short -i to -e was only supposed to occur finally. Where not final, as in a compound, this vowel maintained its original quality. Compare Quenya varne brown, derived from a stem barán- (just like karani > Q carne red comes from karán-) and undoubtedly meant to represent a primitive word *barani: In the case of varne, Tolkien explicitly noted that this becomes varni- when followed by another element (LR:351). Obviously carne red likewise ought to appear as carni- in compounds, and hence Tolkien changed the word carnemírië to carnimírië when the revised version of LotR appeared in 1966. With this we finally catch up with our point: if carne red becomes carni- in compounds (the i of primitive karani retaining its original quality when not final), then an adjective aire holy derived from *gaisi likewise ought to manifest as airi- in compounds. Airetári in Namárië "should" have been *airitári instead! Yet Tolkien failed to correct this when he emended carnemírië to carnimírië. If our theory is correct, Tolkien may in the end have felt that he had no choice but to reinterpret the aire of airetári. A (singular) Quenya adjective in -e can only represent a primitive form in -i, and this -i- should be unchanged whenever not final; hence there is simply no way the first element of airetári can be an adjective. However, Tolkien readily came up with a new interpretation that would still leave the translation of Namárië in LotR more or less correct: While ómaryo airetári-lírinen may be rendered in the voice of her song, holy and queenly, it "turned out" that this aire is not the adjective holy after all. It is "actually" a noun sanctity, formed from the real adjective holy, which is aira. Thus Tolkien managed to plausibly explain (away) the linguistic inconsistencies, though they would have troubled very few readers! However, his translation of the Lord’s Prayer, probably about contemporaneous with the publishing of LotR, gives away that originally aire was precisely what it would seem to be in Namárië: the adjective holy. The alternative explanation must have emerged very late; airitáne rather than *airatáne for hallowed in a late (ca. 1966) manuscript seems to indicate that Tolkien at this point still thought of aire, airi- as the word for holy. Earlier, he perhaps planned to explain Airetári (rather than *Airitári) in Namárië as a form coined on analogy with the simplex aire. Another solution could be that this is better taken as a loose compound Aire Tári (a two-word spelling is actually used in PM:363), though it "happens" to be written in one word in the text in LotR.