J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord’s prayer and Hail Mary in Quenya: Syntactical and Etymological Analysis

úsahtienna, noun in allative: into temptation. The allative ending -nna may simply indicate "movement towards" (as stated by Christopher Tolkien in UT:432 s.v. Eldanna), but if Tolkien based his Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer on the normal wording of this prayer, this ending here implies not only to, towards but into. The allative has the same force in the phrase mannar Valion into the hands of the Lords in Fíriel’s Song (LR:72; -nna becomes -nnar in the plural). This allative ending is obviously related to the prepositional stem nâ¹- to, towards (LR:374). Tolkien stated that "prepositional" elements were normally suffixed to noun stems in Primitive Quendian (WJ:368, see the entry -o for the quotation), so Quenya -nna would presumably descend from nâ¹- in this suffixed position. (The Quenya ending, with double nn, would seem to be strengthened or nasal-infixed; the Telerin ablative still had simple -na, Tolkien equating Quenya lúmenna upon the hour with Telerin lúmena: WJ:367 vs. 407.) – Removing the ending we are left with #úsahtie as the noun temptation. The form most similar to this in the published corpus would be sahta marred, attested in the phrase Arda Sahta Arda Marred (MR:405, changed by Tolkien to Arda Hastaina, MR:408, 254). Yet it seems difficult, semantically, to get from "mar, marred" to "temptation". Nothing certain can be said about the etymology of #úsahtie, except that it evidently incorporates the negative prefix ú-, but some speculation may be offered: The Qenya Lexicon lists a verb saka- pursue, look for, search (QL:81). If a stem *sak- search was still valid at a much later stage of Tolkien’s conception, there could be a primitive causative verb *saktâ- make search (as for the sometimes causative verbal ending -tâ, see tulya regarding primitive tultâ-). *Saktâ- would produce Quenya *sahta-. With the prefix ú-, used in the same "bad sense" as in úcarer sin, trespass above, we may interpret the verb *úsahta- as make (someone else) seek what is bad, which is a plausible etymology for a verb tempt. With the infinitival or gerundial ending -ie (as in en-yalië, UT:317), this verb could indeed produce an abstract #úsahtie temptation. It is, however, also possible to plausibly explain this word without resorting to the early "Qenya" materiaclass="underline" Tolkien may have intended #úsahtie to be a derivative of the stem stag- press, compress (LR:388). This entry in the Etymologies lists no actual verb directly reflecting the meaning of the stem, but there could well be a primitive verb *stagtâ- (this would be yet another case of the ending -tâ functioning as a mere verb-former, adding nothing to the meaning of the root – see ontaril). This *stagtâ- might later become *staktâ- > Quenya *þahta-, *sahta-. If this means to press, we might again have a gerund *sahtie, meaning pressing, pressure. By adding the prefix ú-, full of sinister connotations, we would arrive at #úsahtie, literally referring to some kind of "evil pressure". This may plausibly be a way of expressing temptation[31].

31

These speculations turn out to be quite accurate, which is frankly more than I would have expected. VT43:22-23 reveals that one version of the prayer had, not úsahtienna, but the shorter form sahtienna. This was derived from a stem thag- oppress, crush, press which is plainly a mere variant of the stag- press, compress listed in Etym. For variation between aspirates like ph, th, kh and consonant clusters in s-, like sp-, st-, sk-, compare spal-, spalas- as variants of phal-, phalas- (LR:387). The final form úsahtie Tolkien referred to another stem saka-, which however did not mean "search" as it had in the early Qenya Lexicon; Tolkien defined it as "draw, pull" and indicated that sahta- is a verb induce, whence the prefixed gerund úsahtie = inducement to do wrong.