sí ar lúmesse ya firuvamme : násie :
now and in the hour of our death. Amen.
sí "now", ar "and", lúmesse locative of lúme "hour", ya "which", firuvamme *"we shall die" (fir-uva-mme "die-shall-we"). The ending -mme represents an exclusive "we", the natural form to use here since the one that is addressed is not included in "we": This is a group ("us sinners") addressing someone outside that group (Mary, among Catholics held to be sinless), not another sinner within the group. – As for lúmesse ya firuvamme, these Quenya words literally mean *"in [the] hour that we shall die"; Tolkien did not directly translate the English wording "in the hour of our death" (the literal Quenya equivalent of which would have been rather *i lúmesse qualmemmo). The construction lúmesse ya firuvamme may be seen as a shortening of the syntactically "fuller" *lúmesse yasse firuvamme, "in [the] hour in which we shall die", the relative pronoun ya receiving the locative ending as well (ya with the plural locative ending -ssen is attested in Namárië in LotR, that has yassen for "wherein" referring to the plural word oromardi "high halls"). But this "full" construction would perhaps be perceived as somewhat cumbersome, the locative ending occurring in two consecutive words, and so ya "that, which" is used like English that in a phrase like "the year that we moved" (instead of "the year in which we moved"). – Like the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary ends in a násie "amen" or *"so it is".
4. Lexical/Etymological Commentary: Discussion of Individual Words
á, imperative particle used in conjunction with an uninflected verbal stem: á hyamepray! The particle has no ready English equivalent; it is simply used in conjunction with a verbal stem to make it clear that this verb is to be taken as an imperative. The sentence á vala Manwe in WJ:404 Tolkien translated "may Manwe order it"; a more literal translation could be *do rule Manwe (if we make an effort to translate á as a separate word). This á would represent primitive â, said to be an "imperative particle…originally independent and variable in place" (WJ:365, 371). As mentioned in the Syntactical Commentary above, the imperative particle occurs in LotR in the variant form a (as a short vowel) as part of the Cormallen Praise: A laita te, laita te. This is translated "bless them, bless them" in Letters:308; more literally it is *o bless them, bless them. The text before us indicates that short pronouns (accusative or dative) may be suffixed directly to this particle: áme do [something to] us, ámen do [something] for us; see separate entry áme for further discussion. The particle also appears in a negated form #ála, q.v.
aia, interjection hail. Only the spelling is new; this interjection is attested in LotR. Frodo "speaking in tongues" in Cirith Ungol cried Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima = Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars (translated in Letters:385). As for the variant spellings, compare primitive wâyâ envelope yielding both vaia and vaiya in Quenya (LR:397 s.v. way-). Already in his very early notes on "Qenya" phonology, Tolkien mentioned the variation aiy-/ai-, noting that a word like paiyan ("oration") was "also written paian" (Parma Eldalamberon #12 p. 8). It is interesting to notice that PM:363, 364 mentions Máyar as an alternative form of Maiar (the lesser spirits of the race of the Valar, cf. MR:340). It seems reasonable to assume that the oldest Quenya form of primitive wâyâ envelope was *wáya (paralleling Máyar), later becoming (*waiya >) vaiya and still later vaia (paralleling Maiar; at the same stage that had vaiya, the lesser Ainur would presumably be termed *Maiyar). Aiya and aia as variant words for hail may thus simply represent an older and a "modern" form of the same word; the difference in pronunciation is in any case slight, and in the case of paiyan vs. paian Tolkien seemingly implied that the variation is merely orthographic. (The oldest forms of aia would be appreciably different: archaic Quenya *áya and primitive Elvish *âyâ.) As for the precise etymology of this word, we cannot be certain what Tolkien intended. The first part of *âyâ could somehow be related to the Quenya vocative particle a, as in Treebeard’s greeting to Celeborn and Galadrieclass="underline" a vanimar o beautiful ones (translated in Letters:308). The ending *-yâ is frequently used to derive both adjectives and verbs; perhaps Quenya ai(y)a can also be used as a verb, like English to hail. It is, however, interesting to notice that a word similar to our suggested oldest Quenya form of aia/aiya, namely *áya, is actually attested in PM:363: "Quenya áya meant…awe." This is the same source (indeed the same page) that provides the form Máyar rather than Maiar, so áya and Máyar most likely belong to the same stage of Quenya. If Máyar later became Maiar, áya awe presumably also turned into *aia - wholly similar to the word for hail used in the text before us. Is it, indeed, the same word, so that we could drop the asterisks? If so, the Quenya interjection ai(y)a hail actually or originally means awe, and its use as a greeting would in origin be an expression of deep respect felt by the speaker for the one that is being greeted. If this is the correct etymology, aia hail does not represent primitive Elvish *âyâ as suggested above, but primitive gâyâ, a form given in PM:363. The original meaning was harsher than just "awe"; Tolkien glossed it "terror, great fear". (Tolkien imagined that in Quenya, the meaning was softened because after the regular loss of initial g-, the word came to be associated with Valarin ayanu- or ayanûz, a spirit of Eru’s first creation, which word was adapted to Quenya as Ainu; see PM:364 and WJ:399. The Valar being the most prominent Ainur in Arda, áya came to refer especially to the awe the Elves felt for these mighty spirits, and the word took on a noble sense.) Primitive gâyâ was derived from a Common Eldarin stem gaya "awe, dread" (cf. gáyas "fear" in the Etymologies, LR:358; this could be an extended form of gaya).