TCG Letter #519

Tolkien replied to a letter from Jonathan thanking for his letter - "and especially for the (horrible) view of Mordor and the destruction of Orodruin. I have one criticism and that is that you show the Three Rings inside the unbroken One Ring. That would mean that they were absorbed and conquered by it, I think." He says he had drawn a version of the jacket but that "they proved too expensive, and what was used was a (defective) version of the first."

In his reply he included a previously unknown phrase in Quenya, "nai lye hiruva airea amanar!" and its translation "may thee find a blessed Amanar".

Carl Hostetter commented* at the now sadly closed Yahoo group Lambengolmor that

"The inscription reads:
_nai lye hiruva airea amanar!_

which Tolkien translates as: ‘may thee find a blessed Amanar’, referring to “the Yule and the beginning of the Sun’s return” and representing an “ancient Elvish” equivalent to “merry Christmas”.

I take _amanar_ to be _am-_ ‘up’ + _anar_ ‘Sun’, indicating the Sun’s apparent travel up towards the north from its southern nadir at the solstice."

[*Included here with Carl Hosetter's kind permission.]