Damh the Bard has been releasing musical re-tellings of the Four Branches of the Mabinogion which I just love. The most recent album, covering Math fab Mathonwy, contains a song titled ‘Three Curses’. It covers the section in which Lleu Llaw Gyffes’ mother, Arianrhod, curses him three times through his life. Logically Damh turns the moments of cursing into the chorus.
That chorus starts with the rhyme ‘eyes go dark/fingers spark’, which was immediately so vivid to me it lit up in my imagination. Long story short, I have translated the first iteration of the chorus into a compact, poetic Quenya verse I’m rather proud of. I have put it properly into a syllabic meter with good assonance and… not rhyme proper, but some respectable slant rhymes.
Eyes go dark, fingers spark/The curse is spun and I would not be free
"I decree this destiny/ to never be named unless given by me."
Henya lumbi / leptafinya
Her eyes dark / clever-fingered
Lanyas húte / lá lendenye
She weaves a curse / I am not free to move
—Umbartanyel / lá estuval
“I declare your fate / you will not be named
—Laqui inye / estuvanyel.
“Unless I myself name you.”
It's short; why not.
Henya: This should really be hendurya, ‘her two eyes’. I shortened it to ‘Henya’, which is technically singular ‘her eye’, for the meter.
Lumbi: gloomy, dark. Lumbi being plural makes it clear that ‘henya’ was meant to be. I originally wrote ‘huini’ here, gloomy, and like the word better, but it’s a noun, not an adjective, and as such just a little too confusing. I like having a few more alliterations on ‘h’ too, so it’s not impossible I will make an adjective out of ‘huine’ and put it back in as a treat for myself.
Leptafinya: one adjective meaning ‘clever-fingered.’ Back to singular as this one refers to the subject of the following verb (‘she’). Great word, and since I use ‘weave’ as the verb to describe the curse-casting it emphasizes Arianrhod’s ability while evoking a poetic image.
Lanyas: Lanya meaning weave in present tense plus pronominal sending -s for she.
Húte: a noun form of the verb húta, to curse. I didn’t have too many options for this word and húta both seems to have the correct word sense (or one close enough) and alliterates with other h-word.
Lá: negation that makes the following verb negative. I use ui negation sometime too, but lá negation alliterates here.
Lendenye: ‘lende’ is a tantalizing but likely outdated verb that meant ‘go freely.’ There are signs Tolkien struck this one, especially since it really looks like a past tense form while in its present tense, but it for both meter and alliteration so well I couldn’t resist. -nye of course is the full first-person singular pronominal ending, which I used in full here and elsewhere for metrical reasons.
Em dash: I used em dash instead of english quotations for the speech marker.
Umbartanyel: ‘Marta’, to define, decree, destined, is a later form of ‘umbarta’, a verb that is formed directly from ‘umbar’, fate/doom. I used the archaic verb in order to translate ‘I declare your fate’ as one word, as that’s literally what the longer, older verb means. -nye for 1st Sing Pron again, plus final -l for -lye, you, formal; thus I (nye) declare fate (umbarta) to you (l).
Marta would have worked, but using the old-fashioned verb works well for something translated out of a medieval language to begin with (Cymraeg Canol/Middle Welsh) and it meant I didn’t have to try to shove ‘umbar’ in as a noun elsewhere.
Estuval: esta, to name, -uva for future tense (as the curse applies to Lleu’s future), -l again for you. You will be named, with lá-negation, You will not be named. This curse, wild to begin with, takes on a special flavor in Quenya as elves received several names, including one from each parent. Arianrhod forbidding her son not just a mother-name but also a name from his father (or from his deeds) is a rather cruel overreach. Of course, normally, the father-name would have come sooner, but in the refreshingly matriarchal world of the branches, Lleu’s father is unknown and the tale feels absolutely no anxiety about that fact and makes no attempt to ‘solve’ his fatherlessness. Gwydion as foster-father, frankly, could have given him a name some time ago, but waiting for his mother to do it resonates with the practice of the amilesse in a pleasing way.
Laqui: unless. Rather straightforward, lá + qui, negation + if; unless.
Inye: The emphatic version of the first person singular pronoun. Putting an emphatic in a sentence hones in on the pronoun; you are putting a special emphasis on who is doing the thing. It’s more than saying “I”; here, ‘inye’ is ‘I myself’, with ‘laqui’/unless, it’s more like ‘I alone’ or ‘unless I, myself’. That is, she is the only person who can do this thing.
Estuvanyel: The thing is ‘give a name to you’, ‘it’ being Lleu’s name. Esta/name, -uva for future tense, nye (me) and -l you. Name will I you; laqui inye estuvanyel all together is ‘unless I myself will name you’, with an appropriate sense of doubt that this will happen. Of course, in the legend, Arianrhod is tricked into giving Lleu a name, which then causes her to lay a second curse to replace the first.
I originally had 'anta', give, instead of 'esta', name, for this second verse, so that it read 'unless I myself will give it [the name] to you', which follows the lyrics more exactly, but Quenya prefers a specific verb over a general. I decided to just use 'esta' twice for now. I would rather an alliterating word that is not the same word, but can't think of one at the moment. 'Ehtelehtan', for 'I deliver/rescue', is I suppose not impossible, but I would have to restructure the phrase before to go with it, probably to 'Laqui elye / Ehtelehtan', unless you I deliver, but having to include the full 'elye' in order to fit 'lye' in there is clunky in a way I dislike.