Letter to Dorothy
Dorothy 196? is an alleged letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to a certain miss Dorothy written "years before" 1968.
- Authenticity: "...most likely genuine. If it isn't, it is a particularly well-informed and elaborate hoax" - Carl F. Hostetter[1].
- Publication: Only one Quenya sentence published in mailing lists.
Comment and Excerpt
Dorothy had sent J.R.R. Tolkien a letter asking him how to say "Merry Christmas" in Elvish; Tolkien replied that the Elves did not celebrate Christmas but they had a general greeting *Merin sa haryalye alasse ""I hope that you have happiness" (adding in a case for a mortal: nó vanyalye Ambarello "before you pass from the world").
Legacy
In a letter dated October 14 1968 Dorothy mentioned Tolkien's letter to her to one Miss Dawson, with whom they shared love for Tolkien's work. In her letter, she transcribed the first word as Meriu.
On April 1 1999, Dawson's son, Michael sent a mail to the Tolkien Mailing List inquiring about Dorothy's full name and date of that letter, and for that reason he asked whether that particular letter has been published in Humphrey Carpenter's "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien". Nobody could help Michael Dawson identify Dorothy, since the letter had never been published.
Significance and authenticity
Linguists of Tolklang and Elfling considered the Elvish sentence another piece of the "Quenya puzzle"; most importantly, the previously unknown words sa "that" (introducing a secondary sentence) and nó "before".
Some of the oddities concerning the phrase were that Michael Dawson sent his mail on April 1st (Fool's Day), and afterwards nobody could contact him[2]. Carl F. Hostetter and Christopher Tolkien (who was forwarded Dawson's mail by Hostetter) said that they had not encountered these 'new' words as such in anyone of Tolkien's unpublished papers.[1]
It is of note that the vocabulary of the sentence fits The Etymologies suggesting that the letter to Dorothy was quite early[2]. Also, the word nó was given as "but" at one later point.[3]
References
External links
- An excerpt of Michael Dawson's mail forwarded to Tolklang mailing list.
- Analysis of the Quenya sentence by Helge Fauskanger
- Analysis by David Salo on Elfling mailing list
- Info on the "merin sentence"
