#ortírië noun "patronage", isolated from ortírielyanna "to thy patronage" (VT44:7). A verbal stem #ortir- "over-watch" (look after, care for, protect) seems implied.
Quenya
ortírielyanna
Ortírielyanna
ortírië
patronage
ortírië
noun. *patronage, (lit.) watching over (from above)
ortírielyanna rucimmë, aina eruontari
we fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God
The first line of Ortírielyanna, Tolkien’s translation of the Sub Tuum Praesidium prayer. The first word Ortírielyanna “to thy patronage” is 2nd-person-polite (-lya “thy”) ablative (-nna “to”) form of ortírië “patronage”. The second word rucimmë “we fly” is the 1st-person-plural-exclusive inflection (-mmë “we”) of the verb ruc- “flee”. The third word is aina “holy” and the last word is Eruontari, a name of Mary as the genetrix (female begetter) of the Son of God.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> ortírie-lya-nna ruci-mme, Aina Eru-ontari = “✱patronage-thy-to flee-we, Holy God-genetrix”.
Conceptual Development: The first word was initially written Ortírielyanne (with final e instead of a), but Wynne, Smith and Hostetter suggested this is probably a slip (VT44/5). The third word was initially written Aini >> Aina. Tolkien considered several different Quenya translations for “Mother of God”; ignoring incomplete forms, the development was Eruamillë >> Eruontarië >> Eruontari.
ruc-
verb. fly (to)
#ruc- (2) vb. "fly (to)", in the phrase ortírielyanna rucimmë, "to thy patronage we fly" (VT44:7). If this is really the same verb as ruc- #1 above, it would indicate that ruc- combined with the allative case implies flying in horror to some refuge (denoted by the allative noun).
Tolkien’s translation of the Sub Tuum Praesidium prayer into Quenya, composed sometime in the 1950s (VT43/7), first published in the “Words of Joy (Part Two)” article in Vinyar Tengwar #44 (VT44/5). Tolkien did not provide an English translation of the prayer; following the editors of the “Words of Joy” article, I used a modern English translation of the prayer (VT44/5).
Further discussion can be found in the analysis of the individual phrases. My analysis largely follows that of the “Ortírielyanna” section (VT44/5-11) of the “Words of Joy” article.