wilwarin wilwa

vague as a butterfly

The seventh line of the Markirya poem (MC/222). The first word is wilwarin “butterfly” modified by the adjective wilwa “fluttering to and fro”, which is more loosely translated as “vague” in the poem itself. The English preposition “as” is not reflected in the Quenya text, and may be an artifact of the Early Qenya version of the poem.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> wilwarin wilwa = “✱butterfly fluttering”

Element in

• Q. Markirya “The Last Ark”

Elements

Word	Gloss
vilvarin	“butterfly”
vilva	“fluttering to and fro”