Songs for the Philologists

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Well, the collection was certainly made with Tolkien's (and EV Gordon's) permission, since they made it! But the printed booklet certainly was done without, a decade after Tolkien left Leeds.

Ha, good catch. The fact that they were typed up for students is really interesting, because it might make sense of that caption on the cover:

Mál-rúnar skaltu kunna

Google Translate identifies this as Icelandic, and translates it as Know the Runes, but the actual translation looks a bit more... well, snarky. Still entirely by Google:

-Mál-rúnar, by itself, translates as 'speech-runes'.
-kunna is a form of 'be able to', 'can' (or maybe 'have').
-skaltu is translated as 'please', but alternate translations are 'do' or 'you should' - it's an imperative.

Which means, I think, that the entire thing comes out not as 'know the runes', but as:

Please learn the words!

hS