Gordon’s Edition of The Pearl

With thanks to my friend N.E. Brigand and the greater Cleveland library system (and at the prompting of Carl Hostetter), here’s what the glossary in E.V. Gordon’s edition of The Pearl has to say about wryþe:

wryþe, v. twist; exert oneself, toil, 511; turn aside, 350; wryþe so wrange away, turn so unjustly from the true path, 488. [OE. wrīþan.] [1]

No surprises here. This basically corroborates what I’ve written on the subject so far. And again, unlike Tolkien’s definition, Gordon’s (with or without help from Tolkien — or Gordon’s wife Ida, who finished the edition after Gordon’s death [2]), does not imbue wryþe — on its own — with the sense of turning from the just path; rather, that sense only emerges with the addition of so wrange away.

[1] Gordon, E.V. The Pearl. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953, p.163.

[2] See Drout, Michael. “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and its Significance.” Tolkien Studies 4 (2007): 113-76, p. 129-30.