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if he had seized it when Minas Ithil fell, and explains that while riding to Minas Tirith with Pippin and answering his questions about the Orthanc-stone, Gandalf was pondering the possibility that Denethor had used the Anor-stone and might have fallen, which was one reason for Gandalf’s haste. The essay points out also that Gandalf could not know when Denethor began to use the Anor-stone, and presumed that Denethor had not used it until peril grew great; but in fact Denethor had been using it since he succeeded to the Stewardship. Tolkien discusses how Denethor used the stone, and how the use affected him. Denethor is said to have withstood Sauron’s domination partly because of his character, but also because, as a Steward for the heirs of Elendil, he had a lawful right to use the Anor-stone.

      Since changes consequent on these were not incorporated into The Lord of the Rings until the second printing (1967) of the Allen & Unwin second edition, they date probably from 1966 or early 1967.

       Part of the Legend of Amroth and Nimrodel Recounted in Brief

      see The History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lórien

Payton, Ralph Stuart (1894–1916). R.S. Payton, known as ‘the Baby’, was a friend of Tolkien at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, entering in January 1906, and a fellow member of the *T.C.B.S. Like his elder brother *Wilfrid, Ralph was involved in a wide range of school activities – football, the Shooting Club, the School magazine, the Debating Society – and in most of these he held office. As Debating Secretary he ‘performed with great energy’ the ‘less pleasant duties’ of the office, ‘especially the finding of new speakers. In his own speeches he is more successful as a humorist, and does not often contrive to be serious without being dull’ (‘Characters, 1911–12’, King Edward’s School Chronicle n.s. 27, no. 193 (June 1912), p. 41). But he was outwardly modest, and his delivery in debate was often faulted. He also served as Prefect, Sub-Treasurer, and School Captain and General Secretary. In 1913 he followed his brother to Cambridge, on an open scholarship for Classics at Christ’s College.

      In November 1915 Payton joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment (14th (1st Birmingham Pals) Battalion) and was made a lieutenant, in charge of Lewis (light machine) guns. He was killed on the Somme on 22 July 1916 while leading his men into action.

Payton, Wilfrid Hugh (1892–1965). W.H. Payton, known as ‘Whiffy’, was a friend of Tolkien at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, entering in January 1904, and a fellow member of the *T.C.B.S. Like his younger brother *Ralph, he was involved in msny school activities – football, the Shooting Club, the School library and magazine, the Debating Society, the Literary Society – in most of which he held office and was highly regarded. He also served as Prefect, Sub-Treasurer, and School Captain and General Secretary. In 1911 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, on an open exhibition for Classics.

      In 1915 Payton won a place with the India Civil Service. In the First World War he joined the Indian Reserve of Officers and rose to the rank of captain. He was attached to the 6th Gurkha Rifles, and later to the Khyber Rifles, on the Afghan frontier. His later Civil Service work in Burma earned him in 1945 the honour of Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George.

Pearl. Alliterative poem in Middle English. It is attributed to the same anonymous late fourteenth-century poet who wrote *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, another of four works preserved in the same manuscript (British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, with the poems Patience and Cleanness).

      SYNOPSIS

      The subject of Pearl (or The Pearl) is the poet’s daughter, who died as a child. As he wanders in the garden in which his child is buried, the poet slips, ‘and to sudden sleep was brought, / O’er that precious pearl’. He has a vision of a fair land of marvels and splendour, of a deep stream beyond which lies Paradise, and of ‘a gentle maid of courtly grace’ arrayed in pearls: his daughter grown to maturity. ‘Lament alone by night I made,’ he tells her, ‘Much longing I have hid for thee forlorn, / Since to the grass you from me strayed.’ She upbraids him for excessive grief, and explains that she is in a blissful state of grace, the bride of Christ. Headlong her father plunges into the stream, eager to join her, but ‘right as I rushed then to the shore / That fury made my dream to fade’, and he wakes from his trance. If, he says, it is true that his daughter is ‘set at ease, / Then happy I, though chained in care, / That you that Prince indeed do please’ (translation by Tolkien).

      HISTORY

      The excellence of the poem is observed by *Kenneth Sisam in his Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose (1921):

      If [the contemporary poem] Piers Plowman gives a realistic picture of the drabness of mediaeval life, Pearl, more especially in the early stanzas, shows a richness of imagery and a luxuriance in light and colour that seem scarcely English. Yet they have their parallels in the decorative art of the time – the elaborate carving in wood and stone; the rich colouring of tapestries, of illuminated books and painted glass; the designs of the jewellers, goldsmiths, and silversmiths, which even the notaries who made the old inventories cannot pass without a word of admiration. The Pearl reminds us of the tribute due to the artists and craftsmen of the fourteenth century. [p. 57]

      Tolkien first encountered the work while still at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, as part of his private study of early English literature. A few years later, it was part of his required reading as a student in the English School at *Oxford. At Easter 1913 Tolkien inscribed his name in a 1910 printing of Charles Grosvenor Osgood’s edition of Pearl (first published 1906). He attended lectures on Pearl by *A.S. Napier, and very probably a class on the work taught by Sisam. The West Midlands dialect of Middle English in which Pearl was written was a subject of special interest to Tolkien; see *English language and *A Fourteenth-Century Romance.

      Pearl was also part of the curriculum at *Leeds when Tolkien was on the staff of the University’s English School, and also at Oxford. In May 1924 Tolkien wrote a poem, *The Nameless Land, inspired by reading Pearl for examination papers (see *Examinations).

      MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

      After the publication of their Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in 1925, Tolkien and his colleague *E.V. Gordon began work on an edition of Pearl in Middle English. But Tolkien made little or no contribution to it for many years; instead he prepared, in spare moments during ?1925–6, a Modern English translation of the poem. On ?26 April 1926 he sent a copy of this to Kenneth Sisam, for whose Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose he had prepared a glossary (*A Middle English Vocabulary). At some time by summer 1936 Tolkien offered the translation to the publisher J.M. Dent: it was rejected, but was seen by Guy Pocock, who having joined the staff of BBC Radio arranged for part of the translation to be read, with Tolkien’s permission, in August 1936 on London regional radio. In October 1936 *Stanley Unwin, of the firm George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), expressed an interest in publishing the translation; but with the success of *The Hobbit the following year, his main desire was soon for a sequel to that work.

      By August 1942 the translation apparently had been lent to the Oxford bookseller and publisher *Basil Blackwell. He wrote to Tolkien, expressed delight in the work, and asked if Tolkien would write, for publication with the poem, an introduction to Pearl aimed at the lay reader rather than the student. He offered to purchase the copyright to the translation, with the sum placed against Tolkien’s outstanding account at Blackwell’s Bookshop. Tolkien agreed, and proofs of the poem were ready in late March 1943. The introduction, however, was not forthcoming at once; and in September 1944 Blackwell, wondering if Tolkien’s delay was caused by objection to giving up copyright, now suggested that publication proceed instead on the basis of a royalty. Tolkien certainly wished to proceed: in a letter of 23–5 September 1944 he wrote to his son *Christopher: ‘I must try and get on with the Pearl and stop the eager maw of Basil Blackwell’ (Letters, p. 94). Six months later, c. 18 March 1945, he was still ‘in trouble with Blackwell who has set up my translation of Pearl, and needs corrections and an introduction’, as he wrote to Stanley Unwin (Letters, p.

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