The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
Before the melt-waters
had drumlin-dammed a high hill-water for the water-maid
to lave her maiden hair.
Before they morained Tal-y-llyn, cirqued a high hollow for Idwal, brimmed a deep-dark basin for Peris the Hinge and for old Paternus.2
Long ages since they’d troughed, in solid Ordovician
his Bala bed for Tacitus. a
David Jones notes
2 ‘In places the irregularly eroded valley floors have been hollowed into true rock basins and are now occupied by lakes, though most of the lakes are at least in part dammed by morainic material.’ Brit. Rea. Geol. N. Wales, p. 81. The lake of Idwal, well above the 1,200 contour, six miles N.W. of Capel Curig, occupies one such basin. The saint after whom Llanberis and Lake Peris are named has, for some reason, acquired the description ‘cardinal of Rome’. A Peris son of Helig occurs in one genealogy.
Llyn Padarn means the Lake of Paternus: after Paternus ‘of the red tunic’, grandfather of Cunedda, or after Padarn, the sixth-century saint? I suppose the latter.
additional notes
Padarn (Latin: Paternus) was an early 6th century sanctified British Christian abbot-bishop, the eponymous founder of St Padarn’s Church. Llanbadarn Fawr, near present day Aberystwyth.
a Bala Lake is the largest body of water in Wales, being four miles long and a mile wide. The lake is known in Welsh as ‘Llyn Tegid’, meaning Lake of Serenity, and was formed by the action of glaciers. Its inflow and outflow is the River Dee.
Local legend states that the lake is inhabited by a monster which is known as ‘Teggie’ and it is claimed that on moonlit nights towers and buildings can be seen under the waters of Bala Lake. Legend states these buildings to be the palace of King Tegid, husband of Ceridwen, the mother of the famous Welsh bard Taliesin (c. 534 - c. 599), the earliest poet of the Welsh language and often referred to as Taliesin Ben Beirdd (Taliesin, Chief of Bards) who was born in the area.
Another possible derivation, which DJ is referring to here, is from Tacitus (or Tegid), presumably a Roman soldier and great-grandfather of Cunedda, one of the great 5th century warlords of Wales.
It is a happy accident that ‘Ordovician’, as the name of the geological period, is named after the Ordovices, a Celtic tribe inhabiting North Wales before the Roman invasion; this name is first recorded by the Roman historian Tacitus (no relation to the ancestor of Cuneddin).
see also
Paternus and Cuneddin reappear on page 71.
comments
The text here is preceded by a long paragraph break, indicating a major shift in subject matter. The poet has already introduced the themes of Wales and of mountains; here they are combined. We are turning from the evolution of man to the evolution of the landscape inhabited by man, and in particular to its geophysical development as exhibited in Wales.
Like Eliot’s Four Quartets, The Anathemata is a song of place.