The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
Before the Irish sea-borne sheeta lay tattered on the gestatorialb couch of Camber the eponym
lifted to every extremity of the sky
by pre-Cambrian oreos-heavers
for him to dream the Combroges’ epode.2 c
In his high sêt3 there.
Higher than any of ’em
south of the Antonine limits.4
Above the sealed hypogéumd
where the contest was
over the great munduse of sepulture (there the ver-tigérnusf was)
David Jones notes
2 The word Cymry, kum-ry, the Welsh people, derives from the old Celtic compound combros ‘a person of the same kind’, plural Combroges; pronounce kum-bro-gees, g hard, accent on middle syllable.
3 sêt (Welsh ê somewhat resembles the a in ‘cake’), seat, pew.
4 The earth wall built between Clyde and Forth by Quinctius Lollius Urbicus in the reign of Antoninus Pius represented for a short while the outer limes of the empire in Britain.
additional notes
3 The sêt is Snowdon, which is higher than any British mountain south of Scotland.
a The Cambrian mountains were formed by a complex series of continental collisions, one of the plates involved being that which now bears Ireland and the eastern part of the Atlantic (not that DJ would have known that, but he might have speculated on something similar).
f ver-tigérnous : another name for Vortigern. See DJ and my notes on next page.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
b gestatorial: pertaining to something that is worn or carried about (from the Latin gestare, to wear); now used only of the Papal sedia gestatoria, on whIch the Pope is carried about on ceremonial occasions.
c epode: a classical Latin poem in a certain particular metre, often used for poems of lamentation or incantation.
d hypogeum: something that is underground, usually a tomb or burial-chamber.
e mundus: a pit for sacrificial offerings (in the context of Bronze age culture, where such things are usually found).
comments
The poet is still imagining the interplay of geological forces as a kind of contest.