The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
Before, albescent,a out of the day-starred neoarctic night the Cis-Alclyde1 pack again came sud of the Mull. b
Across the watersphere
over the atmosphere, preventing the crystal formations
ambient grew the wondrous New Cold:
trauma and thauma,c both.
This is how Cronos reads the rubric, frangit per medium, when he breaks his ice like morsels, for the therapy and fertility of the land-masses.2
Or before
from Eden-dales,d or torn from the becked fells
transmontane
transmarine
the barrier-making flood-gravels
the drumlined clays and the till-drift
had bye-waved and delta’d the mainway
for Tanat and Vyrnwy.
Before the heaped detritus
had parted the nymphaean loves
of naiad Sabrinae and sibylline Dee.3
David Jones notes
1 Cis-Alclyde. The old name for the Rock of Dumbarton was Altclut, or Petra Cloithe, the Rock in the Clyde. It was from just south of the Clyde, from the Southern Uplands of Scotland, that the deposits were carried into the Midland Plain of England and into the Plain of Gwent and elsewhere in Wales. See note 1 to page 73 below.
2 See the rubric directing the celebrant at the point of the Mass called the Fraction. ‘He ... takes the host and breaks it in half (frangit per medium) over the chalice.’
Cf. also Psalm CXLVII, 17, Bk of Com. Pr version. ‘He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who is able to abide his frost?’
3 The courses of the rivers Tanat, Vyrnwy, Severn and Dee have all been affected by glacial action. The latter two flowed as one, but the Severn was later caused to flow east and mingle with the Stour while the Dee took its present course north through the border lands gathering to itself many associations and coming to be regarded as a sacred stream. Indeed some have interpreted its Welsh name, Dyfrdwy, as meaning the ‘divine water’ .
additional notes
a A nice pun: both ‘becoming white’ (of the ice) and ‘beginning to become Albion’.
b The Mull of Kintyre is the blunt southwestern headland that marks the end of Scotland.
d The Vale of Eden, in the north west of England, lies just south of the Scottish border and flows into the sea inlet of the Solway Firth, which is the boundary.
e Sabrina is the Roman name for the Severn.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
c trauma: shock and thauma: marvel.
comments
Here and in the following pages, the whole of the British and Irish land masses are emerging in the form we know. Some knowledge of this story helps detailed understanding but is probably not essential; the general drift is clear enough. The standard accounts are those published by the British Geological Survey. See also note 1 to page 73.