The Anathemata
Middle-sea and Lear-sea (continued)
to blanch
main and Ushant.1
Did Albion put down his screen of brume at:
forty-nine fifty-seven thirty-four north five twelve four west2
to white-out the sea-margin east of northwards to confluent Fala, and west over Mark’s main towards where Trystan’s sands run out to land’s last end?
Is that why
from about forty-nine forty north five twenty west
to forty-nine fifty-seven north four-forty westb
he sighted no land
till he first sighted it
a point before the beamc in a north-westerly direction
about six leagues
(by whatever card he knew)
and did he call it
the Deadman?3
Then was when the trestle-tree boy
from his thalassad
across the mare, between the Pillars
over the ocean . . .
a weary time a weary timee—
north-way is Abendsee—
David Jones notes
1 The name of ‘Mark’, king of Cornwall in the Iseult story, is, in Welsh, March which means a stallion; the Scilly Isles were part of his domain.
The action of the Atlantic tides meeting the waters of the English Channel is, I am told, strongly felt along the Breton mainland and around the Island of Ushant, just as it is on the Cornish side, or much more so.
2 The bearing of the Lizard Light.
3 See song Spanish Ladies, verse 3:
‘The first land we made, it is callèd the Deadman’ .
Another version reads:
‘The first land we sighted was callèd the Dodman’.
additional notes
DJ note 1: there is a subtle pun in this line of text. In an early version of the Trystan story, after parting from his adulterous lover Iseult, Trystan meets and marries a second Iseult, Iseult Blanchmains (‘white-hands’). The tale is told in Malory Morte d’Arthur, Book 8 chapter 36, together with the observation that the marriage was unconsummated. DJ intended this meaning along with the obvious one in which ‘blanch’ is a verb and ‘main’ is a noun for the sea. (Hague p.115).
DJ note 2 should read ‘position’ not ‘bearing’.
DJ note 3: the full song may be found here.
a Two rivers flow into Falmouth harbour.
b Two points in the middle of the Channel, the second being north-east of the first. It is at this point they emerge from the fog and see the Dodman to the north-west as indeed it would be from that position.
At 374 feet (114 m) Dodman Point near Mevagissey is the highest headland on the south Cornwall coast. It was originally known as the Deadman or Deadman’s Point, which names are still sometimes used. It hosts the remains of an Iron Age promontory fort.
c In specifying angles, the beam is an imaginary line running at right angles to the main axis of the ship. Thus ‘before the beam’ means in front of this line. A point is 11.25 degrees (an eighth of a right angle).
e ‘There passed a weary time. Each throat /Was parched, and glazed each eye. /A weary time! a weary time! ’ — Coleridge, Ancient Mariner, Part 3 stanza 1.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
d thalassa: sea (Greek).
comments
The gap denoted by the ellipsis after ‘over the ocean’ is not filled until page 102. The poet breaks off and goes back to an earlier part of the voyage.