The Anathemata
Angle-land (continued)
(Close the south-west wall of the chester, without the orbit, if but a stone’s throw: you don’t want to raise an Icenian Venta’s Brettisc1 ghost.
He’ll latin-runes tellana in his horror-coatb standing:
IAM REDIT ROMAc
his lifted palm his VERBVM isd.)
David Jones notes
1 Pronounce bret-tish.
additional notes
b horror-coat: war corselet or chain-mail. ‘horridus’ is a favourite Virgilian epithet for war and things of war.
c ‘NOW ROME RETURNS’. The Roman script (as spoken by the ghost? — not a problem for the poetically imaginative) would indeed be runic to the Anglo-Saxon invader. There is a reference here to a line in one of Virgil’s poems (Eclogues, iv) which was later taken (by the early Church Fathers, after the event) to be a prophecy of the coming of Jesus.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
a tellan: puzzle over (Old English).
comments
The following commentary by Hague (p. 132) is helpful: ‘the south-west wall of the chester (i.e. Caister-by-Norwich) ... his VERBUM: the turn of the page from p.111 masks the fact that the poet is still speaking of the invaders’ burial sites. It was the mixed settlers from Schleswig or Elbe-mouth to elsewhere who, at all events in the earlier stages, avoided dwelling in the (presumably) “sacked” or anyway partly despoiled towns, but also avoided burying their dead (there), for fear of raising the “ghosts” of Romano-British inhabitants (an Icenian Venta’s Brettisc ghost: i.e. the ghost of a British inhabitant of Venta Icenorum, the Roman name for Norwich) — or more because the Bret-Wealas, alive or dead, might “call up” spirits from the vasty deep of the Roman thing of which, after all, they were part.’ (D., Sept. 1974.) ‘Archaeologists,’ D. adds,‘may very well have now abandoned the idea of the invaders’ fear of burying their dead within the orbit of British towns, but it was certainly accepted when The Ana. was being written, so that its use here is perfectly justified.’
d On some of the Roman military standards there was attached a small metal disc with an open hand or flat palm. (See here for examples.) Interpretations of the significance of this vary, but for DJ it is a signum, and sign and word (‘verbum’) have for him a special relationship and connotations. The lifted palm thus represents not only the power but also the Word that conquered the world.