page 113

The Anathemata

Angle-land (page 113)

What was his Hausname?

he whose North Holstein urn

they sealed against the seep of the Yare?

If there are Wealas³ yet

in the Waltons

what’s the cephalic index of the môrforynion,⁴ who knell the bell, who thread the pearls that were Ned Mizzen’s^a eyes, at the five fathom line off the Naze?

On past the low low lands of the Holland that Welland winds to the Deepings north of the Soke

past where Woden’s gang is gens Julia for Wuffingas new to old Nene and up with the Lark⁵

past the south hams and the north tons

David Jones notes

³ Wealas, wa-ahl-ass, plural of Wealh, a Welshman.

⁴ môrforynion, water-maidens, mōrr-vorr-un-yon, accent on third syllable.

⁵ The Wuffingas, that during the fifth-century invasions made settlements in the Fen Country, through which flow the Nene and the Lark, seem later on to have claimed descent from both Odin and Caesar.’

additional notes

DJ note 4: i.e. are they Celtic (Welsh), Anglo-Saxon or Roman mermaids? (Mermaids since they inhabit the sea where it is five fathoms deep.)

DJ note 5: hence gens Julia after Julius Caesar, though ‘Julia’ is ungrammatical (although it sounds better than anything grammatical such as ‘Julii’ would). Incidentally, in the second edition (1955 reprinted 1972), the word ‘is’ is -incorrectly- italicised.

^a here and elsewhere DJ’s name for an anonymous sailor.

Some East Anglian geography:

the river Yare runs into the sea at Great Yarmouth; there are inhumation and cremation sites along the course of the river.

the Waltons: Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex, and Walton Castle, Suffolk.

the Naze: a spit or headland that juts out from the Essex mainland.

Holland: a low-lying division of Lincolnshire.

the river Welland runs into the Wash having crossed the South Holland part of Lincolnshire.

the Deepings: a collection of villages near the river Welland, a few miles north of Peterborough.

the Soke of Peterborough is an area round Peterborough, formerly a distinct part of the Diocese of Peterborough.

the river Nene flows now flows through Peterborough, its course having been altered in the middle ages (formerly it didn’t, hence ‘new to old’).

the river Lark is a small tributary of the Great Ouse which flows into the Wash at Kings Lynn.

‘-ham’ and ‘-ton’ are both very common Old English place name suffixes meaning homestead or enclosure.

comments

There is no suggestion that marking these places on a map would reveal a coherent single path journey, even if seen from the sea (from where many wouldn’t be visible anyway). In any case, what is described in this section isn’t that sort of linear journey. Space and time are very fluid in The Anathemata.

The Anathemata

Angle-land (page 113)

David Jones notes

additional notes

comments

see also

semantic structures

glossary

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