The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool
(continued)
Did he meet Luda at the Fleet Gate?b did he count the toptrees in the anchored forest of Llefelysc
under the White Mount?1
David Jones notes
1 Cf. the tale Lludd and Llefelys (lie-vel-Iss), a legend concerning ‘King Lud’ and his brother in which occurs the assembling of vessels in the Pool of London. The White Mount = The Tower [of London] in Welsh tales.
additional notes
a King Lud was an ancient British king and the mythical second founder of London. To its fifteenth century inhabitants, London was ‘Lud’s Town’.
b The Fleet Gate was where the River Fleet (now underground) joined the River Thames (present-day Blackfriars). The Romans built a bridge over the Fleet and a gate (Ludgate) in their defensive wall here. The name Ludgate does not derive fron King Lud (though doubtless many at the time thought it did) but from the Old English ludgeat, postern.
c The tale is recounted in The Mabinogion.
comments
The section opens with the arrival of a skipper in the Pool of London, presumably at the Greenland Dock in Rotherhithe (see note a to page 118). We are introduced to King Lud, the legendary second founder or restorer of the city and to the Fleet Gate, where the Romans would anchor their ships.