The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
In where she mothers
her painters an’ limners.1
In Pellipar’s
where she’s virgo inter virgines
for the skinner’s boys an’ budge-dressers.2
In all the memorials
of her buxoma will
(what brought us ransom, captain!)
as do renown our city.3
She’s as she of Aulis,4 master:
not a puff of wind without her!
her fiat is our fortune, sir: like Helen’s face
’twas that as launched the ship.5
Or may I never
keep company more with a dunce of a maudlin inceptor—
though he were a seraphb for sub-distinctions.
. . . did black deth
David Jones notes
1 St Mary Staining, Cripplegate, was believed to be so named on account of the painter-stainers whose workshops were in that vicinity; but it may more likely derive from the place name, Stains.
2 St Mary Pellipar, Lime Street, so called after the skin-dressers that worked in the locality (pellio a furrier). The proper name of the church is St Mary, St Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins.
3 Cf. Twelfth Night, III, 3.
4 It will be recalled that the expedition to Troy was becalmed in Aulis harbour because the vow concerning Iphigenia was not fulfilled.
5 Though ‘Minerva springs eternally from the head of Jove’, the Eternally Begotten could not have become begotten on a creature except by a creature’s pliant will. It is significant that in masses of the Common of our Lady the gospel chosen by the church is Luke XI, 27-28, where Jesus leaves no doubt that the blessedness of his mother resides firstly in the compliancy of her will.
Since writing the above note there has now (1951) been published a sermon on the Assumption, by Aelred of Rievaulx, in which that twelfth-century English saint observes that Mary was ‘doubtless blessed in receiving the Son of God bodily into her womb, but she was much more blessed for first receiving him in her mind and heart’. He goes on to say that but for Mary’s acceptance the gospel could never have been preached. Which Irenaeus, in second-century Gaul, had expressed when he said ‘She was constituted the cause of our salvation’.
additional notes
DJ note 2: also, budge is a fur of lambswool with the wool dressed and facing outwards.
DJ note 3: line 22:
Sebastian: I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes
With the memorials and the things of fame
That do renown this city.
DJ note 4: The reference is to the play Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripedes. At the start of the play, the Greek fleet is waiting at Aulis, Boeotia, with its ships ready to sail for Troy, but it is unable to depart due to a strange lack of wind. After consulting the seer Calchas, the Greek leaders learn that this is no mere meteorological abnormality but rather the will of the goddess Artemis, who is withholding the winds because their king Agamemnon has caused her offense. Calchas informs the general that in order to appease the goddess, he must sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia. Agamemnon, in spite of his horror, must consider this seriously because his assembled troops, who have been waiting on the beach and are increasingly restless, may rebel if their bloodlust is not satisfied. He sends a message to his wife, Clytemnestra, telling her to send Iphigenia to Aulis on the pretext that the girl is to be married to the Greek warrior Achilles before he sets off to fight.
See also the quotation from DJ given in my comments to page 56.
b A reference to the 13th century Italian philosopher and theologian St Bonaventure, called the Seraphic Doctor because of the way in his writings he continually praised God (as do the heavenly seraphs).
see also
semantic structures
glossary
a buxom: obedient.
comments
‘she’ is the Virgin Mary. Elen comments on the fact that we would not have received the Holy Spirit (pneuma, wind) without the obedience of the Virgin. This reminds her of her first lover, a ‘dunce of a maudlin inceptor’ — a beautiful triple pun: dunce: a stupid man; also a follower of the 13th century Scottish philosopher Duns Scotus; maudlin: drunken; also a student at Magdalen (same pronunciation) College Oxford; inceptor: one who has taken a first degree at a medieval university; also a beginner, one who is doing something for the first time.