The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
even, after-light. When lime-dressed walls, petals on stalks, a kerchief, a shift’s hem or such like, and the Eve’s white of us . . . and cap-tin, the bleached hemp of a fore-bracea, the white of the wake beyond the dead-water, or the fresh paintwork, for’ard, eh? captain, looms up curiously exact and clear, more real by half than in the busy light as noses everywhere at stare-faced noon—more real . . . but more of Faëry by a long chalk.
An’ in this transfiguring after-clarity he seemed to call me his . . . Fl–ora . . . Flora Dea1 he says . . . whether to me or into the darks of the old ragstone courses?
. . . how are you for conundrums, captain?
And again, once in especial,
at a swelt’rin’ close August day’s close, three sultry eves after they sing Gaudeamus2—on m’ own name-day captain, on the b of the British Elen that found the Wood3—Ceres big moon half ris beyond her own Cornhillc, behind de Arcubusd as
chimes I do not know,
David Jones notes
1 It has been said that the name of the goddess Flora was used as a mystical or secret name for Rome.
2 Cf. the introit for the mass of the Assumption, August 15, ‘Gaudeamus omnes in Domino’, etc.
3 Flavia Julia Helena, wife of Constantius Chlorus and mother of Constantine the Great, associated in the Christian calendar with the tradition of the finding of the Wood of the Cross. In certain dioceses of England, her feast, August 18, takes precedence and is celebrated with a special mass and office. Breviaries and missals used to assert that she was born in Britain but this has now (1949) been corrected to Drepanum in Asia Minor. Apart from her importance in the Christian tradition as St Helen, and her eminence as Empress, there has gathered around her a separate secular body of legend of much beauty but of exceptional contradiction and tangle deriving from Welsh sources. In these tales she is variously the daughter of King Cole, of Eudaf of Arfon, of Eudav of Cornwall, the Roman roads in Wales bear her name, she is wife of Constantius, she is the wife of Macsen Wledig (Maximus), she is Helen of the Hosts, she is builder of the Wall of London; it was as hard to look upon her because of her beauty as it is to look upon the sun when brightest, and so on. In these stories she takes on something of her classical namesake and stands for the beauty of Britain beguiling the emperor and directing the power-struggles; her family conquer Rome for Maximus, she is indeed almost Britannia herself. Not so often has one historic person gathered to herself such a diversity of significances. She can be seen in the tradition of religion to be the mother who gave birth to the ‘Peace of the Church’, the Woman through whom Cross and Vexillum become one; and in our native (Welsh) secular tradition she may perhaps have become identified with other matriarchal figures of unknown antiquity; and, because of being the wife of Constantius, she shared something of his traditional role as restorer and orderer in Britain. The two traditions together envisage the fusion of typic figures of great splendour and depth: imperatrix plus numinous beauty’ plus Holy Woman. The epistle at her mass is, very happily, Mulierem fortem quis inveniet? (Proverbs XXXI, 10-31). She is here envisaged as Holy Wisdom.
additional notes
DJ note 2: ‘Gaudeamus omnes in Domino’: ‘Let us all rejoice in the Lord’.
DJ note 3: a ms. note reads, ‘Corrigendum to page 131 : Owing to the fact that on August 18th, the feast of St Helen, the Collect, the Gradual and other prayers of her mass commemorate her association with the Cross, I state on p.131 that her feast is also the Feast of the Finding of the Cross. This is erroneous, May 3rd and September 14th being the dates when that event is specially celebrated, the latter date being the original one.’ (Hague, p. 168.)
Mulierem fortem quis inveniet? : ‘A good wife who can find?’ The text goes on to describe the manifold virtues of such a woman.
b A word seems to be missing here. I suggest ‘day’.
c If we take DJ’s suggestion of September 14 for the date now being referred to, there could well be a harvest moon. Ceres was the Roman goddess of corn and the harvest.
d Arcubus: see DJ note 1 to next page.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
a fore-brace: A rope applied to the fore yardarm, to change the position of the foresail.
comments
Elen remembers that during this encounter he called her ‘Flora’. She then recalls a later tryst in the same place with her mason on her name-day.