The Anathemata

The Lady of the Pool (continued)

We wont speak of her top-hamper nor the aspect of her dear, gay garnishings 1

but

sweet Christ’s dear Tree!

her cordage!!

how does it stand

to stay?

how does it run

to brace or lift or hale?2

can the wraith of a laniard extend the ghost of a shroud?

render or freshen, p’r’aps

but how take-up or belay

a hemp o’ gossamer?

But, a cloth of buntin’

at her damaged main cap, another to pennon her jury

and

bended to the fretted halliers—not all that tattered and bleached but what to gaudy yet her after-castle—

her native ensign:

as proper to her as is the dog-rose to a’ English beggar’s hat,

abaft the weathered rags that served her for mizzen.

David Jones notes

1 ‘Top-hamper’ today is usually restricted in use to the light upper sails and rigging, but historically it can mean any weight or encumbrance above deck. In my text it is used of the built-up superstructures of medieval and later ships, the decorations of which were termed ‘garnishings’.

It is said that seamen and shipwrights both resisted the disuse of garnishings which eighteenth-century utility demanded. Behind a natural dislike of change and a proper love of decoration there were still deeper, if unconscious, reasons. It is significant that the figure-head was still for so long retained; for in remote antiquity the presiding genius of the vessel had her ‘chapel’ in the bows, and again the stern had equally sacred associations as the place of command, helm and ensign.

2 Cf. the fixed system of stays and shrouds for staying the masts in position called ‘standing rigging’, and that other and quite distinct gear of ‘braces’ for bracing, ‘lifts’ for lifting and ‘halliards’ for haling (hale=haul) called ‘running rigging’.

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semantic structures

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