The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
clear gilt-tressed
enough to hang a dozen Absolons1
and Lorks-a-mercy!
making a music to the tune of Greensleeves and for en-core in sung-out plain-spoke south-English, this prose:
With locks lovesome and long, with front and face fair to take between hands, with many mirths may we mingle, blow wind, blow us our sweetings2
set to fluvial fifths and fishy cadences of choirs fathoms under, but seeming of the Thirteenth Mode.3
’Twere the crux of the voyage
and a near thing.
David Jones notes
1 See Chaucer, Balade
‘Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere . . .
Hyde ye your beautes Isoude and Eleyne’
2 Cf. thirteenth-fourteenth century song, Ichot a burde in boure bryht (Ox. Bk. of Eng. V. No. 4).
3 The thirteenth, the Ionian Mode, is the mode to which the modem Major Scale corresponds. It was known in the middle-ages as the ‘lascivious mode’, that is, the sportive mode.
additional notes
DJ note 1: Absolon (Absolom) was a son of the Biblical King David who was very handsome and proud of his hair. He rebelled against his father and during a battle he was riding a mule when his hair got caught in a tree and he was left there hanging while his mule went on. His enemies took the opportunity to kill him. The story is related in 2 Samuel chapter xviii.
see also
near thing: see the note to page 94.
comments
But the greatest danger encountered during the voyage was the sirens.