The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
for ’t is to garnish paps
that nourish such as must strike soundings in the gannet’s bath.1
If we furnish to the part
maybe we’ll play it—as Saint Aristotle would ’a’ said.
Our shift must drape so—no, a trifle off: but not indecorous!
No helm? no matter
we’ve mantling!
From over the chapman-booths of level Southwark2 does the stiffing breeze that freshes our Thames play out our tresses—how this Maudlina gilt streamers a tangled order
and sweet Loy!b
how it do become us.
But La! late roses, red and white with the earliest green acorn for our chaplet twined—you little pretty one, you know our mind in head-pieces . . . and these autumn fashions suit our complexion.
But who’s gone to buy us
a bunch of blue ribbons?c
capital!
now, let be at that
and let the Tilbury gulls
cry us Jack Neptune’s latest espoused Jill and Last Thalassocrat.d
Viols? Good—but see the mode’s Dorian!e
David Jones notes
1 See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under A.D. 973, ‘. . . over the rolling waters, over the gannet’s bath, . . . over the water’s throng, over the whale’s domain.’
2 Cf. ‘some of the war-host held booths in level Southwark’. The Heimskringla, Section VIII, The Saga of Olaf the Saint.
additional notes
DJ note 1: for ‘973’ read ‘975’.
DJ note 2: for ‘Section VIII’ read ‘Section VII’.
a ‘Maudlin’ is an adjective, but the capital letter is there to provide a link to Mary Magdalene (the streamers are of her hair) who –according to Catholic tradition– was identified with the sinner (=prostitute) who washed the feet of Jesus in Luke vii, 36-50. ‘streamers’ is yet another example of a noun being used as a verb.
b sweet Loy: Chaucer writes of his Prioress (Prologue, line 120): ‘Hire gretteste ooth was but by seint Loy’. ‘There has been much discussion’, writes Professor Hales (Folia Litteraria, p. 102), ‘why the good lady should swear by St. Loy of all the saints in the calendar, inasmuch as St. Loy, or Eloy—for Loy appears to be a clipped and more familiar form of the name Eloy, which is the French form of Eligius—is commonly known as the patron of “goldsmiths, blacksmiths, and all workers in metals, also of farriers and horses.” It is natural then that the carter in the Friar’s Tale should invoke God and St. Loy when his horse is struggling to pull his cart out of the slough, but what is his saintship to the Prioress or she to his saintship ?’
The answer which Professor Hales suggests is that the Prioress swore by St. Loy because, according to a story told of him by his friend St. Ouen, he had refused to take an oath even when pressed to do so by King Dagobert. To swear by a saint who objected to swearing would thus be swearing of a very apologetic kind, and Professor Hales even thinks that Chaucer meant that the Prioress never swore at all.
c ‘Oh dear, what can the matter be . . . Johnny’s so long at the fair/He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons/To tie up my bonny brown hair’.
d Thallassocrat: ruler of the seas. Here, ‘Jill’ refers to Britannia as the last queen of the seas.
e Dorian: the Dorian mode is a variant of the minor scale, traditionally used at the time for grave and solemn music.
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