The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
But to my tale
that I regaled my mason with—where were we?
Why yes:
Dartle and swift molestings of blackamoor Barbaries—as hate IMAGE.
Cast-pieces bare cooled off,
harquebuses1 fouled, arblests unstrung, jacks, gins and ratchesa at sixes and sevens, matches damped, reserve powder already using, ball very down, spring-stays and such like re placements not yet fitted, casualties scarce below, or by the board, when what next? Siphoned Greek fireb of the most Christian Doge’sc dago latins amiral’d of a vandal of a baptised Cypriot Jew from Damietta that was a camouflaged alcalif’sd mamelukee as by his algebras were a master of ballistics and that by the sorceries of Apollyon had the wind at will
it were the very Wicings!f
for a full two hours or three.2
Unequal from the first contact and deteriorating rapid. The mum and praying clerk as bended where was sighting of a’ all but crippled gun, straightens sudden and side-stepping the recoil, uncommon actual, sings out:
To prayers, all is won, all is won.
To prayers.
And up went their powder-bin, aft of midships. Then echoes the sergeant-gunner, broken on the deck:
To prayers all is wong
no matter where his commas come they’ve nowt bar concedo to that one. You old God’s arlot!h well argued, that
makes clear,
David Jones notes
1 Pronounce hark-we-busses, with the initial aspirate strongly sounded .
2 Cf. Song Henry Martin
‘Broadside on broadside and at it they went
For fully two hours or three.’
additional notes
a arquebus: an early type of gun of the rifle family.
arblest: a powerful type of crossbow.
jacks, gins, ratchets: various sorts of armament fittings.
b Greek fire: any of several flammable compositions that were used in warfare in ancient and medieval times. More specifically, the term refers to a mixture introduced by the Byzantine Greeks in the 7th century. It caught fire spontaneously and could not be extinguished with water.
c Doge: the chief magistrate of Venice or Genoa.
d alcalif: lavender-ese for ‘caliph’?
e mameluke: a slave owned by an Arabic ruler, usually one of an army of such slaves.
f Wicings: rhymes with ‘Dickens’. The familiar form ‘Vikings’ is not recorded in English before the 19th century.
g Cf. The Tempest, Act I, scene i line 39:
‘All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost!’
h arlot: a harlot in its Chaucerian sense of a male rascal or buffoon.
comments
After digressing on sirens/mermaids and Britannia, Elen resumes the story told her by the master of the Mary. They have a brush with pirates off the Barbary coast of North Africa and an attack from a Venetian vessel captained by a ‘vandal’ (the Vandals were a Germanic tribe who established a Vandal kingdom in north Africa, which was conquered by the Byzantine empire in 534 CE; they were noted for their Mediterranean piracy) in which the ship’s clerk (cleric, i.e. chaplain) fires a cannonball which blows up the attacker’s gunpowder store.
I think ‘IMAGE’ is capitalised because DJ is here thinking of religious image, which for the Christian is primarily the image of Christ.