The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
well argued, that
makes clear, that re-distributes their middle1 for ’em—now where’s their premises? Ask of the strewed sea!2 But bless me you God’s dumb hound:a looks we’d best learn our trade anew, prove our back-sights by the Lombardb and gloss the Scot before we know our rutters.a By our own Nicomedy Barbara,3 they felt the full Thisness4 of that to each of the eight rhumbsd of the four quadrants, either side the nording lily-flower or my name baint Wadman!
David Jones notes
1 Cf. how in syllogistic debate the term called the ‘distributed middle’ is the term shared by the major and minor premisses, and is the ‘key-stone of the argument’.
2 Cf. Felicia Hemans’ Casabianca.
3 St Barbara, virgin and martyr, executed in Nicomedia in Asia c. AD 230. She was imprisoned and martyred in a fort or tower which may account for her being the patroness of armourers, gunners, siege-engineers and such like.
4 Cf. the term haecceitas, ‘thisness’, associated with John Duns the Scot and his principle of individuation, expressed in the well-known formula Haecceitas est de se haec, or, ‘Thisness is wot makes this ’ere itself.’
additional notes
DJ note 2: the poem is better known by its opening line: ‘The boy stood on the burning deck’.
a God’s ... hound: domini canis. The clerk must have been a Dominican.
b Lombard: Peter Lombard, twelfth century scholastic theologian.
c rutters: early pilot books and sailing directions (routiers).
d rhumb: a rhumb line is an arc crossing all meridians of longitude at the same angle, i.e. a path with constant bearing as measured relative to true or magnetic north.
comments
The gunner (Wadman, he who tamps home the wad of gunpowder) is being cheeky to the clerk after the unlikeliness of the victory.