The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
How so be that
he sweared by the Tree of Chester3
by a certain Jessy Mowers and by the owls, with many darroes an’ dammoes, Dukes and Jews and b’ their god’s great athlete, Samson, and by Cassandra, as I take to be Welsh for Delilah, though these two mortal women seem scarce sorted, yet truly both was wheedlers.4
And by Our Lady of Penrice
the Welshman’s most Blesséd Sibyl5
David Jones notes
3 See
‘There was a Welshman there . . .
Now will I yield again . . .
. . . . . . by the Rood of Chester.’
Langland, V, 579-586, Wells’ trans.
4 The Lady of the Pool of London is here giving her cockney version of: Iesu Mawr, Great Jesus; y diawl, the devil; daro, colloquial for dammit; damnio, damn; Duwcs, colloquial for Duw; Duw, God; Samson, St Samson of Dol; Cas Andras, andras is colloquial for the deuce and cas means hateful.
5 Bishop Latimer writing to Thomas Cromwell in 1538 says: ‘I trust yr Lordshype wyll bestow our grett Sibyll to sum good purposse.’ And again ‘her . . . of Walsyngham . . . of Ipswych . . . with ther other too systers of Dongaster and Penryesse . . . They wold nott be all day in burnynge’.
additional notes
DJ note 1: Langland: Piers Plowman (written c. 1370-90) is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest works of English literature of the Middle Ages.
see also
semantic structures
malapropism
comments
With a string of malapropisms, Elen misinterprets the boatswain’s Welsh oaths.