The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
annals and in the modern findings of John Whethamstede a great booker an’ librarian
a legist an’ an Hertford man
this twice in his abbacy most able
a master of architects
and a’ impugner of fable.1
But Quo warrantoes?
here’s no surety
for these learn’d be ever apt to
burn phoenixes and are like to bury the cat that has much
mousing in her yet, being but six times dead. I’ld as soon take
tale of Rose the dish-seller2 that meddles Maid Marian in
the Lay of Robin, with Luke’s lay, Then quoth Maria . . .3
What odds, says Rosie, by Martha Betanny,a these twain sort
as platter and pan and be as scarfedb as keel and stem, in that
both lays ben ’gainst pretty sitters
. . . which were close exegesis
and God’s verity!
Howsoever, by all this and these this Welshook Milford bo’s’n sweared—as though it were matter greatly laden or of any moment—by these he declared, so help him God,
how at this Welsh wave-faring
David Jones notes
1 John of Whethamstede in Hertfordshire, an administrator and builder and twice abbot of St Albans, inaccurately known as the ‘first opposer of Geoffrey of Monmouth’ and the first ‘directly to oppugne the history of Brute’.
Whethamstede’s many activities included (c. 1440) the writing of the Granarium de Viris Illustribus in which Geoffrey’s Historia is dismissed as totally fictitious. But Newburgh and Cambrensis had said as much in Geoffrey’s own century without in any way affecting the continued popularity of the Historia from its first publication in 1139 to the seventeenth century.
2 Cf. ‘. . .Rose the dish-seller
Godfry of Garlickhithe and Griffen the Welshman
And an whole heap of upholsterers . . . ’
Langland, V, 439-441. H. W. Wells’ trans., 1935.
3 Cf. Da cwaeth Maria: Min saule mersed drihten and min gast geblissode on Gode minen haelende. Twelfth-Century English version of Luke I, 46.
additional notes
DJ note 3: ‘And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, [47] And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour’.
a Martha Bettany: Martha of Bethany together with her sister Mary, are asssociates of Jesus who are mentioned a number of times in the Gospels.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
b scarf (verb): to overlap two pieces of wood so as to make a strong joint.
comments
Elen is also sceptical of John of Whetmamstede’s debunking of Geoffrey. She has no time for academics. She would just as soon believe the simple confusions of Rose the dish-seller, in that both Maid Marion and Mary are on the side of the poor (Mary’s Magnificat continues ‘...[53] he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away’ — just like Robin Hood.)