The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
The cook scalded
the carpenter in irons—and
weevil in the biscuits.
Through all fouls and fairs natural.
As through all the filthy airs
what’s work of transaccidentation, weft and warped of glamour.a
For he’ll took on as second mate a Sandyb from a port of call north of the Bodotria.c
Gup Scot!d
they be more sotted than the Welshery
of grammarie.e
Dont eye me captain
for I did but relate him as I were told, what I had of Ned Mizzen, what he had of the late Ben Backstay’s boozing partner as was in her that trip.
Pieced in parts with
and descanted upon of certain matters told me on the water stairs by a dark foreigner of Pelasgian fathering, got upon a Syro-Phoencian woman in the byes of Massilia that maze and warren toward the mast-forest in the keel-haws of the Old Port—whereabouts his tomb in that came quick from among the dead.1
Signed on ordinary seaman
at Corbilo-on-Liger,2 he that told me likewise of the peri- ploughing, or the like, long long long ago, of a field of waters he called the Erithrand3 though a long long long way from
Crayford Ness!
David Jones notes
1 Marseilles is traditionally associated with the later life and death of Lazarus and Mary Magdalene.
2 At the mouth of the Loire, a port connected with the Cornish tin-trade of pre-history and later. St Nazaire now occupies the site.
3 See the account of the coastline from the Red Sea to the coast of India known as The Periplous of the Erythraean Sea, written well on in the Christian era, but attributed to Antiquity.
additional notes
DJ note 3: A periplus is a manuscript document that lists the ports and coastal landmarks, in order and with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore. The cited document is available online in an old edition. A modern edition is also available, edited by Lionel Casson (Princeton University Press). The name of the sea refers to the whole area of the northwestern Indian Ocean, including the Arabian Sea.
b Sandy: Used as a generic term for a young fellow, a chap, especially a country man, a yokel. It was no doubt from this sense that was developed the 18th century English slang usage of the word to mean a Scotsman.
c Bodotria: Roman name for the Firth of Forth or the Forth-Clyde gap.
d Gup Scot! is the opening of John Skelton’s diatribe against the Scots. (John Skelton (c. 1460-1529), sometime English Poet Laureate and a virulent critic of the Scots, wrote a violent diatribe against them during the 16th century war between the two countries. His verse is characterised by appalling rhymes and vicious sentiments.) The best translation of ‘Gup’ would be a vernacular and offensive phrase meaning ‘Go away’; but I have no desire to risk these pages being blacklisted by net-nannies for bad language, the excuse of scholarly exegesis notwithstanding.
e grammarie: a beautiful word, combining the senses of grammar (=education) and gramarye, an obsolete word re-introduced by Walter Scott(!) from the French grimoire meaning magic or necromancy. Elen’s confusion between this word and ‘glamour’ above is particularly pleasing.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
a glamour: in its older meaning of magic, enchantment, spell.
comments
We leave the Welsh boatswain’s tales and return to the troubles of the Mary as related to Elen by the crew.