The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
At ’Hallows2
by the shameful tree
where the molls pray the Hanged Man and his
Dolorosy Queen.a
At so many bliss’ d sites
what body knows to whom they all hallow’d be?3
David Jones notes
2 All Hallows, Barking-by-the-Tower.
3 ‘. . . there were many more churches there than they might wot to what man they were hallowed’ from a description of London in Snorri Sturlason’s twelfth-century Heimskringla, ‘The Saga of Olaf the Saint’.
additional notes
a From Stow: ‘Upon the hill (Tower Hill) is always ready prepared, at the charges of the city, a large scaffold and gallows of timber for the execution of such traitors and transgressors as are delivered out of the Tower, or otherwise, to the sherriffs of London by writ, there to be executed’. The molls pray to Christ and his mother (‘Stabat Mater Dolorosa’) for the unfortunates. ‘The molls I had in mind were the Sukey Tawdries of the Beggar’s Opera’ (DJ in Hague p. 186.)
comments