The Anathemata

The Lady of the Pool (continued)

under

worked extra antique in the creature of stone

under.1 

At each adytuma  over

where under the fathering figures rest that do keep us all.

So it’s fabled

in Taffy’s historias and gests of Brut the Conditor—

romans2 o’ Belins, ’Wallons an’ Wortipors3 

agéd viriles4 buried under

that from Lud’s clay have ward of us that be his townies—

and certain THIS BOROUGH WERE NEVER FORCED,b 

cap-tin! !

And making to bear

bean-stalks, cherry-gardens, tended ’lotments, conservatories and stews of fish, pent fowl, moo-cows and all manner o’ living stock, such as, like us women, be quickened of kind: so God will.

Strong binders also

to make our loam the surer stereobatec  for so great a weight of bonded courses,

so it is said.

David Jones notes

1 Cf. the Roman sculptured stone believed to represent three nymphs found on the site of the priory of the Holy Trinity, Aldgate.

2 romans, accent on second syllable, but said as an English word, not as a French one.

3 Apart from the head of Brân the Blessed buried under the White Tower and chief protector of London and of the Island, in Welsh tradition, there were other hidden guardians and strength-givers: Brut the founder, Lud, Beli, Cadwallon, and Vortimer (Vortiporius) the ‘good’ son of the ‘bad’ Vortigern. By means of Anglo-Norman chroniclers and writers of romans and bruts, vestiges of this deposit became a permanent part of English lore, whether folk or literary; to be felt in later centuries as a kind of ground-swell and sometimes as a present wind influencing such a deep-draughted ship of burden as the Shakespeare or the high-superstructured Milton.

4 Pronounce to rhyme with ‘tiles’.

additional notes

DJ note 3: see the internet for Brân, Brut, Lud, Beli, Cadwallon, Vortimer and Vortigern. gests and romans are old French words for heroic and romantic tales. Brut (‘Roman de Brut’) is a 12th century verse literary history of Britain by the poet Wace written in the Norman language. It is based on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae.

d THIS ... FORCED: This sounds (and looks) like a quotation from the second world war, but I cannot trace the original in that form. The nearest I can get is the Churchillian exhortation (capitalised for emphasis, I guess) ‘Never yield to force’. And indeed London didn’t.

comments

Elen recounts how the fathering figures of legend both protect and fertilise the city, its smallholdings, gardens and livestock. They are the ‘strong binders’ which reinforce the loamy London soil.

see also

semantic structures

glossary

a adytum: innermost part of a temple, shrine (Latin).

c stereobate: solid mass of masonry.