The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
by Gogmagog1
and the thirty-two fornicating
daughters of the Island o’ Britain,1 may the Loathly Worm have you, before you’ve so much as made the Norea on a favourable tide! I know your fund of amusements and you macaronib admirals is worse nor Trelleborg sea-kings.c
David Jones notes
1 The Guildhall images known as Gog and Magog, destroyed by fire in 1666 and in 1940, were known until the seventeenth century as Goemagot and his Trojan victor Corenius. Goemagot was the last survivor of the giants of Albion begotten by incubi on the ‘emperor Diocletian’s thirty-two wicked daughters’ that had come to Britain. Thus, it appears, is the Trojan legend fused with memories of an historic proscription of the Christian Church in our collective London myth. It will be recalled that our proto-martyr St Alban suffered under the Diocletian persecution early in the fourth century AD. As with the individual psyche, collective myth cares nothing for discrepancies of time or circumstance.
additional notes
DJ note 1: see here for another version of the story of the daughters of Diocletian.
a The Nore is a sandbank at the mouth of the Thames Estuary. It marks the point where the River Thames meets the North Sea.
c Trelleborg sea-kings: Vikings (though the earliest record of Trelleborg, the southernmost town in Sweden, is not until the 13th century).
see also
semantic structures
glossary
b macaroni: describing an 18th century class of young men who dressed very fancifully and affected foreign ways.
comments