The Anathemata
Mabinog’s Liturgy (continued)
since his Ledaa
said to his messenger
(his bright talaria b on)
fiat mihi.1
Thirty-three, back last early fall
since the hamadryadc
leaning from Pomona’sd wall
showed her ripe cherries
was first to keep the rubric’s word:
hic genuflectitur.2
David Jones notes
1 See the Mass of the Annunciation, March 25; terminating words of the Gospel: . . . fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum, ‘be it unto me according to thy word’.
2 Cf. the carol ‘Joseph was a-walking’ in which the cherry-tree genuflects to honour the unborn Son and for the pregnant Mother to eat; and the familiar rubric ‘Here all kneel’.
additional notes
DJ note 2: DJ misquotes. The Cherry-tree Carol begins ‘Joseph was an old man’.
a Leda, the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, was admired by Zeus, who seduced her in the guise of a swan. As a swan, Zeus fell into her arms for protection from a pursuing eagle. Their consummation, on the same night as Leda lay with her husband Tyndareus, resulted in two eggs from which hatched Helen (later known as the beautiful Helen of Troy), Clytemnestra, and Castor and Pollux (also known as the Dioscuri). Leda and the swan and Leda and the egg were popular subjects in both ancient and post-classical art.
b talaria: the winged sandals worn by Hermes or Mercury. An early Christian theological doctrine associated Hermes and the Logos. It is as Mercury, too, that Gabriel appears in one of DJ’s best known watercolours, The Annunciation in a Welsh hill setting.
c A hamadryad is a Greek mythological being that lives in trees. They are a particular type of dryad, which are a particular type of nymph. Hamadryads are born bonded to a certain tree — in this case, the Cherry-tree of the Carol.
d Pomona: the Roman goddess of fruit and nut trees.
comments
This paragraph refers to the Annunciation.