The Anathemata
Mabinog’s Liturgy (continued)
Brow of Helen!
hide your spot that draws the West.
No! nor cast eyes here of green or devastating greya
are any good at all.
Had she been on Ida mountains
to whose lap would have fallen y’r golden ball, if not to hers
that laps the unicorn ?2
And you!
She has your hunter’s moon as well.
Vanabride! y’r cats come to her call.3
Whose but hers, the Lady of Heaven’s hen?4 and, as Durer knew, the butterfly is proper to her himation.5 b
David Jones notes
2 It will be remembered that Helen’s beauty was enhanced by the mole in her forehead and Aphrodite’s by the cast in her eye. There was also the blemish in one eye of the British Venus, Emma Hamilton, which took ‘nothing from her beauty’. And further that it was in the Ida range of mountains in Asia Minor that Aphrodite’s offer was accepted above those of Hera or Athena and that perfection of form won the apple and not riches nor even success in battle. Paris’ values were not at all bad. Further again, that only virgins can tame unicorns and that in some allegories the unicorn means our Lord.
3 Vanabride is Freyja. See note 2 to page 59 above.
4 By the European peoples, Greeks, Romans, Celts and Teutons, the wren, the smallest of birds, has been called the ‘king of birds’. Frazer cites the Scottish folk-rhyme:
’Malaisons, malaisons, mair than ten,
That harry the Ladye of Heaven’s hen.’
5 See Dürer’s painting the ‘Virgin with the Irises’. The madonna is in a red dress with a purple cloak upon the paler purple lining of which a butterfly has alighted. From the Doughty House Collection, now in the National Gallery.
additional notes
DJ note 2: as not everyone knows that story today, and as it is essential in order to understand DJ’s note, here it is, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Zeus held a banquet in celebration of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Eris, the goddess of discord, was not invited for her troublesome nature, and upon turning up uninvited, she threw a golden apple into the ceremony, with an inscription that read: ‘for/to the most beautiful’). Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They brought the matter before Zeus. Not wanting to get involved, Zeus assigned the task to Paris of Troy. Paris had demonstrated his exemplary fairness previously when he awarded a prize unhesitatingly to Ares after the god, in bull form, had bested his own prize bull.
Zeus gave the apple to Hermes and told him to deliver it to Paris and tell him that the goddesses would accept his decision without argument. As each goddess wanted to receive the apple, they each stripped off their own clothing and appeared naked before Paris. Each of the goddesses also offered Paris a gift as a bribe in return for the apple; Hera offered to make him the king of Europe and Asia, Athena offered him wisdom and skill in battle, and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife, Helen of Sparta (later to be titled Helen of Troy). Paris chose Aphrodite, a decision that ultimately led to the start of the Trojan war. Paris soon went to celebrate the marriage of Helen and Menelaus with his brother. They spent the night there, and Menelaus was called to Agamemnon, and thus Helen and Paris were left alone. In this time they made love, and Helen left Menelaus to sail to Troy with Paris, thus initiating the Trojan War.
a devastating grey: alluding to Athena’s epithet glaukopsis (‘grey-eyed’).
see also
semantic structures
glossary
b himation: a garment consisting of a rectangular cloth draped over the left shoulder and wrapped around the body.
comments
The reference in the previous paragraph to Mary leads the poet on to other important mythic women, Helen and Vanabride, whom he says are inferior to Mary in beauty of form and power over nature (unicorns, cats, wrens, butterflies).