The Anathemata

Mabinog’s Liturgy (continued)

(As near the sacred murexa  a length o’ cloth

as ever come out of a Silchester madder-vat!)

And moreover

patterned the colour of gorse-buds in forms as apis-likeb  as may be.

(Ischyros and all his Basils!c  what will they say of that at Caer Gustennin?)1 

Edged and lined throughout

with dappled vairs of marten and pale kinds of wild-cat:

It’s cold in West-chancels.

So, wholly super-pellissed of British wild-woods, the chrys- elephantined  column (native the warm blood in the blue veins that vein the hidden marbles, the lifted abacus of native gold) leaned, and toward the Stone.

David Jones notes

1 Cf. the purple chasuble embroidered with golden bees, worn at Byzantium as the exclusive prerogative of the imperial house. Caer Gustennin, keirr, ei as in height, gis-tén-nin; Constantinople .

additional notes

c as one might say ‘Great Caesar!’ (Greek ischyros=strong ; Basil from Greek basileus=king); but the linguistic context is Byzantium not Rome.

The metaphor of column for the queen’s figure is continued in the architectural use of abacus, the flat slab at the top of a column supporting the architrave.

comments

see also

semantic structures

glossary

a murex: a mollusc yielding the Roman sacred and imperial purple dye; the cloth so dyed.

b apis: bee (Latin).

d chryselephantine: overlaid with gold and ivory.