The Anathemata
Mabinog’s Liturgy (continued)
(for Elbe-men
blacken with red fire the east wheat-belt, and nothing through from Loidis,1 and elsewhere the situation is obscure and Nials gathering hostages2 gather also the white sign, and then on top of all and everywhere the blackening by grey rain for three successive years of rotten harvest).
Of Libera
perhaps from over the Sleeve
made confluent with the lucid gift
our naiads never fail to bring
parthenogenic from the rock
quick by high valleys, or
meandering slow and
by the wide, loamed ways, by sallowed way – b
sign the whole anatomy of Britain
with his valid sign
(out to where the nereids
bring in the shoal-gift: also Him, in sign).
No wonder
the proud column
leaned
to such a board
even before the Magian handling and the Apollinian word3
David Jones notes
1 Cf. Loidis Regio or Elmete, the British district in the West Riding. In my text the name ‘Loidis’ must be taken symbolically of any pocket of resistance in times of confused and shifting frontiers; I am not implying that ‘Ilkley moor’ was in fact grain-producing.
2 Cf. Nial of the Nine Hostages (whose last raid in the Severn area may possibly have been the occasion of the carrying off the future St Patrick), and such-like Irish raiders who, during the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, were to the west of Britain what Saxons were to the east and Picts to the north.
3 The ref. here is to Spengler’s terms, ‘Magian culture’ and ‘Apollinian culture’. The manual act of consecration in the Mass is of the former culture, while the words of consecration are generally in a language of the latter.
additional notes
DJ note 3: see my introductory note on Spengler.
a Liber: the Roman god of wine and viticulture.
b the syntax here is deliberately broken (anacolouthon) for the sake of assonance. To be read as if it is the naiads (nymphs of the streams) who ‘sign the whole anatomy of Britain’. The – represents a relative (‘which’ or ‘who’) or possibly ‘to’ (i.e. ‘in order to’). The water flows out to where the nereids (sea-nymphs) bring in the fish (a Christian sign) for fishermen.
comments
In the Mass, the wine (the second sign) is mixed (made confluent) with the water (the third sign).