The Anathemata
Mabinog’s Liturgy (continued)
In the middle silences of this night’s course the blackthorn
blows white on Orcop Hill.1
They do say that on this night
in the warm byres
shippons, hoggots and out-barns of Britain
in the closes and the pannage-runsa and on the sweet lawns of
Britain
the breathing animals-all2
do kneel.
Some may say as on this night
the narrow grey-rib wolves
from the dark virgin wolds and indigenous thickets of Britain,
though very hungry and already over the fosse, kneel content on the shelving berm.b
David Jones notes
1 In 1949 I talked with an elderly Herefordshire farmer who vouched for the blooming of the thorn. He added that people he knew averred that the cattle knelt but that that was some long time ago and outside his experience .
2 Cf. the Christmas carol:
‘Animals all as it befell
Who were the first to cry nowell.’
additional notes
DJ note 2: and, possibly more relevantly, see also Eric Gill’s wood engraving Animals All.
see also
see page 152 for more about the Orcop thorn.
semantic structures
glossary
a pannage-runs: pig-pastures.
b berm: a ledge or shelf between a boundary-ditch (fosse) and rampart.
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