The Anathemata
Mabinog’s Liturgy (continued)
seeking their Lady Wisdom where the columned Purbeck gleams, would find her under Pales’a thack, ad praesepem.1
If this, though sure, is but allegory
at all events
and speaking most factually
and, as the fashion now requires, from observed data: On this night, when I was a young man in France, in Gallia Belgica, the forward ballista-teams of the Island of Britain green-garlanded their silent three-o-threes2 for this I saw and heard their cockney song salute the happy morning; and later, on this same morning certain of the footmen of Britain, walking in daylight, upright, through the lanes of the war-net to outside and beyond the rusted trip-belt, some with gifts, none with ported weapons, embraced him between his fossa and ours, exchanging tokens.
And this I know,
if only from immediate hearsay, for we had come on this mild morning (it was a Green Christmas) back into the rear, two to three thousand paces behind where his front valIum was called by us, the Maiden’s Bulge, and ours, the Pontiff’s Neb, between which parallels,3 these things, according to oral report reaching us in this forward reserve area, were done,
BECAUSE OF THE CHILD.
David Jones notes
1 Cf. carol
In dulci Jubilo now sing we all I.O.
He my love my wonder lieth in praesepio
2 More usually known as ‘eighteen pounders’.
3 The allusions are reflective of names given to salient features of the opposing trench lines in the Richebourg sector in 1915; e.g. Gretchen’s Trench, Sally Trench, the Pope’s Nose, Sophia’s Trench and the Neb.
additional notes
a Pales: the god (or goddess, sources vary) of shepherds and their livestock. Thack, thatched roof. praesepe (correctly praesaepe) stall. The sense is that those who would be wise will find more true wisdom at the baby’s cradle than in the churches built of the finest Purbeck marble much favoured in the middle ages for the interiors.
comments
Although what the poet has said up to now may be allegory, it is certain fact that the exchange of fraternisation (on Christmas Day 1915) took place because he was there to witness it.