The Anathemata
Mabinog’s Liturgy (continued)
She that makes the gillies of Bride of the februal Fires1
gillies of her Son
whose spouses we are all
as be naiad-signed.a
But first, careful that his right thumb is touching the letters of the writing, he must make the sign, down and across, beginning where the imposed, preclear-bright uncial reads, Exiit edictum a Caesare Augusto.2
Just where, in a goodish light, you can figure-out the ghost-capitals of indelible eclogarii, rectilineal, dressed by the left,
like veterani of the Second,3 come again to show us how,
from far side shadowy Acheronb and read
IAM REDIT . . VIRGO
. . . . IAM REGNAT APOLLO4
David Jones notes
1 Bride, Ffraid, Brig, Brigantia, Brigit, a kind of Celtic Vesta; her fire-rites became later associated with St Brigit of Kildare called ‘the Mary of the Gael’, Secondary Patron of All Ireland, whose feast is on February 1 the Eve of Candlemas. Romano-British dedications to the goddess Brigantia have been identified in London, Cheshire and Scotland. Bride is the accepted English form as in St Bride’s and the Bridewell.
2 The Gospel for the first Mass of Christmas begins with ‘A decree went out from Caesar Augustus’ and ends with ‘to men of good will’.
3 The Second Legion, called ‘Augustus’s Own’, had long-standing associations with us; it was stationed at Caerleon-on-Usk for 300 years, and at Richborough in Kent for 65 years. Its tradition must have been very ‘Anglo-Indian’ indeed.
4 See Virgil, Eclogue IV, lines 6 and 10, ‘Now also the Virgin returns’. ‘Now Apollo reigns’. I had especially in mind a palimpsest in which the large letters of Cicero’s De Republica are still plainly visible beneath the smaller, fluent, clear uncials of St Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms, owing to ineffective erasion. The seven existing MSS of Virgil are in evenly spaced, dressed lines of square or rustic capitals.
additional notes
The original text has an image facing this page: Exiit Edictum. Inscription in opaque water-colours, 1949.
DJ note 2: Luke 2:1-14. The birth of Jesus and the angel’s announcement to the shepherds.
a naiad-signed: baptised (i.e. signed by the sign –water– of the naiads).
b Acheron: a river in Hades over which Charon ferried the souls of the dead. The reference is to Virgil.
see also
See page 213 for more about Virgil’s Eclogue IV.
comments
The deacon is reading from a handwritten palimpsest in which the Gospel overlays a just-visible text of Virgil’s Eclogue IV. See here for a modern translation of the Eclogue.