University of Virginia Library

V. THE LADY OF THE POOL

124.1 "Did he meet Lud at the Fleet Gate?" the old Pelasgian

The man who may have met Lud is an archetypal captain-figure. At the start of this section of the poem, he emerges as a Mediterranean captain listening to Elen Monica's monologue in late-medieval London. The marginal gloss identifies this captain with a Phoenician captain called "the old Pelasgian" (107) and with an "old" Greek captain called "the bacchic pelasgian" (173).

• 124.1 "Did he meet Lud at the Fleet Gate?" Prelude 1
• 124.4 "Did he walk the twenty-six wards . . .?" Prelude 2
• 125.15 "Was already rawish crost the Lower Pool . . ." Comp. of Time
• 127.3 "From the Two Sticks an' a' Apple . . ." Comp. of Place

The designation, on page 124, of Preludes one and two appears to reflect the usage of St. Ignatius Loyola in The Spiritual Exercises. There the topic of meditation for a particular day is introduced by "the first prelude", recalling

the history of the subject, and "the second prelude", locating the subject in a specific place. The emphases on time and place in the Ignatian preludes are combined in each of Jones's preludes, which locate this section of the poem in London and, by reference to "the White Mount" and "the twenty-six wards", implicitly designate the time as post Norman Conquest. Furthermore, the Ignatian emphasis on time and place, respectively, corresponds to the subsequent glosses designating parts of the poem as "Composition of Time" and "Composition of Place". The Ignatian terminology and emphasis on time and place suggest a parallel between the opening of "THE LADY OF THE POOL" and the commencement of meditation in the Ignatian mode. This section of the poem, after all, is an uninterrupted spoken meditation by Elen Monica, the Lady of the Pool, who is roughly Loyola's contemporary. And there may be more extensive correspondences with the Ignatian form of meditation, for the entire poem is a sort of meditation. As David Jones writes in his preface, it concerns "matters of all sorts which, by a kind of quasi-free association, are apt to stir in my mind at any time and as often as not 'in the time of the Mass'" (31).

The four lines in the text are marked with two vertical lines in the margin. The gloss cryptically indicates that the theme of this passage is the first subject of Elen Monica's long monologue and therefore one of the principal themes of the poem. In the passage, Mary is pre-typified by Iphigeneia whose sacrifice placated Artemis, against whose will the Argive fleet could not set sail for Troy (see Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis). Iphigeneia's willingness to be sacrificed corresponds to Mary's fiat mihi. Furthermore, Mary resembles Helen, the expedition's formal cause, or reason for setting out. Early in the poem, Helen is called "the margaron" or pearl (56), an image recalling Matthew 13:46 and Troilus and Cressida II, ii, 81-83, both of which concern merchants setting out to acquire a 'pearl of great price'. In The Anathemata, the merchant is chiefly evocative of Christ. Mary's correspondence to Helen at the finish of the expedition suggests Mary's symbolizing the bride of Christ—bride because liturgically equated with redeemed mankind. Alluding to this correspondence later in the poem, Jones writes of Christ and Mary, "He that was her son / is now her lover" (224). In the four lines quoted above, Mary is also likened to the "pretty maid" of the nursery rhyme who tells a young man, "My face is my fortune." Because Mary symbolizes mankind, her face is our fortune—her beauty symbolizing the compliancy of will that made possible the Incarnation. Later in the poem, her magnanimity is equated with her tota pulchra, which exceeds the physical beauty of Helen with her blemished brow (194).

128.13-14 "Or may I never / keep company more . . ." Here L of P starts her long digression about lovers etc.

Elen Monica has been listing the churches of London and will resume listing them on page 160. The intervening digression about her lovers will itself be interrupted by several digressions.

137.3* "His beard full of gale." Chaucer in many a tempest had his beard ben shook

The poem alludes to the Shipman's portrait in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, line 408, which is quoted in the gloss.

Elen Monica, alluding to Chaucer's Prologue (lines 7-8), designates the day the medieval ship Mary arrives in port as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Virgin says fiat mihi. The Mary is here a manifestation of the archetypal ship in which every man sails. See 128.9-12 and 53.11 above.

139.6-7 "I saw water / coming from the right side . . ." a latere dextro

The poem here refers to a hole in the Mary's hull. The poet's Latin gloss is from the "Vide Aquam", sung by the priest during Paschaltide at the sprinkling of the faithful with holy water: "I see water going out from the temple, from the right side, and all who come to that water are saved." The image of water from the temple, deriving from Ezekiel 47.1, implies that the medieval ship typifies the Church and corresponds to the physical body of Christ, from which water came after he was pierced with the spear.

140.5-6 "vancurrers of snow / and thunder noons of yallery night" 31.1.53

The word "yallery" is from the song "The Six Dukes". The word "vancurrers" evokes the "vaunt-couriers" of King Lear III,ii,5. The numbers in the gloss seem to indicate the date 31 January 1953, possibly a day on which David Jones was reading and glossing the poem.

141, bottom margin. The Captain himself speaks only on p 141, when, in reply to her direct query: 'storm or hurricane?' he answers: 'For certain this barke was Tempest-tost?" (DJ letter to DC written round about March 12th 1953)

Why David Jones puts his gloss in the form of a question is not clear. In a letter of 12 March 1953 to Desmond Chute, he conveys this information without reservation.

     

146.10 "how this Maudlin 1 gilt 2 streamers 3 . . ."	1 adj
	2 noun
	3 verb

148.5 ". . . we know our rutters." from routiers

"Rutters" is not a Cockney pronunciation of routiers. The French word, meaning nautical guides or track-charts, was adopted by the earliest English

writers of pilot-books, which they called 'rutters'. Rutter, in this sense, is a well-established English word, though unrecognized by the O.E.D. See David Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times (1958), p. 13.

• 149.6,10,15 "The sawbones"
• "The Redriff mate" subs?
• "The boatswain, from Milford," [Jones's underlining]

All three underlined nouns may be the subjects of their respective sentences, in which the predicate "was" is understood. They may also be prepositional objects depending on the words "Without mention of the usuals as" (lines 3-4). The ambiguity is the reason for the question mark in the gloss.

149.19 [as tho' he] "were dozing" [Jones's underlining]

150.1 [as tho' he] "Had made fast"

150.4 seque] "Had conned their ship"

The three glosses above appear, as bracketed, before the phrases in the text. The glosses indicate what should be evident without them, that the phrases in the text are to be understood as introduced by the words "As though: / he" (149.17-19). Each phrase begins a simile by which Elen Monica describes the Milford boatswain's antique comparisons.

150.16* "south-south-westing" sow-/ sow

Here what seems a gloss indicating proper pronunciation is actually an emendation that has not yet been incorporated into the poem. In a list of corrigenda compiled "For Jack & Maire Sweeney" in 1962, David Jones writes, "Page 150, line 16, for 'south-south-westing' read sow'-sow'-westing."

150, note 3 "A phenomenon reported by Marco Polo." Cf. Marco Polo, Ch. XXXIII, trans H. Murray, 1844.

Here again, what seems a gloss is actually a correction not yet incorporated in the text. David Jones makes this clear in his list of corrigenda compiled for the Sweeneys. In the poem, Elen Monica expresses disbelief ("what a carry on!") in the Welsh boatswain's claim of "recent instances of islands that be males and females". What she reacts against is not, however, the Welsh boatswain's report (or that of Marco Polo), but her own confusion of the Welshman's story. Marco Polo reports that off the Indian coast is an island called "Male" on which men live who, for three months each year, visit their wives on an island called "Female". See The Travels of Marco Polo, Hugh Murray, tr. (1844), Part III, ch. xxxiii, p. 279.

151.3 "the modrern rig" [Jones's underlining] stet /, tho' modren is the commoner corruption.

The word "modern" is pronounced by Cockneys sometimes as spelled in the text and more commonly, as spelled in the gloss.

154.12 "'now-opserve-you-close-nows-cabden'" Welsh for Captain

Ellen Monica is mimicking the accent of a Welsh boatswain.

154* Of Noble Race was Shenkin

This phrase, written along the outer margin, is the first verse of an eighteenth-century comical song concerning typical Welsh claims to the noble ancestory. David Jones seems reminded of the song by the Welsh boatswain's claiming Trojan and Roman antecedents. The lyrics of the song appear in Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: Pills to Purge Melancholy II (London, 1717), p. 172.

155.10 "Gup Scot!" cf Skelton

Elen Monica's exclamation derives from the words "Gup, Syr Scot", which appear in line 109 of Skelton's poem, "Agaynst the prowde scottes clatterynge, / that neuer wyll leaue theyr tratlyng." Elen Monica is accusing the Scotsman aboard the Mary of speaking excessively about "grammarie" or magic. "Gup", an exclamation usually directed to horses, here roughly means 'get out'.

The poem refers to Mary's co-redemptive presence at the Passion of her son. The word "anamnesis", Greek for 're-calling', can mean 'a remembering' but is used liturgically to express the eucharist's 'making present again' the person of Christ and the effects of his Passion. The gloss is therefore appropriate here, where the text, employing imagery from Isaiah 63, refers to the crucifixion. But the word, here and below (164.8-12), seems primarily to designate the aesthetic effect of a special kind of remembering. James Joyce's use of the term 'epiphany' involves a similar transposition from liturgical to literary modes. David Jones probably derives his understanding of "anamnesis" from Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1947), pp. 242-247. Jones owned three copies of the book at the time of his death; one of them, obtained on 3 August 1948, is heavily annotated.

160.21 "At the Fisher with the ring, 'pon Cornhill" Comp of Place

164.8-9 "best let sleepers lie / and these slumberers" anamnesis

Elen Monica is recalling, and praying for, legendary Brute and his fellow voyagers from Troy who sleep in the ground of London, which was thought to have been first established as 'Troy Novaunt'.

165.15 ". . . we carry out Chloris as dead as a nail." cf p 190 [= Flora

Elen Monica is referring to the folk custom, originally a fertility ritual, of carrying out the spirit of vegetation, dead at summer's end but destined

to be reborn in the spring. Her emphasis here on Chloris's death is appropriate to Elen's speaking during the last days of summer at the end of the Middle Ages. The poet's gloss refers to a later point in the poem where Chloris is called on to witness the symbolic blossoming of the cross in a springtime that is at once seasonal, cultural and metaphysical. This blossoming, while prefigured by fertility ritual, is of a significance not fully comprehended by pagan rites. The voice of the poem asks, The gloss on page 165 makes it clear that Chloris and Flora are alternate names for the same nature-deity, associated in this passage with proverbial Aunt Flora.

166.1 "'T will soon be on us, cap'n" Episode w-wind

It is the winter wind that "will soon be on us". Elen Monica's original intention in speaking to the Mediterranean captain is to warn him of the imminence of winter (see page 125). Here she concludes her digressions and resumes her original purpose. The warning she gives (lines 1-10) is called an "Episode", possibly with reference to the action framing choric expression in Greek drama, for the action of warning is the dramatic context of her monologue. Furthermore, the root meaning of the word 'episode' is 'a coming-in' (epieisodion). This may suggest the return to her original purpose which brings to an end the many and long excursions that are her monologue.