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 South Wales Echo is the first piece of our "Monumental Docs" series. This series will work towards acquiring and organizing works that are not easily available on the web in order to preserve them as witnesses of important movements, places and people. As the series progresses, we intend to develop criteria to decide what ephemera to acquire, digitize, and save.
To that end, Gerard Casey was born in 1918 and died in October 2000. His poem, South Wales Echo, was first published in 1973 and was reprinted in his 1990 collection Echoes. We thank Louise de Bruin, Gerard Casey’s executor, for permission to reprint this poem. Click here to check out the piece.
SOUTH WALES ECHO
for David Jones
He does what is done in many places
what he does other
he does after the mode
of what has always been done.
What did he do other
recumbent at the garnished supper?
What did he do yet other
riding the Axile Tree?
—The Anathemata
Moving Towards the Southfacing Form Voices
Off
In
A Shadow Dance for Puppets on Stilts
SOUTH WALES ECHO
For
The Night Before All Souls’ Day
Foreword
‘A man in himself is a city, beginning, seeking, achieving and concluding his lfe in the ways which the various aspects of the city may embody…
—William Carlos Williams: ‘Paterson’
That a child, uncertain as children are of the boundaries of guilt and innocence, should in certain circumstances surrender to the sense of an invading darkness will occasion no surprise. That the darkness should establish itself as unchangingly central in the consciousness of the child and on into youth and maturity, that the uncertainty should remain unresolved, that for the man—even though perhaps one of a naturally sanguine disposition—the sun should remain centred in darkness. . . what then? Have we here entered the realm of the pathological? Yet to the man himself it may well seem that the boundaries between health and sickness are as uncertain as those between innocence and guilt.
However all this may be see the child—playing in his school playground, games broken into to chant in unison with his companions ‘bonfire night, bonfire night. . . ‘and excited talk of coming fireworks and guy. The eyes are bright, the voice clear yet these things veil an inward quailing before the necessary return home through the winter nightfall. His way will take him by the long wall of the City Gaol and the slums of Adam’s Down. And he knows—it is the talk of the City—that inside the Gaol are three men, of whom two are brothers, awaiting execution, condemned to death for murder. He believes—perhaps mistakenly, who knows?—yet he believes with his father and mother and many others in the City that one of the men is innocent. Was he not sitting, his hat beside him, in the Anchor at the time of the murder, before leaping up at the sound ofpolice whistles to rush into the street and run towards the Castle? He has heard too that another of the men has become insane—and for the child there is a peculiar slant of horror in the story going round the City that this man’s insanity grows from his knowledge of his companion’s innocence.
So the child walks home through the darkening streets each evening in growing apprehension and dread. At first there is some comfort in the bells sounding faintly across the sky from his school church. Yet as the evenings pass it seems to him there isfrar in the sound of the bells too, as, in remembrance of another death, another execution of three, they call to prayer.
He marks, on more than one evening, a woeful group moving at the pavement edges among the passers-by in City Road—an elderly man tremulously singing out of a gaunt countenance, a ragged girlchild holding out his cap beside him, a tall black man a little apart only occasionally attempting to join the singing. There is that about the haggard singer—an air of utter dereliction, a hint of the more than half crazy—that is never tofadefrom memory. ‘All the rzjf-raff of the world collects in Tiger Bay so the child has been warned. Who is the singer? Some veritable Is/imael—outcast and wanderer from the outer reaches of the world—dr/uing up from Tiger Bay even as another Jshmael might have turned up, derelict and half-crazy, at some dingy sea -port after the sinking of the Pequod by the White J4”hale? With a ghostly Dagoo in tow? Some late-born Odysseus after dreadful chance—‘and I only am escaped alone to tell thee’—cast up at the mouth of the Taff to follow his small white-faced Nausicaa to the grim palace in her home-city? The child never sees him again yet always sees him; shadowed away in the background, glimpsed in the eyes of any man, for the most part but a sleep and a forgetting, at a moment of stress or remembrance. Sees him more especially inwardly present in all those around the singing fool—those who hurry by ind(J’erent, mocking, jeering, worried, or compassionate.
In the mind of the child this trinity of threes becomes confusedly inter-related,’ later indistinguishably one. So at least memory with blurred edges symbolises in the mind of the man the initiation in the mind of the child of the still enduring darkness.
One may perhaps fancy—why should one not?—the presence among the crowds in the city streets, on the night before the execution, of a stranger—a man from another place—waiting and listening, pausing and observing, and as he watches he overhears snatches of conversation, words spoken or sung, voices too breaking in from the backward reaches of his own mind, from the remote past, from the future, senses unuttered pressures in those around him as part of the total complex of thoughts and feelings and reactions charging the atmosphere in that particular time and space. It is certain the child of our story sensed the presence of some such stranger—a stranger unknowing it may be of the things which had come to pass in the city in those days. Yet the child thought not: and in this writing attempts to re-echo the words the stranger heard.
The scene is outside the ‘The Anchor’ as evening moves on to closing time. Passages printed in italics are singing voices.
‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’
—John Donne
NIGHT CITY STREET SOUNDS
AND VOICES
late news
South Wales Echo
late night news
now get along home now Lizzie get along home
you’ll catch your death of cold in this wind
this night is no night
for the likes of you to be out in
echo
echo
there’s the paperboy there
can’t you hear him?
get the Echo
old bones at the fort of Didius
where the seaway crosses the river
have no ears
muffled crushed under many tramplings
they hear no voices
hear the bells of St Peter’s ringing
they received no provisions for the way
have long been deaf to bells
to braying mules to crackling flames
when the splashing wave hid the church
set where the streams empty
they heard no sound
when the northmen moved in the creek
they heard no prayer
listen
the bells of St Peter’s ringing
ringing to evening prayer
living men though short of time
have ears to hear. . . let them
listen to the praying of the bells
we can’t hear you
the wind is snatching the words
right out of your mouth. . . besides
we’re busy men with little time to spare
time is pressing
we must think of other things
of iron and coal and bank accounts
and then of course there’s silicosis
aye! it’s the dust they say that does it
from the assumptions of the grex
good Lord deliver us
when two or three are gathered together
in the name of the grex
make yourself scarce Tom
listen to the bells
withering in the wind
you remember Huw how Tim2
laughed like a blasted drain
at the stuttering old man in the billiard hail
who found his tongue to say
he’d heard the dogs of Annwn barking
in Parc Wyilt
bet y march bet y guythur
bet y gugaun cletyfrut
anoeth bid bet y arthur’
bright spearpower declines to fibrin
all that maddens and torments
all muck in the lees
what feb de sc in bedlam? .. . no
keep the old sumpety sarcage moving on the tump Tom
outwalk Uranus4
he’s out in the dark and cold
but he’s bigger and older than Lizzie
echo
echo
little Dai loves sheep
but Lord! he’s terrified of dragons
there’s Salvation Band down at the corner
playing Cwm Rhondda they are
a saint I said a saint you call ‘im
‘umble and meek you call ‘im?
the umbug of ‘ippo I call ‘im
‘is Jesus ‘as a bloody great snout. . . like ‘im
my Jesus is a snotty little tyke. . . like me
‘e’d ave knocked me down for tuppence he would
my old man said follow the band
and don’t you dare dilly daily on the way
eight frozen plutonian years
since the dark fell in spring sunlight
hidden still in blueblack fire the phoenix sings
of flashing ice and snow
frozen to the dark rock
and sparkling stone
in time we’re weary
aye! weary
even of the dead
it’s a bitter wind the east wind smells empty
Courage mes enfants le diable est mort
this night before cockcrow
dancing bones will be crushed
Nox est perpetua una dormienda
what no ears
for oblique hints from
let’s all off to the hop lads
and our Tudor Rose
our truest treasure
our red red rose
our dearworthy darling
our Rose of Sharon
and we’ll dance a jig to the melody
she so sweetly plays in tune
bubble up bubble up!
all got sixpence?
ain’t it grand
to be blumin’ well dead
and now I’ll not be lost in a maze
this sparkling stone will mark my days
aye won it up the valleys
on a ticket in the raffle
for the cracked chapel bell
but ‘e won’t last long
‘e’ll soon be with Dai central-’eatin’
mutton for ‘Arry the boxer7
it’s the dust they say that does it
let’s drop in at the Anchor
don’t y’know my dear
the only thing I’d like my dear
is a little bit off the top
a little bit off the top
late news echo echo
who is that calling
calling
calling
calling all down Adam’s Down
and now I’ll not be lost in a maze
this sparkling stone
will mark my days
let him call in vain
aye! Gentleman Jim the baby giant!
left ‘is ‘at at the Anchor
there’s talk ‘e may get off
but tomorrow they’ll all three hang
down they’ll drop
following the elephant
man-monster Merrick
with his broken neck
one’s gone clean daft they say
there’s the paperboy there
get the Echo
see what the Echo says
old Adam’s cold
frozen still
staring south
from the Castle Gate
the guileful deceptions of
what man can escape them
by what sprightly leaping
leaps he beyond them
snared in his blindness
slips he the noose scatheless?
sunny Jim ‘e was
unlucky Jim now
no tears for Priam?
even Achilles wept
what voice is this
echoing down the airwaves?
sightlesse he drownes
againe he strides the blast
in teares teares teares
echo echo
eyes darkened at Plwcca halog
sockets emptied at Cae budr
smoked out at the end of the way
at Crwys Bychan
bonfire night bonfire night
three little angels dressed in white
hush children
just been down Adam’s Street
seeing Mary Anne. . . she said quietlike
tomorrow is All Souls’ Day
so still and small she was
watching the candleflame
they’ve sent for the priest. . . she’s expecting too
now come along home children its time for bed
come along home to Daddy Howe’s down Sapphire Street
and I’ll tell you the story of Jack the Giantkiller
yes.. . and of blessed Michael the darkangel
bonfire night bonfire night
three little angels dressed in white
only a penny for the guy mister
not tuppence
not tuppence? are prices down then?
what matters tuppence or two and tuppence
Rawlins flung out his nets along the mudbanks
pulled out fish along the river
then.. . eyes thinned
forsook his nets and
proved combustible
outcapped Capper
at four and fourpence
what matter rising prices?
we the townsfolk meet the cost
we the indwellers pay the piper
I too am under orders
to carry provisions for the way
down Adam’s Street down Adam’s Down
poor Mary Anne. . . and a child in her womb
a wild night this for men at sea
in the morning the crowd will be waiting at the wall
staring at the wall
the wall without windows
save us from eternal death
save us from eternal death
in that day. . . dies illa
dies irae
dona nobis pacem
nights I dream
all ways lots of people about
out somewhere and
lost voices calling all ways
lost in a dream
no way home
much will be well
much manner of thing will be well
Roland’s horn will be heard
and grief-harbour’s joy shall touch them
at the time I’ll be easy
I’ll say quietlike
well lads its time take it quietly
come on lads its time
waiting
the lightning
the silence
the thunder
across Mockery Gap
fire burns
wind blows
sun flames
thunder claps
and death comes on at last
He hurls the dark
lux est perpetua una
give us rest
let light shine
fallen fallen light renew
who’ll head Corpus Christi
to the Keeper at the Gate?
freezing the black fire burns
ringed in threefold fire
the iceberg splashes the northern lights
astream to the bear and turning pole
gannet plunges
babble on Bert babble on
babble on in air
the day is dark
the wind has blown the sun
right out of the sky
but one more ancient than the sun
fireborn bright from the ancient waters
walks down Adam’s Down tonight
echo
echo
late night news
* * * * *
VOICES IN THE WEND SINGING
the bright the utter the still
we utter
bright
beyond bright
beyond bright
utter
beyond utter
beyond utter
still
beyond still
beyond still
blue-winged
flashing
flashing snow fire
we utter
beyond bright
beyond utter
beyond still
* * * * *
echo echo
mae bys Mari Ann wedi brifo
A Dafydd y gwas ddim yn iach
Maer baban yn y cryd yn crio
A’r gath wedi crafu Joni bach
there goes Tom again
singing for his supper
wonder where he comes from
sospan fach yn berwi ar y tan
sospan fawr yn berwi ar y llawr
a’r gath wedi crafu Joni bach
‘e’s a regular queer plain scatty
doesn’t know ‘oo ‘e is
and the whitefaced kid with staring eyes
white as chalk she is always with ‘im
dosses down Tyger Bay with Omed ‘amed
‘e’s big enough to knock spots off Jack Johnson2°
look at ‘im black as the ace of spades ‘e is
should ‘av been born in a rainstorm
‘e’s coming ‘e’s coming
‘is ‘ead is bended low
I ‘ear them angel voices calling
poor old Tom
poor old Tom
poor old Tom
Tom?
who the devil’s Tom?
Tom?
Tom’s Tom mister
who I am or what I am
who knows or cares
call me Ishmael. . . or Ulysses
he that poured libations to all the dead
come stormdriven back from that hateful stream
where powerless heads throng to the dark blood
flotsam I come
as to a place much longed for
as to one much prayed to
to the place where the streams empty
but I knew Tom of old. . . long ago
far back in the storm of the world-flow
he foresuffered all
humped trembling over Esau
bent in flamelight over Tilphussa’s spring
gulped the black water
all worlds consumed in everliving fire
And eyeless under Suhir
sang with Shiddeh his bahilowi
three blind mice three blind mice
see how they run see how they run
they all...
there’s tricky Tom Dolittle the artful dodger
in port after stormie seas
rejoycing with Sinbad the Sailor
Darkinbad sailing the Brightdayler
Rudolf Steiner on Pen-maen-mawr
echo echo
the valley spirit never dies
take Tom now old Tom Mope-along
he’s the joker in the pack
always rummaging in the dark
groping in odd corners
grumbling to himself things get lost
harking back
to old unhappy far-off things
things far away and long ago
Tom mooches south at sunrise
through the valley where the horses graze
heading for the northf acing form
lefthand touched by the brightshiner
he stills to the instant and sees
Alpha of the Cross invisible in light
but tiring
forgets
and nodding to the turn
lefthand shadowed slantwise crosses the stubble plough
edging the wood to Basho’s pool
dwinges muttering
babbles at the bear and turning pole
centres to the zodiacal light
faint foolscap glimmer
Hyades rising Jupiter setting
among the constellations of the heart
glances askance at the brightshiner
rising in the east
and mumbles
don’t you remember you said
he’d feed us
all jetsam from worldstorm
and lead us
and cracked skulls and rags
and crushed bones will dance
then slopes off north
to the breaking of the bread
and turtle soup
* * * * *
echo echo
Diawl Dai let’s get home
this wind’s whipping savage
right across the tidefields
enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey
God help us all every manjack of us
blow up scawind along Paumanok’s shore
I woke up in the dark last night
thinking
on every side
in the flaring dark
the paths tangle
beyond ken to scan
going to the incinerator
it started to cry
old nobodaddy’s kid
o ma ga ma ga
o pa gas pie zoo
please put a penny in the old man’s hat
and he’ll sing a song of
O I’m a sorrowful
sorrowful
very sorrowful
sweet fanny adams
move along there move along
the world’s on the move
death is now the phoenix nest
and the turtle’s
any bits or pieces
any silver
come on mister
you’ve the look of a stranger
let’s divide by thirty
sixpence for all souls eh?
look at all the lights in the windows
look
eyes in the wind
eyes in the wind down Adam’s Down
down Adam’s Down
down Adam’s
down
all right Lizzie
Mae bys Man Ann wedi gwella
A Dafydd y gwas yn ei fedd
Maer babi yny crud wedi tyfu
Maer babi yn y crud wedi tyfu
A’r gath wedi huno mewn hedd
this night is no night
fire born from the bright the ancient waters
burns down Adam’s Down tonight
hurry along there hurry along
but hurrying men have ears to hear
bells in the wind ringing
voices praying in the wind
voices failing in the wind
voices in the wind singing
sospan fawr yn berwi ar y tan
sospan fach yn berwi ar y llawr
a’r gath wedi crafu Joni bach
O Dai bach y sowjur Dai bach y sowjur
Dai bach y sow fur a chwt igrys e
mas
time now lads come on lads its time
echo
echo
late night news
white to red
along the wall
the crosses blaze
get along there get along
the world’s at the crack
won’t you put a penny in the old bloke’s hat?
echo
echo
London’s burning London’s burning
look yonder look yonder
fire fire
fire
fire
O bring me some water
koax
meg gimme the clock gimme the clock
no no put it back gimme Aiph’s button
that scream
that nameless unimaginable thing
out there
Judy judy judy jud ju ju ju d
Koax
THE WIND BLOWS ON IN THE DARKNESS
INCREASING TO GALEFORCE LATER
YOU HEAR THE SOUND OF IT
* * * * *
VOICES IN THE WIND SINGING
[Children’s voices
very blow wind blow wind blow
softly blow from the sea to this sea girt land
pp] blow wind blow wind blow
brekekekex
[Women’s voices blow wind blow wind blow
p] blow from the moon to this moonlit land
blow wind blow wind blow
brekekekex koax
[Men’s voices blow wind blow wind blow
f] blow from the stars to this starlit land
blow wind blow wind blow
brekekekex koax koax
[all souls blow wind blow wind blow
ff] blow from the dark32
blow from the dark
blow from the dark
blow wind blow wind blow
blow blow blow
koax
NIGHT NOW
ALL WAYS LOST NOW
NIGHT NOW NIGHT NIGHT
NIGHT DOWN ADAM’S DOWN
NIGHT
AND NIGHTLIGHT GLOW
NOTES
A certain familiarity with the history of Cardiff as far back as Roman times is assumed.
A number of echoes from other writings are integrated into the substance of the work. If these are read in their original contexts they provide any comment necessary for fuller understanding. Peter Finch, the only living poet whose work I have consciously used in this way, has generously given me permission so to use it. Friends have drawn my attention to some passages that seemed to them obscure. In this connection the following notes may be helpful.
Among the Somali a man under extreme nervous mental or spiritual stress may seek help by calling his friends and womenfolk to a ‘bahilowi’. They all meet at night in the open away from dwelling places and stand round him in a circle. He gives utterance to his suffering perplexity in a questioning chant. The others reply—sometimes singly, sometimes in unison—with comments, admonitions and exhortations accompanied by singing, clapping, and stamping.
A Somali—an old seaman who, when I knew him, had long been back in his own country—once told me how years before he had found himself stranded for a time in Tiger Bay. Friendless and in distress he had solaced himself one night by walking out onto a piece of waste land and holding a ‘bahilowi’—pretending some of his people were present. He had been, he said, ‘made whole’ in this way. This lonely ‘bahilowi’ seems to have been held somewhere in the desolate area I often played in as a child—and knew as ‘the tidefields’.
South Wales Echo might perhaps best be undestood as the result of a similar attempt to recover wholeness.
To the many ghostly friends
whose voices sound in the circle
an expression of gratitude is due:
more especially to Smart, Blake, Clare
and Tom O’Bedlam:
I knowe more than Apollo
for oft when hee ly’s sleeping
I see the starres att bloudie warres in the wounded welkin weeping.
1. Throughout the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. the prayer ‘from the fury of the Northman deliver us’ was commonly included in the litanies of the Church along the coastal regions of north-west Europe.
2. I remember walking with Huw Menai from Coity over the hill past Parc Wylit. There we were glimpsed from within, over a wall, by a group of women standing among trees. They greeted us with a wild outcry: clamorously babbling, laughing and screaming: ‘For upon all had come grief that might not be borne’. Huw started talking of the Dogs of Annwn. His formidable presence has been constantly with me in this attempt to restate our theme that afternoon as we talked the sun down the sky.
3. ‘a grave for Mark, a grave for Gwythur
a grave for Gugaun of the ruddy sword
not wise (the thought) a grave for Arthur’
The Black Book of Carmarthen
Trans. Sir John Rhys.
In Celtic Myth ‘the wild land of hell’ lies, frozen and dark, to the north.
4. During one revolution of Uranus earthborne Tom might circle the sun fourscore odd times even as Uranus achieves all but three completions of his orbit in one plutonian year. Each instant in all such gripped circlirigs within the structured order of the cosmos holds hidden within itself an end and a beginning: all the possibilities of a death and a birth into. . . but to step outside these circles, to follow Tom on this walk, one must needs buy stout boots such as were stitched by Master Jacob at Gorlitz.
See also Fludd’s geocentric picture of the universe reproduced by Otto R Frisch on page 11 of his work The Nature of Matter.
5. ‘this stone is sparkling white and red like a flame of fire. . . a flawless mirror in which all things live. . .‘ see The book of the Sparkling Stone by Jan van Ruysbroeck, chapter 4.
Compare also Ezekielio:i; Isaiah54 ‘in dense darkness thy stainless beauty sparkles’. Hindu Hymn to The Destroyer.
6. Tophet: ‘the beating of the drum’.
‘and this, as they say, was the manner of sacrificing in Tophet. . . The statue of Moloch was of brass, hollow within, with its arms extended, and stooping a little forward. They lighted a great fire within the statue, and another before it. They put upon its arms the child they intended to sacrifice, which soon fell into the fire at the foot of the statue, putting forth cries . . . To stifle the noise of these cries they made a great rattling of drums, that the spectators might not be moved with compassion...’
Cruden’s Concordance.
7. Tudor Rose—a popular streetgirl
Dai central-’eatin’—the Devil
‘Arry the boxer—the undertaker.
Such humorous sobriquets are common in Wales.
Daddy Howe: an old man. Well known for his kindness and integrity. He received into his home several orphaned children. (See also Exodus 24: 10).
8. See The Elephant Man and other Reminiscences by Sir Frederick Treves 1923. (T L S 9th June, 1972 page 655). Merrick known as the Elephant Man lived by exhibiting himself at freak shows—‘tuppence a time’. He is described as ‘the most disgusting specimen of humanity ... a frightful creature that could only have been possible in a nightmare. . . There emanated from him a sickening stench... what made his fungoid deformity perhaps even more appalling were those portions of the body not invaded: the left ear perfcct, the left arm and shoulder delicate as a woman’s, the genitalia normal as any man’s. . . his only idea of happiness was to creep into the dark and hide . . . he was a gentle affectionate and lovable creature free from any trace of resentment . . . the weight of his head was so great that he could only sleep by raising his knees and resting his head against them. . He often told Sir Frederick Treves the surgeon who befriended him in the last years of his life that he wished he could lie down ‘like other people’. One afternoon, in April 1890, he was found lying back on his pillow ‘like other people’. He was dead -. his neck broken by the weight of his head.
8b. The sentence on John Rowland one of the brothers convicted of murder was commuted shortly before execution to detention at His Majesty’s pleasure in Broadmoor.
9. old Adam’s cold an early keeper at the Castle Gate was named Adam. He acquired landrights on the East Moor which lay between the ‘warths’ or tidefields along the Severn Estuary and the Castle. He sent his sons to herd his cattle and swine on the moor which became known as Adam’s Down. This Adam became indentified in my imagination with the First Adam.
10. a multitude of men of all nations has passed the point of no return. Then silence. In deepening anguish and despair after long waiting those left behind join in prayer for tidings: see the opening chorus of elders in Aeschylus’ The Persians (lines 107-114).
11. ‘but ever-ageing time teaches all things’. (See Prometheus Bound trans. Weir-Smyth, lines 980-983). Plotinus, who accepted the possibility of reincarnation, in speaking of ‘the sorrows of Priam’ (Enneads 1: 4) echoes the taunt of Hermes to Prometheus: ‘alas? that is a word unknown to Zeus.’ ‘the one and only transmigrant is the Supreme Spirit’ (Shankara). Plotinus shared this view.
12. public executions were carried out for many years at Crwys Bychan:
the Little Cross in Cae budr: ‘the defiled field’. The area was known as Plwcca halog: ‘place of pollution’. Here the way from the forth entered the town to run along the old Castle Road to the Big Cross. There it joined the ancient via maritima and swung west to cross the river beyond the south wall of the Castle. Before the Castle Gate another way branched south along St Mary’s Street to the mouth of the river and the Church which was swept away by a tidal wave in 1607.
From early times these crossing ways carried the flows of human movement towards and away from the Castle. To venture too far from a stronghold brings danger. Men sailing from the estuary in the Nova Terra would, after a long voyage, come to a cold end under the shining of the Southern Cross: a constellation hidden below the horizons of their northern latitudes. And many an ocean-wanderer moving north under the ever-circling, ever-watchful, southward- gazing Bear reached an end likewise ‘without fire, without bed.’ Yet midgetina movements between the river-mouth and Castle—an impatient turning from his nets, or a careless running away from his hat—might initiate for a man, whether with or without fire, even darker farings.
13. Rawlins White, a fisherman from the Estuary, was burned at the stake before the Castle Gate in the reign of Mary under the revived statute de heretico comb urendo.
Richard Capper suffered some years earlier.
The sheriff recorded the cost of the burning to the townsfolk at four and fourpence. A century earlier ropes for public hanging close to the present site of the Blue Anchor were priced at two pence.
14. Compare Matthew 24: 27.
Mockery gap: refers to the yawning gap of ‘Chaos’
which came into being on the separation of heaven and earth:
see Hesiod’s Theogony line i i6 foil.
15. at this time in Cardiff, each year at the Feast of Corpus Christi, processions of children would converge from all quarters of the city at the south end of St Mary’s Street and walk up to the Castle Gate—there to enter the Castle grounds and receive the Eucharistic Blessing. Doubtless for this reason some hint of the numinous attached itself for me to the way up to the Gate, and the endless coming and going of people there shared in the significance of these processions.
I remember, as a child, late one evening becoming—in some way I cannot now account for —lost among the ever-moving crowds in St Mary’s Street. I was caught up among those strange anonymously hurrying crowds—crowds hurrying, as it seemed to me, nowhere. . . with growing inward panic I hurried too—hoping to reach the Castle: a central and known thing. The street then was to me endless. I did not reach the Castle and after some time I thought despairingly I was moving in the wrong direction. At that I turned and ran back and again failed to reach it. In this way I ran to and fro several times. Gripped by a sense of nightmare I could not ask for help. . . at last tears caught the attention of a friendly stranger who quickly pressed a sixpence into my hand and saw me safely on to a tramcar for home.
It was with a shock of strangely significant repetition that years later I read Dostoievsky’s account of his encounter with the child in the Haymarket.
16. ringed in threefold fire In the Christian tradition: baptismal, pentecostal, apocalyptic. From the point of view of another tradition light will be thrown on this passage by reference to the translations from the Rigveda and notes in Macdonell’s Vedic Reader. Of more especial interest are the hymns to Agni, Apam napat, and the Funeral Hymn. Agni, the Sacred Fire burning at the heart of all the worlds appears as threefold light in the beggar at evening to command Ratri, Night, to ‘bring the world to rest’. One of the functions of Agni, who is born of the celestial waters and appears in the east, ‘clothed in lightning’, ‘widely shining forth to all men’, is to conduct the dead by the paths of the ancestors to the highest heaven, where they are united to bodies ‘free from disease and frailties, complete and without imperfections’.
16b. A friendly aside to two distinguished contemporary British philosophers.
17. Compare Isaiah 6:3.
One thinks too of the music heard by Boehme ‘shortly after midnight’ on November 21st, 1624.
18. Mae bysMariAnn wedibrifo—
Mary Anne’s finger is cut
David is not well
the baby is crying in the cradle
and puss has scratched little Johnny
19. sospan fach yn berwi ar y llawr—
the small saucepan is on the fire
the big one on the hob
and puss has scratched little Johnny...
20. During this period Jack Johnson, the great American Negro boxer, (at one time heavyweight champion of the world) was held in high honour in South Wales.
21. the Somali name Shiddeh means ‘born in pain’ Shiddeh sings under Suhir—the star Sirius—believed to exert a baneful influence. See Jacob Boehme Signatura Rerum chapter xvi ‘on the weeping of Adam in Esau.’
22. Steiner spoke at Pen-maen-mawr of gigantic elemental presences locked up in the planetary structures under his feet.
23. Basho’s pool Suzuki in his commentary on the Lankavatra Sutra speaks of the shadow dance as ‘reflected on a screen of eternal solitude and tranquillity . . the Mahayanist eye is always gazing at the screen itself...’ The whole passage from which these words are taken will be found one of intense interest for our theme.. . but for Tom a sudden flaming word has, more decisively than for Yeats at the crossways, broken into the ancient reverie.
24. Compare Revelation.7:2. The Catholic Requiem Mass for the Dead.
25. ‘0 mother earth, mother earth,
0 Father, Son of Earth, Zeus’
compare Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Maidens lines 885-901.
26. sixpence for all souls
Compare Dostoyevsky’s account of his visit to the Haymarket in 1862: ‘In the Haymarket... I saw a girl of about six, no older, all in rags. . . no one paid any attention to her. . . she walked along with a look of such sorrow, such hopeless despair. . . she kept shaking her head from side to side as if discussing something . . . I offered her sixpence. She took the silver coin, then shyly with timid amazement, looked me in the eyes and suddenly took to her heels, as if afraid I would take the money back from her.’ (See also Luke 24:18).
27. Mary Anne’s finger is better
David is in his grave
the baby in the cradle has grown
the baby in the cradle has grown
and puss is asleep...
28. Heraditus: ‘fire when it has advanced will judge and convict all things’.
c.f. Hcraclitus Fragments xx; xxii; and xxvi
29. Voices singing in chorus from inside ‘The Anchor’.
‘the big pot is boiling on the fire
the little one on the hob
and puss has scratched little Johnny again
O little Dai the soldier
little Dai the soldier
little Dai the soldier
Look! the tail of his shirt is out. .
Compare the pair Dadeni or ‘Cauldron of Rebirth’
30. the prototypes of Punch and Judy have been seen as—in an old mystery play—Pontius Pilate and Judas. See Revelation 21:6.
31. the ghosts of vivisected frogs respond in chorus from the underworld. Compare Aristophanes’ The Frogs in which the frogs croak in time to the oar- strokes of Dionysus as he rows perforce across to Hades: croaking ‘faster faster’...
32. the dark beyond the stars: ungrund equally to both Great Bear and Southern Cross.
Compare Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes lines 854-860
‘as you sigh dear friends
as you weep
beat with your hands
oarstrokes in the wind across Acheron
speeding the black ship unknown to Apollo
unknown to the sunlight
to the dark shore
that welcomes all’ |
