Pethau

The Tutelar of the Place - David Jones

THE TUTELAR OF THE PLACE

She that loves place, time, demarcation, hearth, kin, enclosure,
site, differentiated cult, though she is but one mother of us all:
one earth brings us all forth, one womb receives us all, yet to each
she is other, named of some name other...

                                                       ... other sons, beyond
hill, over strath, or never so neighbouring by nigh field or near
crannog up stream. What co-tidal line can plot if nigrin or flax-
head marching their wattles be cognate or german of common totem?

Tellus of the myriad names answers to but one name: From this
tump she answers Jac o’ the Tump only if he call Great-Jill-of-the-
tump-that-bare-me, not if he cry by some new fangle moder of
far gentes over the flud, fer-goddes name from anaphora of far
folk wont woo her; she’s a rare one for locality. Or, gently she
bends her head from far-height when tongue-strings chime the
name she whispered on known-site, as between sister and brother
at the time of beginnings ... when the wrapped bands are cast and
the worst mewling is over, after the weaning and before the august
initiations, in the years of becoming.
When she and he ’twixt door-stone and fire-stane prefigure and
puppet on narrow floor-stone the world-masque on wide world-
door.

When she, attentively changes her doll-shift, lets pretend with
solemnity as rocking the womb-gift.
When he chivvies house-pet with his toy hasta, makes believe
the cat o’ the wold falls to the pitiless bronze.
                                             Man-travail and woman-war here we
see enacted are.
                                When she and he beside the settle, he and she
between the trestle-struts, mime the bitter dance to come.
Cheek by chin at the childer-crock where the quick tears drop
and the quick laughter dries the tears, within the rim of the shared
curd-cup each fore-reads the world-storm.
Till the spoil-sport gammers sigh:
                                                 Now come on now little
children, come on now it’s past the hour. Sun’s to roost, brood’s
in pent, dusk-star tops mound, lupa sniffs the lode-damps for
stragglers late to byre.
Come now it’s time to come now for tarry awhile and slow
                    cot’s best for yearlings
                    crib’s best for babes
here’s a rush to light you to bed
here’s a fleece to cover your head
against the world-storm
                        brother by sister
under one brethyn
kith of the kin warmed at the one hearth-flame
(of the seed of far-gaffer? fair gammer’s wer-gifts?)
cribbed in garth that the garth-Jill wards.

Though she inclines with attention from far fair-height outside
all boundaries, beyond the known and kindly nomenclatures,
where all names are one name, where all stones of demarcation
dance and interchange, troia the skipping mountains, nod
recognitions.

As when on known-site ritual frolics keep bucolic interval
at eves and divisions when they mark the inflexions of the year
and conjugate with trope and turn the season’s syntax, with
beating feet, with wands and pentagons to spell out the
Trisagion.

Who laud and magnify with made, mutable and beggarly
elements the unmade immutable begettings and precessions of fair-
height, with halting sequences and unresolved rhythms, search-
ingly, with what’s to hand, under the inconstant lights that hover
world-flats, that bright by fit and start the tangle of world-
wood, rifting the dark drifts for the wanderers that wind the world-
meander, who seek hidden grammar to give back anathema its
first benignity.
Gathering all things in, twining each bruised stem to the swaying
trellis of the dance, the dance about the sawn lode-stake on the
hill where the hidden stillness is at the core of struggle, the dance
around the green lode-tree on far fair-height where the secret
guerdons hang and the bright prizes nod, where sits the queen
im Rosenbage eating the honey-cake, where the king sits, counting-
out his man-geld, rhyming the audits of all the world-holdings.

Where the marauder leaps the wall and the wall dances to the
marauder’s leaping, where the plunging wolf-spear and the wolf’s
pierced diaphragm sing the same song ...

Yet, when she stoops to hear you children cry
                    from the scattered and single habitations
or from the nucleated holdings
                              from tower’d castra
                              paved civitas
                              treble-ramped caer
                              or wattled tref
                                           stockaded gorod or
                                           trenched barh
from which ever child-crib within whatever enclosure
demarked by a dynast or staked by consent
wherever in which of the wide world-ridings
                                   you must not call her but by that name
which accords to the morphology of that place.
Now pray now little children for us all now, pray our gammer’s
prayer according to our disciplina given to us
within our labyrinth on our dark mountain.
                              Say now little children:
Sweet Jill of our hill hear us
bring slow bones safe at the lode-ford
keep lupa’s bite without our wattles
make her bark keep children good
save us all from dux of far folk
save us from the men who plan.
Now sleep on, little children, sleep on now, while I tell out the
greater suffrages, not yet for young heads to understand:

Queen of the differentiated sites, administratrix of the demarca-
tions, let our cry come unto you.
                     In all times of imperium save us when the
mercatores come save us
               from the guile of the negotiatores save us from the missi,
from the agents
                                          who think no shame
by inquest to audit what is shameful to tell
                                                               deliver us.
When they check their capitularies in their curias
                                                       confuse their reckonings.
When they narrowly assess the trefydd
                                                               by hide and rod
                                                               by pentan and vent
by impost and fee on beast-head
                                                               and roof-tree
and number the souls of men
                                                          notch their tallies false
disorder what they have collated.
When they proscribe the diverse uses and impose the
rootless uniformities, pray for us.
                                                               When they sit in Consilium
to liquidate the holy diversities
                                                               mother of particular perfections
                                                               queen of otherness
                                                               mistress of asymmetry
patroness of things counter, parti, pied, several
protectress of things known and handled
help of things familiar and small
                                                         wardress of the secret crevices
                                                         of things wrapped and hidden
mediatrix of all the deposits                                                         margravine of the troia
empress of the labyrinth
                                                     receive our prayers.
When they escheat to the Ram
                                                                       in the Ram’s curia
the seisin where the naiad sings
                                   above where the forked rod bends
or where the dark outcrop
                               tells on the hidden seam
pray for the green valley.
When they come with writs of oyer and terminer
                                                                       to hear the false and
                                                                                determine the evil
according to the advices of the Ram’s magnates who serve the
Ram’s wife, who write in the Ram’s book of Death.
In the bland megalopolitan light
                  where no shadow is by day or by night
be our shadow.
Remember the mound-kin, the kith of the tarrengone from this
mountain because of the exorbitance of the Ram ... remember
them in the rectangular tenements, in the houses of the engines
that fabricate the ingenuities of the Ram ... Mother of Flowers
save them then where no flower blows.
                                                                                Though they shall not come again
because of the requirements of the Ram with respect to the world
plan, remember them where the dead forms multiply, where no
stamen leans, where the carried pollen falls to the adamant surfaces,
where is no crevice.
In all times of Gleichschaltung, in the days of the central economies,
set up the hedges of illusion round some remnant of us, twine the
wattles of mist, white-web a Gwydion-hedge
                                                                    like fog on the bryniau
                                                                    against the commissioners
and assessors bearing the writs of the Ram to square the world-
floor and number the tribes and write down the secret things and
take away the diversities by which we are, by which we call on
your name, sweet Jill of the demarcations
                                                                    arc of differences
                                                                    tower of individuation
                                                                    queen of the minivers
laughing in the mantle of variety
belle of the mound
                                                                                                 for Jac o’ the mound
our belle and donnabelle
on all the world-mountain.
In the December of our culture ward somewhere the secret seed,
under the mountain, under and between, between the grids of
the Ram’s survey when he squares the world-circle.
Sweet Mair devise a mazy-guard
in and out and round about
double-dance defences
countermure and echelon meanders round
the holy mound
                                                                                              fence within the fence
pile the dun ash for the bright seed
                                                                                       (within the curtained wood the canister
within the canister the budding rod)
troia in depth the shifting wattles of illusion for the ancilia for the
palladia for the kept memorials, because of the commissioners
of the Ram and the Ram’s decree concerning the utility of the
hidden things.

When the technicians manipulate the dead limbs of our culture
as though it yet had life, have mercy on us. Open unto us, let us
enter a second time within your stola-folds in those days -
ventricle and refuge both, hendref for world-winter, asylum from
world-storm. Womb of the Lamb the spoiler of the Ram.