David Jones's 'The Hunt' and 'The Sleeping Lord': The once and future Wales
In 1954 David J ones began an autobiographical talk on the Welsh B.B.C. with this bit of history:
About eight hundred years ago a prince of Aberffraw defeated his Welsh and English enemies at Colehill, between Flint Sands and Halkin Mountain.
Holywell, where my father, James Jones, was born, is about three miles north-west of the battle-site. The birth of a son to John Jones, Plastrwr, Treffynnon, in 1860 would indeed seem a matter having no apparent connection with the battle won by the Great Owain Gwynnedd in 1149. But however unapparent, the connection is real enough; for that victory symbolized the recovery of a tract of Britain that had been in English possession for well over three centuries. Had that twelfth century recovery not occurred the area around Holywell would have remained within the Mercian zone of influence. In which case its inhabitants would centuries since have become wholly English in tradition, nomenclature, and feeling. Had local history taken that course, it follows that I should not now be speaking to you at the invitation of the Welsh B.B.C., as an artist of Welsh affinities. You see by what close shaves some of us are what we are, and you see how accidents of long past history can be of importance to us in the most intimate sense, and can determine integral things about us(1)
I begin this brief paper with a long quotation because this passage so aptly delineates the poet's feeling for and understanding of his Welsh heritage. Jones believed his Welshness one of the most integral things to him and described himself as an 'artist of Welsh affinities'. This paper explores Jones's connection to his Welsh heritage and how his Welsh affinities are manifested in his art, particularly in his poems 'The Hunt' and 'The Sleeping Lord'.
'By what close shaves some of us are what we are...' James Jones, David's father, left Holywell, the birthplace so significant to his son, and went to live in London in the 1880s. He married Alice Ann Bradshaw, the daughter of a Thames-side mast-and-block maker. David was born in London and lived there most of his life. Although he visited Wales when he was a child and writes eloquently of the time spent in his father's homeland,(2) he knew little of modern Wales and few of its people. Moreover, despite repeated tries, he never managed to learn Welsh. Jones's connection to Wales stems not from these infrequent visits,(3) but rather from a profound inner sense of his own Welshness. Through his father, who chose David's Welsh name, Jones cherished an undying 'sense of belonging to the Welsh people'(4).
Rene Hague, Jones's lifelong friend and colleague, finds Jones's Welshness superficial. Hague writes, in his Introduction to Dai Greatcoat: A Self-Portrait of David Jones in His Letters:
It was a great sorrow to David that he was cut off from Wales, but he was cut off from a Wales for which he had no more than a sentimental love. He was widely read in Welsh history, but the Wales he loved ended with the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd on 11 December 1282... and reached back into a Wales of myth and not of fact(5).
Indeed Jones was 'cut off' from the Wales he loved, for that Wales no longer existed. For Jones, Wales is his historic inherited past, not a personal past. In this way, he differs crucially from a poet such as Dylan Thomas, who was born and lived in Wales, or Saunders Lewis, who knows and writes in Welsh. Generally, Jones writes of Wales at a distance, rather than immediately, using the myths, legends, and words of Wales, not personal experiences or memories.
Nonetheless the artistic shape this love takes in Jones's poetry is not sentimental, even though his work differs from that of other poets of 'Welsh affinities'. The Welshness of David Jones's poetry appears primarily in two ways: first in the Welsh words, figures, and allusions that permeate all the poetry; second, in the myth of Arthur, the greatest of all Welsh heroes, which underscores much of Jones's work. Few passages in the poetry lack one or the other of these elements. However, two poems in Jones's last book, The Sleeping Lord, deal specifically with Wales, the Welsh landscape, and the myth of Arthur. These two poems, 'The Hunt' and .The Sleeping Lord', focus on Wales as it once was (at least in Jones's imagination), as it is, and as it should be.
'The Hunt', the shorter of the two poems, describes the legendary hunt for the great boar, Twrch Trwyth. This legendary Welsh hunt (which Jones calls 'The Moby Dick of Welsh legend ') first appears in Welsh literature in the work of Nennius (c. 79)(6). Jones, however, uses a later redaction found in the story of' Kilhwch and Olwen ' in the Mabinogion. In this story, Arthur embarks on a hunt for Twrch Trwyth so that his cousin Kilhwch can win the hand of Olwen, daughter of a cruel king. Trwyth 'was once a king and God had him transformed into a swine for his sins'(7). The boar runs amok, killing and maiming men and ravaging the land. In the legend, but not in the poem, Arthur successfully drives the boar into the sea and Wales is once again at peace.
The hunters in the poem are a motley and diverse band of men - 'the men of proud spirit and the men of mean spirit, the / named and the unnamed of the Island'(8). They are led by 'the diademed leader / who directs the toil / whose face is furrowed / with the weight of the enterprise'. (67) Jones describes this leader as a composite figure combining attributes of Christ and Arthur. The leader 'directs the toil', words always associated with Arthur; yet like Christ, he has 'priced tresses' and 'scarred feet'. Indeed for Jones, Christ and Arthur merge into a single figure he sees Christ as a kind of Welsh prince(9) and Arthur, despite his pagan past, is fully a Christian king.
The Christ-Arthur figure in 'The Hunt', although austere is filled with love and compassion for his followers:
if his forehead is radiant
like the smooth hill in the lateral light
it is corrugated
like the defences of the hill
because of his care for the land
and for the men of the land.
if his eyes are narrowed for the stress of the hunt and
because of the hog they are moist for the ruin and for love
of the recumbent bodies that strew the ruin. (67)
Thus in 'The Hunt', Jones discloses the nature of the figure who, according to myth, lies under the soil of Wales, who is, in fact, the 'sleeping lord'. When he awakens he will lead again the hunt for the force that destroys the land and the men of the land.
'The Sleeping Lord', the second of the two poems, is set in contemporary Wales, and the poem's speaker asks a series of questions about the sleeping lord:
And is his bed wide
is his bed deep on the folded strata
is his bed long
where is his bed and
where has he lain him (70-1)
In this long poem, the speaker asks about the sleeping lord's Foot-Holder: How does he behave? Where is the lord's Candle-Bearer? He reflects on the ancient tradition of candlebearers at Court, remembering a Priest saying Mass. The Priest, in turn, recalls and prays for those who have gone before him - hermits, priests of cities and rural areas, all others who have said Mass before him, lords and rulers of the land, and poets 'who loved the things of the Island'. (82) The Priest prays for all the dead, incorporating even those of pre Christian times into the Christian mythos. The poem's speaker considers the fallen trees felled by Twrch Trwyth, and concludes the poem with more questions about the sleeping lord.
In this poem, Jones most poignantly depicts his own grief at the effects of technology and urbanization on rural Wales. He laments the despoiled land and the dehumanization of the worker. The poem's speaker asks if the sleeping lord knows of the polluted waters and the hard labours of the Welsh miners:
Are his wounded ankles
lapped with ferric waters
that all through the night .
hear the song
from the night-dark seams
where the narrow-skulled caethion
labour the changing shifts
for the cosmocrats of alien lips
in all the fair lands (91)
Does the lord weep for the land and is he angry at what has happened to it?
Is the Usk a drain for his gleaming tears
who weeps for the land
who dreams his bitter dream
for the folk of the land
Is his royal anger ferriaged
where black-rimmed Rhymni
soils her Marcher-banks
Do the bells of St Mellon's
toll his dolour
are his signs canalled
where the mountain ash
droops her bright head
for the black pall of Merthyr?
Or, is the dying gull
on her sea-hearse
that drifts the oily bourne
to tomb at turn of tide
her own stricken cantor? (92-3)
Lastly the poet suggests that the sleeping lord might be the land itself:
Are the slumbering valleys
him in slumber
are the still undulations
the still limbs of him sleeping?
Is the configuration of the land
the furrowed body of the lord
are the scarred ridges
his dented greaves
do the trickling gullies
yet drain his hog-wounds?
Does the land wait the sleeping lord
or is the wasted land
that very lord who sleeps? (96)
For David Jones Wales represents 'not only the British Principality but also any small, self-conscious, oppressed and oppositional historic group'(10). The unique vision of the Celts of early Wales, a vision lost because of imperialism and technology, includes a respect for the land, a 'sense of the local, the physical, the love of the fenced-in and familiar, and affection for what is known',(11) and an esteem for the artist-craftsman. The condition of contemporary Wales depicted in 'The Sleeping Lord' represents the modern world, which suffers the tension between the 'old culture patterns and the new technological schematization',(12) between man's essential nature as an artist and the demands of the new technocracy.
The hope depicted in 'The Sleeping Lord' is hope for both Wales and all the modern world, and rests on the figure of the sleeping lord, the Christ-Arthur who led the hunt for the boar. The myths of Christ and Arthur share the theme of betrayal, defeat, and subsequent resurrection. Both Christ and Arthur overcome death and come again to restore the world. The Christ-Arthur, who sleeps beneath the soil of Wales, offers hope for a new spirit and new leadership. In Welsh folklore Arthur is 'the sleeping-hero-who-will-come-again'(13). He has no grave and the Welsh peasants believed 'that in their hour of most need he would come again...'out of Faerie'’(14) For Jones, a resuscitated Arthur means a renewal of Welsh tradition, a resurgence of respect for the land and for the worker all of which would counterbalance the dire effects of technology depicted in 'The Sleeping Lord'. It means a return to the Holywell recovered in 1149 by the Great Owain Gwynnedd, to the Wales of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.
Jones leaves the actuality of this 'once and future' Wales ambiguous, leaving unspecified his vision of the form the sleeping lord might take. Perhaps it is Arthur, perhaps Christ, perhaps the land itself. He says: 'If we are altogether impatient of what is seen darkly in a mirror we shall have little use for the myth of Arthur... From the machine-age the strayed machine-men may create a myth patient of baptism. Arthur may return from 'faerie' in the least expected of guises.'(15)
NOTES
1 David Jones, 'Autobiographical Talk', Epoch and Artist (London: Faber & Faber, 1959), p. 25.
2 'Autobiographical Talk', p. 27.
3 Jones lived in Wales for a short time, but in Anglicized areas.
4 Rene Hague, Dai Greatcoat: A Self-Portrait of David Jones in His Letters, (London: Faber & Faber, 1980), p. 20.
5 Hague, p. 23.
6 J. A. MacCullough, The Religion of the Ancient Celts (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1911), p. 211.
7 The Mabinogion, trans. Lady Charlotte Guest (New York: New Amsterdam Book Co., 1902), p. 199.
8 David Jones, The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments (New York: Chilmark Press, 1974), p. 65. All subsequent quotations from the poems are from this volume and page numbers are indicated in the text.
9 Desiree Hirst, 'Particularity and Power', Poetry Wales, Vol. VIII, No.3 (Winter 1972), p. 51.
10 Harman Grisewood, Introduction to The Dying Gaul and Other Writings by David Jones (London: Faber & Faber, 1978), p. 11.
11 David Jones, 'Christopher Smart', Epoch and Artist, p. 283.
12 David Jones, 'Welshness in Wales', Epoch and Artist, p. 51.
13 David Jones, 'The Myth of Arthur', Epoch and Artist, p. 218.
14 'The Myth of Arthur', p. 224.
15 'The Myth of Arthur', p. 218.
(Teresa Godwin Phelps is Assistant Professor, Notre Dame Law School, Indiana.)
Page(s) 64-71
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