John Powys - The Brazen Head

It was said for instance that he was helped in his work as a travelling tinker by several women from different parts of the country, all of whom had sold their souls to the Devil.

It was at this point that Raymond began rather nervously explaining to the great teacher from Cologne that they would be soon arriving at the main gate of the Fortress of Roque; and he went on to indicate more specifically, what he had already mentioned shyly to him before, namely that Lady Val, who was expecting him as her guest that night, was the mother of the young lady to whom he himself was betrothed, and was the wife of the most formidable boar-hunter and wolf-slayer in all that portion of England. Nor did he hesitate, though even more diffidently, to explain that they were all so weary of the violent personal quarrels between these two belligerent Franciscans, Friar Bacon and Bonaventura that they welcomed the appearance among them of a renowned Dominican whose presence alone would be sufficient to break up these vindictive quarrels.

The whole party paused at this point at the request of the visitor, to enable him to retire behind a clump of willows with a view to relieving himself. When he returned he kept them standing for a moment above the leafy declivity containing the entrance to this cave of the tinker’s witch-wives, while he begged Raymond de Laon to tell him as definitely as he could what his own private and personal reaction was in regard to the quarrel between these famous men.

He had no sooner asked this question and Raymond was frowning and biting his lips and searching his mind for an adequate answer, when they all heard quite distinctly, borne up upon the wind from the depths of the leafy gully beneath them a wild husky voice singing a ditty which clearly was, whether they were able to follow all its crazy words or not, a blasphemous defiance of Providence above, of the Church below, and of all that mankind from generation to generation has been taught to hold sacred.

The day was so hot and the sky above was so blue, that the effect of this howl of defiance to everything they had all been accustomed from infancy to venerate was enhanced by the complete absence at that spot of any work of men’s hands, whether of wood or stone. It was like a voice from the depths of the earth replying to a voice from uttermost space. It seemed to be addressed to the formless and shapeless rocks of granite and basalt that lay around this small group of travellers, and it seemed to be appealing desperately to earth, air, and water, not to allow the sun-rays that were so lifegiving to all, to fool them by their warmth.

It was the sort of defiance such as the ghost of a baby of a million years ago, a baby or “baban” whose skull, “penglog”, had been discovered in the grave of an antediluvian giant, “gawr”, might have uttered to all oracles and prophets and announcers of revelations and to all deities and pantheons of deities who were already gathering in the mists of the future to claim human worship.

“Until I’m dust I’ll enjoy my hour—

Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!

I’ll gather my harvest and grind my flour—

Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!

With Holy Rood I’ll have naught to do—

Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!

Adam am I, and Eve are you,

And Eden’s wherever we are, we two—

Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!

A mortal’s fate is the same as a mole’s—

Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!

The same as the fishes that leap in shoals,

Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!

Where leaf do fall — there let leaf rest—

Where no Grail be there be no quest—

Be’ee good, be’ee bad, be’ee damned, be’ee blest—

Be’ee North, be’ee South, be’ee East, be’ee West

The whole of Existence is naught but a jest—

Penglog y Baban yr Gawr!”

The effect upon that small company, together with Raymond their leader and Albertus Magnus their visitor, of this weird ditty, a ditty followed by dead silence, save for the sound of the wind in the trees about them and the far-off cry of a buzzard high in the air above them, would have been for anyone concerned with the results of unexpected shocks upon human nerves, of no small interest.

It had an effect however that no chronicler, however sagacious, could possibly have foreseen. Every single one of those six armed men, as well as their leader and his visitor, behaved exactly in the same way. They all were so startled and shocked that they simply dared not comment on what they had heard. Every single one of them pretended — whether to himself as well as to the others who could tell? — that he had heard nothing!

The shock of what they had heard, for all this pretence, followed them, all the same, through the burning heat of this mid-day in June, as they pressed on, leaving the stone circle to their left, and that lonely stone seat where Lil-Umbra, on an early February morning, had asked Peleg such searching questions, on their right, till they approached, not the small postern this time, for they were too large a party, and it was too cogent an occasion, to use that entrance, but the main gate of the Fortress.

As soon as Raymond told him they were approaching their journey’s end, Albertus brought their march to a halt and put to his young guide the direct question, which the voice of that cave-devil had for the time postponed.

“And what,” he asked him, “is your own private attitude to these disputes?”

The Cone Castle men, who were already alert, now crowded quite close to them, and it became clear to Raymond that they felt unusually concerned. And indeed there was unquestionably something about Albertus Magnus that attracted the attention of intelligent persons wherever he went. He had already held for a couple of years an important bishopric in Germany, but this he had recently resigned together with all the influence and wealth that a bishopric gives in order to devote himself solely and entirely to the metaphysical and botanical and entomological studies that were the main interest of his days upon earth.

This absorption in the mysterious life of all the creatures of Nature and in the whole problem of mind and matter, since it was combined with a lively interest in men and women for themselves, threw a very singular aura round him, an aura which, though it rendered him separate and aloof, endowed his presence with the peculiar attraction which certain rare and evasive animals and birds and insects possess.

And not only was Albertus Magnus an unusual, indeed we might say a unique person in himself, but the particular line of philosophical investigation into which he threw his whole nature linked itself with metaphysical thoroughness to his wide natural sympathy. He himself described it as finding the Universal “before” all, “in” all, and “after” all. He was not only a student of plants, trees, flowers, and insects, but of human beings also; and he sought to find this Universal of his in all its three stages of “before”, “in”, and “after”, in every living thing he studied.

In appearance Albert of Cologne was curiously impressive. He was of medium height but very powerfully built. He always wore, day and night — for it was a weakness of his to be physically sensitive to catching cold, and it was a conviction of his that where he was especially menaced by this affliction was through his head — a curiously shaped white cap that had a remote affinity to an academic cap, and also to the metallic cap of a knight in armour, but was first suggested to him by the singular night-turban worn by an Arabian student of Aristotle with whom he had shared a lodging in early days in Swabia.

But the chief advantage of this ubiquitous protection against colds was that it was made of such soft stuff that any kind of ceremonial head-gear, from a pontifical mitre to a more secular token of authority, could be squeezed over it.