[In the following essay, Newstead evaluates the significance of the role of King Mark of Cornwall in the Tristan romances, observing that the character figures prominently in the stories, as does the setting of many incidents in the King's castle at Tintagel.]

In the dramatic action of the Tristan romances King Mark is almost as important as the lovers themselves. Tristan, as the son of his sister, is bound to him by close ties of kinship, and the hero's first spectacular exploit is the liberation of Mark's kingdom of Cornwall from the annual human tribute demanded by the Irish champion Morholt. Many of the subsequent plots, counter-plots, stratagems, and thrilling escapes that characterize the story are initiated by Mark's uncertain temper towards the lovers, his continual vacillation between belief in their innocence and suspicion of their guilt.¹ His prominence in the story and the setting of many incidents in his castle at Tintagel have generally been interpreted as evidence of Cornish influence in the Tristan legend, but there is wide disagreement about its nature, extent, and significance.² Since King Mark is so closely identified with Cornwall in the Tristan romances, a fresh study of the traditions attached to him may shed some light on this perplexing problem.

The oldest extant document to mention King Mark is the Latln Vita of St. Paul Aurelian, composed in 884 by Wrmonoc, a monk of the Abbey of Landévennec in Brittany.³ After the saint had performed many good works as a disciple of St. Illtud in south Wales⁴

fama eius regis Marci peruolat ad aures quem alio nomine Quonomorium uocant. Qui eo tempore amplissime producto sub limite regendo moenia sceptri, uir magnus imperiali potentiae atque potentissimus habebatur, ita ut quatuor linguae diuersarum gentium uno eius subiacerent imperio.⁵

The saint declined Mark's invitation to become his bishop and later quarreled with him over a bell that the king refused to relinquish. Then St. Paul Aurelian, after a sojourn with his sister in western Cornwall, departed for Brittany. Long afterwards, just as he was relating the story of his dispute with Mark to a kinsman on the isle of Batz off the Breton coast, Mark's bell miraculously turned up in the interior of a huge fish.

Although Mark's kingdom is not explicitly identified in the Vita, the itinerary of the saint—from south Wales, to Mark's realm, to western Cornwall, and then to Brittany—is commonly understood to imply Cornwall; but as Mrs. Bromwich has pointed out after a judicious review of the facts,⁶ it is more probable that the ninth-century hagiographer intended to refer to a location in south Wales nearer St. Paul Aurelian's home in Glamorgan. Because of the usual but doubtful assumption that the Vita presents Mark as king of Cornwall, much has been made of the alternative name Quonomorius given to him in the text. On a sixth-century stone at Castle Dôr near Fowey in Cornwall, the same name, in the form Cunomor, is inscribed. Although the first part of the inscription is very much worn and has been deciphered in diverse ways, the most recent reading of the whole is:

drustaus hic iacit / cvnomori filius.(7)

If Cunomor is equated with King Mark and Drustaus (for Drustanus) interpreted as a sixth-century form of Tristan's name, the inscription would seem to commemorate Tristan son of Cunomor or Mark. But what is the real basis for this sensational argument?

In the first place, the identification of King Mark with Quonomorius rests on this single passage in the Vita; nowhere else does Wrmonoc use the alternative name to refer to the king.⁸ On the other hand, a tyrant Conomor is a familiar figure in the biography of St. Paul Aurelian's fellow-student St. Samson,⁹ and since Wrmonoc knew the Vita of St. Samson and elsewhere drew upon it,¹⁰ he might easily have borrowed Quonomorius from the same source as an appropriate name for one who had offended St. Paul Aurelian, just as other Breton hagiographers considered it necessary to include a hostile encounter between their subjects and Conomor.¹¹ As F. Lot has remarked, “Conomor est un croquemitaine que les Vies de saints s’empruntent les unes aux autres pour donner du pathétique au récit.”¹² The historic Coonomor, who lived probably in the sixth century,¹³ appears to have been well known on the Continent, but there is no indication that he enjoyed a comparable vogue in the British Isles. The Castle Dôr inscription, then, merely means that a person named Cunomor lived in Cornwall; it does not prove that he was a Cornish king or the historic original of King Mark.

Similarly, all the evidence points away from Cornwall to the derivation of the legendary Tristan from a Pictish king named Drust son of Talorc, who ruled in northern Scotland about 780 a.d.¹⁴ Drust (diminutive Drostan) son of Talorc appears in Welsh as Drystan or Trystan son of Tallwch, an almost exact equivalent in sound. Since Drystan son of Tallwch is linked in the Welsh triads¹⁵ with Esyllt, the wife of his uncle March son of Meirchion, he is clearly identified with the Tristan of the romances. Furthermore, a fragment of the Pictish saga of Drust is preserved in a tenth-century recension of the Irish Wooing of Emer, an interpolated episode that strikingly parallels Tristan's deliverance of Cornwall from the demand for human tribute and his later rescue of the princess Isolt.¹⁶ In the light of these facts, the Drustaus of the Castle Dôr inscription, whoever he may have been, must be rejected as the historic original of the hero.¹⁷ No literary source, moreover, assigns the name Cunomor to Tristan's father or kinsman. Unless a more substantial connection can be demonstrated between the Tristan legend and Cornish archaeology, the value of the Castle Dôr stone in the context of the romances remains negligible.

The Vita of St. Paul Aurelian indicates that King Mark was a contemporary of the saint in the sixth century. He may, however, have ruled in south Wales rather than in Cornwall, and Wrmonoc in the ninth century may have learned of him from his south Welsh sources.¹⁸ In any event, the only certain inference to be drawn from the passage in the Vita is that by the second half of the ninth century King Mark had achieved legendary renown. His fame could have been no recent growth if he was considered to belong to that distant past when St. Paul Aurelian traveled in Wales and Cornwall before settling in Brittany.

In Welsh tradition King Mark is known as March son of Meirchion.¹⁹ In the Dream of Rhonabwy²⁰ March son of Meirchion is mentioned twice: once as the leader of an army and a cousin german of King Arthur, and again in a list of Arthur's counselors, among whom is also Drystan son of Tallwch.²¹ A Welsh triad informs us that March son of Meirchion was one of the three fleet owners of the Isle of Britain.²² Another triad relates how Drystan son of Tallwch, one of the three great swineherds of Britain, guarded the swine of March son of Meirchion while the swineherd delivered a message to Esyllt. Arthur, March, Kei, and Bedwyr failed, despite their best efforts, to carry off a single animal.²³

Although the Dream of Rhonabwy and the triads are recorded in manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, these four references represent native Welsh tradition independent of any known version of the French romances.²⁴ What can we learn from them? First of all, they confirm the tradition of Mark's fame, which also appears in a hagiographic source. Both Welsh texts, moreover, link him with Tristan and Arthur. In the Dream of Rhonabwy he is Arthur's cousin, and both Mark and Tristan are among the counselors of Arthur. These facts indicate that Welsh tradition established the close relationship of Tristan and Mark²⁵ and also connected them with King Arthur and two of his warriors, Kei and Bedwyr.

The association of Mark and Arthur is natural if we recall that important traditions of Arthur's birth and last battle were localized in Cornwall.²⁶ According to Geoffrey of Monmouth (ca. 1136),²⁷ the begetting of Arthur took place in Tintagel, the very castle which in the Tristan legend in Mark's principal stronghold. The connection of both monarchs with Tintagel undoubtedly cemented their relationship and stimulated the conteurs to interweave their histories.

Since King Mark was the legendary ruler of Cornwall, his court would inevitably be located at Tintagel, which had become the residence of the earls of Cornwall shortly after the Norman Conquest.²⁸ The spectacular landscape of Tintagel, with its chasm and ruined walls,²⁹ exercised a potent spell upon the conteurs. In their hands it became the setting for the clandestine interviews of Tristan and Isolt and for the illicit amour of Igerne and Uter Pendragon. To Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace, Tintagel was an impregnable stronghold on a lofty cliff protected by the sea and impenetrable to Uter Pendragon except with the aid of Merlin's wizardry. The author of Perlesvaus (ca. 1210) gravely explains that the sin of Uter and Igerne caused the chasm and the ruin of the castle, and thus describes the impressive approach to Tintagel:

… e cevauchierent a grant esploit, tant que il vinrent en.i. terre mout diverse, qui n’ert gaires hantee de gent; e troverent.i. petit chastel en.i. destor. I[l] vinrent cele part, e virent que tot li clos, donc li chastel estoit avironnez, estoit fondus dusqu’en abisme, ne n’estoit homme terriens qui aprochier i peüst de cele part. Mais il i avoit.i. molt bele entree e.i. porte gramde e larje par onc on i entroit. Il esgarderent la dedenz, e virent.i. chapele qui molt estoit bele e riche, e par dejoste.i. grant sale, e avoit.i. tor au cief de la sale mout ancienne.³⁰

The Oxford text of the Folie Tristan preserves a charming local tradition that vividly conveys the power of the legend-haunted castle to stir the imagination. To the Cornish peasantry of the twelfth century it was a “chastel faé” that vanished twice a year:

E si fu jadis apelez
Tintagel li chastel faëz,
Chastel faé fu dit a droit,
Car dous faiz l’an [il] se perdeit.
Li païsant distrent pur veir
Ke dous faiz l’an nel pot l’en veir,
Hume del païs ne nul hom,
Ja grant guarde ne prengë hom.
Une en ivern, autre en esté,
So dient la gent del vingné.(31)

The same tradition seems to have persisted into quite recent times in Cornwall,³² inspired, no doubt, by the mists that often enshroud the entire headland so that it is actually invisible a short distance away.

Since Tintagel was King Mark's principal court, presumably it was the site of the tribute episode, although Gottfried von Strassburg is the only source to name it specifically.³³ A curious story in the Vulgate Lancelot, however, not only associates the motif of human tribute with Tintagel but also suggests that it circulated in a form independent of the Tristan material. According to this story, Galeschin delivered a castle named Pintagoel, whose lord was obliged to surrender a child from each household and a third of his land to a grant vilain.³⁴ Since an analogue, likewise in the Vulgate Lancelot, names the castle Tinaguel and its lord “le duc de Cornuaille,”³⁵ and another analogue in Malory's Book vi identifies it with “Tyntagyll,”³⁶ it is clear that Tintagel is meant. Although the second story in the Lancelot and Malory's variant lack the theme of the human tribute, a close cognate of all three versions in Chrétien's Yvain preserves it in unmistakable form and shows that its appearance in the Pintagoel episode is not fortuitous.³⁷ In Yvain, the king of the “Isle as Puceles” was forced to deliver an annual tribute of thirty maidens to two sons of a devil until some valorous knight should succeed in vanquishing them. Yvain destroyed them and delivered the castle, here known only as “Le Chastel de Pesme Avanture.” The Pintagoel story, therefore, embodies a tradition that Tintagel was oppressed by a demand for human tribute, and since nothing in the cognates suggests the slightest influence from the Tristan romances, it may well represent a local legend. If such a story about human tribute was independently attached to Tintagel, the similarity of theme would explain how Tristan's first important adventure came to be localized there and geographically separated from its normal sequel, the rescue of the princess.

Tintagel is King Mark's stronghold in all versions of the Tristan legend except Béroul's and the episode known as Tristan the Minstrel, included in Gerbert de Montreuil's continuation of Le Conte del Graal.³⁸ Both texts locate Mark's court at Lancien,³⁹ which J. Loth identified with Lantyan, now a village on the river Fowey in the parish of St. Samson's, Cornwall.⁴⁰ Béroul also mentions a church of Saint Sanson (vss. 2973, 2994) apparently in or near Lancien, which was attended by Mark and Isolt; and the parish church of the modern Lantyan is dedicated to the same saint. Loth's identification is therefore certainly correct, but the localization adopted by Béroul and Gerbert seems to be an arbitrary departure from the traditional setting introduced by some conteur familiar with the region, perhaps by Béroul or his immediate source.⁴¹ Nowhere else, so far as I am aware, is Lancien a place of legendary import in the matière de Bretagne. In any case, Béroul also mentions Tintagel as Mark's court (vs. 3150) and refers (vss. 264, 880) to the evil dwarf who lived in Mark's household as “le nain de Tintaguel.”

If the localization at Lancien represents no particularly archaic trait, it is far otherwise with the second tradition about King Mark that Béroul alone records. He relates (vss. 1303-50) that the king had a secret known only to the dwarf Frocin. One day, when the dwarf was drunk, the barons asked him why he and the king spoke together so often and so confidentially. He replied (vss. 1315-26):

“A celer bien un suen consel
Mot m’a trové toz jors feel.
Bien voi que le volez oïr,
Et je ne vuel ma foi mentir.
Mais je merrai les trois de vos
Devant le Gué Aventuros.
Et iluec a une aube espine,
Une fosse a soz la racine:
Mon chief porai dedenz boter
Et vos m’orrez defors parler.
Ce que dirai, c’ert du segroi
Dont je sui vers le roi par foi.”

The barons accompanied the dwarf and listened as he announced to the hawthorn bush (vss. 1332-34):

“Or escoutez, seignor marchis!
Espine, a vos, non a vasal:
Marc a orelles de cheval.”

When they reported to the king that they knew the secret, he promptly cut off the dwarf's head.

It is easy to understand why this grotesque story does not appear in the more courtly and refined versions of the Tristan romances, in which continuity and a certain consistency of tone are maintained. The free episodic structure of Béroul's narrative enables him to exploit the broadly comic implications of the incident and to stress the element of dramatic surprise so effectively that no one is disposed to wonder why Mark's deformity is neither observed nor mentioned again. Although Béroul is the only romancer to include the story, the conte of the horse's ears was probably adapted to the legend of King Mark at an early date because in all the Celtic languages his name means ‘horse’.⁴² Onomastic stories of this kind form a typical category of Celtic narrative,⁴³ and versions of this particular tale have been collected in Ireland, Wales, and Brittany, usually attached to a personage whose name means ‘horse’. The story, of course, is not restricted to these areas, for similar legends were related of King Midas, the emperor Trajan, and Alexander, among others.⁴⁴ Béroul's version, however, was derived from a Celtic source. The story flourished so lustily on Celtic soil because Celtic tradition is especially rich in names with an equine meaning.⁴⁵

The earliest version is an Irish saga dated by Kuno Meyer in the tenth century.⁴⁶ It relates how King Eochaid (Ir. ‘horse’) had two horse's ears, and to conceal this blemish he used to retire to the wilderness to be shaved and each time slay the person who performed the operation for him. He had a nephew named Angus but called MacDichoime (‘Son of the Unlovely’), who was a keen and splendid youth. He used to shave the warriors, take care of their weapons, and entertain them with musical instruments. Everyone loved him, especially the queen, Eochaid's wife, who desired to lie with him. Rumors of an affair between MacDichoime and the queen reached Eochaid, and the jealous king determined to kill him. With that intention he invited his nephew to the wilderness to shave him, but MacDichoime instead threatened to kill him. Eochaid begged for mercy, offering his nephew a share of the kingdom and the permanent post of royal barber in exchange for the promise to keep the secret of the horse's ears. MacDichoime agreed, but the secret pressed so heavily upon him that he fell into a wasting illness. One day as he passed a moor on his way to a leech, he fell face down on the ground, three streams of blood gushed from his nose and mouth, and he was instantaneously cured. A year later, passing there with the warriors, he found that three saplings had grown on the spot, and he related the story of his miraculous cure to his companions. Afterwards a harper and his company came to the saplings and heard the trees telling each other about Eochaid's ears. The harper, a satirist, decided to use this theme in his performance. When Eochaid heard the harper proclaiming his secret, he ordered the entertainers bound; but after learning that the revelation had been caused by the saplings sprung from his nephew's blood, he released them. He no longer tried to conceal his deformity, and MacDichoime later made a double pipe from the saplings. After Eochaid's death he became king, but he always cherished his pipe.

This remarkable story, which is no folk tale but rather an elaborate literary version, is too early to have been influenced by the French Tristan legend, and it is obviously not the direct source of Béroul. There are, nevertheless, three noteworthy points of resemblance. First, the story of the horse's ears is attached not only to a king whose name, like Mark's, means ‘horse’, but it is also adapted to a situation in which the king is roused to murderous jealousy by rumors of his queen's amour with his nephew, just as Mark is. This triangular relationship may have been affected by the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne, which was known in Ireland before the tenth century⁴⁷ and which, as Miss Schoepperle showed,⁴⁸ also influenced the legend of Tristan. The fact that in Béroul the incident of the horse's ears is connected with the loathsome dwarf whose principal function is to arouse the king's suspicions suggests that the tale may have reached Béroul in a composite form similar to the Irish.

In the second place, the name ‘Son of the Unlovely’ given to the custodian of the secret⁴⁹ accords with the appearance of the dwarf in Béroul's poem, who is said (vs. 320) to be “boçu,” and in the episode itself is thus described (vs. 1329):

Li nains fu cort, la teste ot grose.(50)

The alternative name ‘Son of the Unlovely’ may represent a variant of the story in which the king's nephew is a repulsive character instead of a splendid, handsome youth loved by all; or the epithet may be the result of an attempt to fuse two originally distinct persons.⁵¹

The third parallel between Béroul and the Irish saga concerns the revelation of the secret. The Irish story displays considerable confusion on this point. In a later but simpler Irish version in the Yellow Book of Lecan (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), the hero is cured of his malady by divulging his secret to a willow tree, from which a harper afterwards fashions a harp that can produce nothing but the revelatory statement.⁵² In the Welsh and Breton folk tales, too, a pipe or a flute is made from reeds growing on the spot, and the musician unwittingly discloses the secret by performing on the instrument. The tenth-century Irish saga preserves a muddled reminiscence of the standard version in the pipe which the king's nephew makes from the saplings, but this instrument plays no part in the action. The harp, on the other hand, is not made from the saplings. The trees are merely overheard by the harper, who then of his own volition determines to repeat the statement in his performance before the king. Now, in Béroul's episode, the secret is similarly overheard by the barons as the dwarf communicates it to the shrubbery, and they deliberately repeat it to the king. It is surely significant that of all the extant versions only Béroul and the tenth-century Irish saga should present this distinctive deviation from the traditional form.

Although Béroul's story rationalizes the supernatural revelation of the secret, its original nature is betrayed by the locale. The place chosen by the dwarf for his meeting with the barons is “le Gué Aventuros / Et iluec a une aube espine.” A ford by a hawthorn tree was a typical setting for uncanny marvels, as numerous other examples in Celtic and Arthurian tradition prove.⁵³ A place of magic and enchantment, it was the haunt of fays and the site of mysterious combats in which the prize was a faery steed. Since there is nothing supernatural in Béroul's account to suggest the appropriateness of such an eerie locality, it must have been a traditional element in the story. Mark's equine characteristics might have inspired the choice of the setting because of the frequent appearance of supernatural horses in stories about fords near hawthorn trees.

Despite the contrast between Béroul's compressed, anecdotal treatment of the tale and the highly developed, conflate form of the Irish text,⁵⁴ the remarkable correspondences make it clear that the stories are related. The relationship may be remote and indirect, but it does exist.

Wales and Brittany furnish no text as early as the Irish saga but rather a number of folk-tale versions ranging in date from about 1550 to the end of the nineteenth century. They preserve a simple but fairly complete form of the basic story, which is attached to the name March. Béroul's account, lacking the introductory incidents and other typical features,⁵⁵ could not have been their source. These tales, then, testify to the independent circulation in Wales and Brittany of the legend about King Mark's ears.

The earliest is a Welsh tale appended to the genealogy of Iarddur ap Egri, who traced his ancestry back to March ab Meirchion; it was written down in a manuscript copied between 1550 and 1562 (Peniarth MS 134, formerly Hengwrt MS 107). According to this anecdote,⁵⁶ March had horse's ears, a secret known only to his barber, who was warned to guard it on pain of losing his head. But the barber fell ill, and a physician, perceiving that he was dying, ordered him to tell it to the ground. The barber recovered, but reeds grew on the spot that received his confidence. Certain pipers of Maelgwn Gwynedd cut these reeds and used them for their instruments.⁵⁷ When they had to perform before March, they could elicit nothing but “Horse's ears for March ab Meirchion.”

Another Welsh tale, found in the papers of Edward Llwyd and dated 1693,⁵⁸ relates that one of Arthur's warriors named March Amheirchion was lord of Castellmarch in Lleyn. To conceal his horse's ears he used to kill each man who shaved him. On the spot where he buried the bodies there grew reeds, which someone cut to make a pipe. Since the pipe would utter nothing but “March Amheirchion has horse's ears,” March was ready to slay the piper, but refrained when he himself obtained the same result from the instrument. After he learned where the reeds had grown, he no longer attempted to hide either the murders or his deformity. This tale continued to circulate in the district of Castellmarch: in the summer of 1882, nearly two hundred years later, the aged blacksmith of Aber Soch, near Castellmarch, told the same legend to Sir John Rhys.⁵⁹

These Welsh versions agree with the Irish in the murderous nature of the king with the horse's ears. The Peniarth text, in particular, resembles the Irish saga of the tenth century in the barber's illness and the growth of the communicative plants on the spot where he recovered after being relieved of his secret. The Welsh tales also agree with Béroul in the characterization of the king, for in his story Mark actually murders the dwarf. It is significant, too, that the Welsh tales should name the protagonist March, and that the version of 1693 should link him with King Arthur, a tradition corroborated by independent Welsh sources of much earlier date. In Béroul's poem, King Arthur plays a major rôle and is closely associated with King Mark.⁶⁰

In Brittany the legend is similarly connected with the name March. One version, recorded in 1794, relates how the king of Portzmarch killed all his barbers to prevent them from revealing that he had horse's ears. The intimate friend of the king, after shaving him, was spared only because he promised never to disclose the secret, but he suffered so acutely from repressing it that, on the advice of a wise man, he confided it to the sandy banks of a stream. Three reeds grew in this spot and were later used by bards to make flutes. The flutes could only repeat: “Portzmarch, le roi Portzmarch a des oreilles de cheval.”⁶¹ The utterance of the flutes makes it evident that March was part of the king's personal name as well as an element in the place-name. The setting of this version in Plomarch (formerly Portzmarch) and its currency in the region of the bay of Douarnenez, where the Ile Tristan, so called since 1368, is situated, confirm the connection with King Mark of the Tristan legend.⁶²

As in Béroul's account, the sole guardian of the secret is an intimate friend of the king. In both, too, the secret is betrayed in a similar place. In Béroul, the location is “le Gué Aventuros,” which must be at a stream since a ford can hardly be anywhere else. In the Breton tale, the barber confides to the sandy bank of a stream where reeds grow. The Breton story also agrees with the Welsh tradition in the multiple murders and in the use of reeds to make a pipe or flute, a detail missing in Béroul. It is still more astonishing to find agreements between the Breton variant and the tenth-century Irish saga: in the Irish, the custodian of the secret is also an intimate of the king, his nephew; and a pipe is made from the three saplings that grew in the place of the revelation just as a flute is made from the three reeds in the Breton tale.⁶³

In another Breton version⁶⁴ the name of the king with the horse's ears, Gwiwarch, also contains the element march. Gwiwarch's barber reveals the oppressive secret to a thicket of elder-bushes growing on the bank of a stream, a feature that significantly corresponds to Béroul's “aube espine” beside “le Gué Aventuros.” A variant of this tale also supplies a parallel to March's murder of the dwarf, for Gwiwarch killed the barber after his indiscretion. This particular version resembles as well the Welsh tale of 1693: an elderbush grows from the burial place of the slain barber and is used to provide material for the pipe that publicly proclaims the secret.⁶⁵ In addition to a number of other Breton variants of the legend, there is in the museum at Quimper a bas-relief of a head with horse's ears that is known locally as the head of King March.⁶⁶

The Celtic variants indicate that a Breton conte must have been Béroul's source for the episode, as the following agreements show:

1. The king's name is Mark: the Breton stories are attached to the name March in some form.

2. The custodian of the secret is a confidant of the king, as in the Portzmarch version.

3. The Gué Aventuros is the site of the revelation; in the Portzmarch version it takes place on the banks of a stream.

4. The dwarf reveals the secret to an “aube espine” near the “Gué Aventuros”; in the Gwiwarch variant the secret is confided to a thicket of elder-bushes near a stream.

5. King Mark kills the dwarf after the revelation; King Gwiwarch kills the barber who has betrayed the secret.

This Breton conte, which is only partially preserved in Béroul, must have been more elaborate than the folk-tales now extant. These popular Breton tales, nevertheless, display a clear connection with the Welsh forms of the story in the name of the horse-eared king and in the detail, lacking in Béroul, of the flute fashioned from the reeds. The Breton variant, moreover, agrees with the Castellmarch story in the reeds that grow from the burial place of the king's murdered victims. Both the Welsh and the Breton tales also reveal a relationship to the tenth-century Irish saga. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that the conte which found its way into Béroul's poem had been expanded, like the Irish tale, by a story of the king's jealousy aroused by rumors of the queen's amorous dalliance with his nephew. This circumstance probably facilitated its adaptation to the Welsh and Breton versions of the Tristan legend. The cognomen of the king's nephew in the Irish saga, ‘Son of the Unlovely’, seems to have split off from the original character as the story passed through Wales and Brittany⁶⁷ and to have been absorbed into the personality of the hideous dwarf, who is the confidant of King Mark and who exists in Béroul's romance only to stimulate the king's jealous suspicions. The “intimate friend” in the Portzmarch variant strongly implies that the Irish tradition of a close personal relationship between the king and the guardian of his secret was current in Brittany.⁶⁸ The Breton conte upon which Béroul's episode was based must also have contained the localization at a thorny thicket by a stream, which is preserved in two of the later folk-tales; and it concluded, most probably, with the slaying of the confidant.⁶⁹

The story of King Mark's ears is an ancient tradition, rooted in the Celtic meaning of his name. Attached to an Irish king with the equivalent equine name of Eochaid, it existed in Ireland in a written form dated in the tenth century. But since this saga shows unmistakable signs of conflation, there must also have been earlier versions. The traditions represented in the tenth-century account of Eochaid migrated to Wales, where they became part of the legend of March son of Meirchion, who was already a famous personage of sufficient magnitude to rank with Arthur and Tristan and to be linked with them. In Wales the composite Irish story of the king with horse's ears who also suspected his wife's fidelity was probably attracted into the orbit of the Tristan traditions, although the extant Welsh tales do not afford enough evidence to permit certainty on this point. The version of 1693, at any rate, shows that the story of March, the king with the horse's ears, was connected with Arthur in Wales.

In Brittany the evidence is clearer. The location of the Portzmarch version in the neighborhood of the Ile Tristan strongly implies that the legend of March with the horse's ears was absorbed into the Tristan legend in Brittany. It is reasonably certain, too, that the hideous dwarf as the king's confidant and the custodian of the secret was already established in Breton tradition since his name, Frocin, seems to be of Breton provenance.⁷⁰ And, of course, the setting at the Gué Aventuros near a hawthorn was another Breton contribution that invested the story with the weird connotations of this place of faerie.

All these facts point to the derivation of Béroul's episode from a Breton conte. If the story also existed as a local legend in Cornwall, it is unlikely to have been introduced into Béroul's poem from that source. In both Wales and Brittany the story of March and his horse's ears lived continuously in popular tradition at least until the end of the nineteenth century and clung tenaciously to a number of place-names with the element march. In contrast to this brisk circulation in Wales and Brittany, the story manifests no vitality in Cornwall, even if it was once current there. Of course, Frocin is called “le nain de Tintaguel,” but since Tintagel was the traditional site of Mark's court and the dwarf belonged to his household, this localization is no proof of Cornish origin for Béroul's story of Mark's ears.

To judge from the variety of traditions preserved about King Mark, he must have enjoyed an impressive legendary reputation. He is a monarch of great power, according to the biography of St. Paul Aurelian. In Welsh tradition, he is a chief of the army and the navy of Britain, and one of Arthur's counselors. On a less exalted plane, he fails, in spite of Arthur's help, to steal a single pig from Tristan disguised as a swineherd. And he appears in a grotesque, even sinister light in the vigorous tradition current for more than seven centuries in Wales and Brittany that depicts him as a king with horse's ears who murders his barbers to conceal his deformity.

Although Mark was celebrated in Wales and Brittany, his geographical associations in the Tristan legend are unquestionably centered in Cornwall. His castle Tintagel is the setting for a legend of human tribute that circulated in a form untouched by the Tristan traditions. Since a similar story was one of the earliest to be attached to Tristan, the resemblance may have brought the two figures together. The sources of King Mark's legendary identification with Cornwall are thus to be sought not in the obscure monument at Castle Dôr but rather in the storied ruins of Tintagel.

Notes

1. Cf. Béroul, Le Roman de Tristan, ed. E. Muret, rev. L. M. Defourques (CFMA; Paris, 1947), vss. 3432 f.:

   Li rois n’a pas coraige entier,
   Senpres est ci et senpres la.

   All references to Béroul's text in this paper are derived from this edition.

2. J. Loth, Contributions à l’étude des romans de la Table Ronde (Paris, 1912), Chapter vi, has argued for the Cornish origin of the Tristan legend. Dissenting views have been expressed by E. Brugger, MP, XXII (1924), 159-191; A. Smirnov, Romania, XLIII (1914), 121-125; R. S. Loomis, MLN, XXXIX (1924), 319-329, among others. Cf. also J. D. Bruce, Evolution of Arthurian Romance, 2d ed. (Baltimore, 1928), I, 177-185; P. Rickard, Britain in Medieval French Literature 1100-1500 (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 93-97; R. Bromwich, Trans. Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1953 (1955), pp. 46-49, and in Studies in Early British History, ed. N. K. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1954), p. 122 n. 6; C. A. Ralegh Radford, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, N.S. 1 (1951), Appendix.

3. The text was edited by C. Cuissard, RC, V (1881-83), 413-460. Cf. S. Baring-Gould and J. Fisher, Lives of the British Saints (London, 1907-1913), IV, 75-86; J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland (New York, 1929), I, 176.

4. F. Lot, Romania, XXV (1896), 19; L. Gougaud, Christianity in Celtic Lands, trans. M. Joynt (London, 1932), pp. 58 f. St. Paul Aurelian lived in the sixth century and founded the diocese of Léon in Brittany.

5. RC, V, 431. As Baring-Gould and Fisher point out, op. cit., IV, 77 n. 2, the phrase about bringing peoples of four languages under his domination is borrowed from Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, Book III, Chapter vi.

6. THSC, 1953, pp. 47 f.

7. C. A. Ralegh Radford, op. cit. This reading is also that of Professor Kenneth Jackson, according to Mrs. Bromwich, THSC, 1953, p. 47 n. 70. For different readings of the name and additional information about the stone, cf. R. A. S. Macalister, Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum (Dublin, 1945-49), I, 465, 466; Archaeologia Cambrensis, LXXXIV (1929), 181; ibid., 5. Ser., XII (1895), 53; Victoria History of the County of Cornwall, I (London, 1906), 410; H. O. Hencken, The Archaeology of Cornwall and Scilly (London, 1932), p. 231; F. Lot, Romania, XXV, 20 f.

8. RC, V, 445.

9. R. Fawtier, La Vie de Saint Samson (BEHE; Paris, 1912), pp. 64-59.

10. RC, V, 421; Fawtier, op. cit., pp. 41 f.

11. Ibid., pp. 64-69; F. Lot, Mélanges d’histoire bretonne (Paris, 1907), pp. 450-453, 124-127, 253 f.

12. Ibid., p. 127 n. 1.

13. Gregory of Tours, Opera, Part I: Historia Francorum, ed. W. Arndt (Hanover, 1885), Book IV, Chapter iv; cf. Fawtier, op. cit., p. 69.

14. H. Zimmer, ZFSL, XIII (1891), 65-72; J. Bédier, ed., Thomas, Le Roman de Tristan (SATF; Paris, 1902-05), II, 105-108; A. O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1922), I, cxiii-cxxviii; H. M. Chadwick, Early Scotland (Cambridge, 1949), pp. 1-49; R. Bromwich, THSC, 1953, pp. 35-39. Even Loth, in Académie des Inscriptions, Comptes rendus, 1924, p. 128, accepts the derivation of Tristan from the Pictish Drust.

15. J. Loth, Les Mabinogion (Paris, 1913), II, 284. Tallwch is not a native Welsh name, and it occurs only as Drystan's patronymic. Since the French romances assign entirely different names to Tristan's father, Tallwch cannot possibly be derived from French sources.

16. M. Deutschbein, Beiblatt zur Anglia, XV (1904), 16-21; Bromwich, THSC, 1953, pp. 38-43.

17. Ibid., p. 48; Rickard, op. cit., p. 94.

18. Bromwich, THSC, 1953, pp. 48 f. Cf. Lot, Romania, XXV, 20.

19. Mrs. Bromwich, op. cit., p. 48, suggests that Mark's father may have been King Meirchiawn of Glamorgan, who gave lands to St. Illtud in the early sixth century. J. Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, 1886 (London, 1888), pp. 271, 650, considered the name Meirchion a kind of reduplication of March.

20. M. Richards, Breudwyt Ronabwy (Cardiff, 1948), p. xxxix; Bromwich, in Studies in Early British History, pp. 116 f. On traditional material in this tale see R. S. Loomis, Wales and the Arthurian Legend (Cardiff, 1956), pp. 96-101.

21. Loth, Les Mabinogion, I, 361 f., 373.

22. Peniarth 16, No. 14, ed. R. Bromwich, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XII (1946), 1-15; this collection of triads is dated in the thirteenth century, Studies in Early British History, p. 111 n. 3. The same triad is No. 31 in the Red Book of Hergest collection (fourteenth century), Loth, Les Mabinogion, II, 255, 223-226.

23. Ibid., II, 270 f. The Peniarth 16 version (No. 26) is the same except that Kei and Bedwyr are not mentioned. Cf. Bromwich, THSC, 1953, pp. 33 f.; J. Bédier, Tristan, II, 115.

24. On the triads as native Welsh tradition see Bromwich, THSC, 1953, pp. 34 f. and Studies in Early British History, pp. 114-118.

25. Another triad (Loth, Les Mabinogion, II, 284, No. 81) makes Trystan the nephew of March and the lover of Esyllt, the wife of March, but it is perhaps wise not to rely too heavily upon this triad because, unlike the others, it includes no details that could not have been derived from the French romances. Trystan, March, Arthur, Kei, and Esyllt also appear together in the Ystorya Trystan, ed. Ifor Williams, Bull. Board of Celtic Studies, V (1930), 115-129; cf. Bromwich, THSC, 1953, pp. 54 f; H. Newstead, PMLA, LXV (March 1950), 291-294.

26. R. S. Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes (New York, 1949), pp. 14 f.; MP, XXXIII (1936), 231.

27. Historia Regum Britanniae, ed. A. Griscom (New York, 1929), pp. 424-426.

28. H. Jenner, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, XXII Part 2 (1927), 191 f.; C. G. Harper, The Cornish Coast (North), (London, 1910), p. 112.

29. Although the early history of Tintagel is obscure, there is little doubt that the promontory was the site of buildings from early times. The formation of the land, which produced the great chasm and caused landslips, would make ruins almost inevitable. The present ruins may date only from Norman times, but there were surely ruins of earlier buildings. Cf. Jenner, op. cit., pp. 190-195; J. Kinsman, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, XXXIII (1877), 170-175.

30. Perlesvaus, ed. W. A. Nitze and T. A. Jenkins (Chicago, 1932-37), I, 280 f.; II, 319 f.

31. La Folie Tristan d’Oxford, ed. E. Hœpffner, 2d ed. (Strasbourg, 1943), vss. 131-140, and p. 19.

32. C. G. Harper, The Cornish Coast (North), p. 116.

33. Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan und Isold, ed. F. Ranke (Berlin, 1930), vs. 6018.

34. Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, ed. H. O. Sommer (Washington, 1908-13), IV, 107: “Et il li auoit iure auant & fait tele seurte comme lui plot quil li donroit ce quil li demanderoit. Et il li demanda de cascune meson de sa terre. vn. enfant por lui seruir tant com il li plairoit. et le tierc de toute sa terre.” The form Pintagoel is cited ibid., IV, 109 n. 2.

35. Ibid., V, 214 n. 3.

36. Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. E. Vinaver (Oxford, 1947), I, 272. Here Tyntagyll is associated not with Mark and the Tristan legend but with the begetting of Arthur. The principal story underlying these analogues is discussed by Loomis, Arthurian Tradition, pp. 322 f.

37. Ibid., pp. 320-326. Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, Textausgabe ed. W. Foerster, 2d ed. (Halle, 1926), vss. 5256-5770. Cf. also A. Pauphilet, Le Legs du Moyen Age (Melun, 1950), p. 123, who has also noted the parallel with Tristan.

38. Gerbert de Montreuil, La Continuation de Perceval, ed. Mary Williams (CFMA; Paris, 1922), I, vss. 3309 ff.; also ed. J. L. Weston and J. Bédier, Romania, XXXV (1906), 497-530, with useful notes.

39. Béroul, vss. 1155, 2359, 2394, 2438, 2453; Gerbert, vss. 3642, 3844, 3855, 3880.

40. J. Loth, in Académie des Inscriptions, Comptes rendus, 1916, pp. 589-593; Bromwich, THSC, 1953, pp. 32, 59 f.; Rickard, op. cit., pp. 95-100.

41. Cf. Loomis, MLN, XXXIX, 328; Brugger, MP, XXVI (1928), 11 f.

42. G. Schoepperle, Tristan and Isolt (Frankfurt and London, 1913), II, 269-272; C. Foulon, Bulletin philologique et historique 1951-52 (1953), pp. 31-40; Bromwich, THSC, 1953, p. 36.

43. W. J. Gruffydd, Math vab Mathonwy (Cardiff, 1928), pp. 155, 335-339.

44. For references to other occurrences in folk tales, see Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, rev. ed., III (Bloomington, Indiana, 1956), F 511.2.2; T. P. Cross, Motif-Index of Early Irish Literature (Bloomington, Indiana, 1952), p. 274; J. J. Jones, Aberystwyth Studies, XII (1932), 21-33; W. Stokes, RC, II (1873-75), 198; W. Crooke, Folk-Lore, XXII (1911), 196 f.

45. For a discussion of these names see T. F. O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin, 1946), p. 61.

46. K. Meyer, Otia Merseiana, III (1903), 46-54; trans. into German by K. Müller-Lisowski, Irische Volksmärchen (Jena, 1923), pp. 1-5.

47. Schoepperle, op. cit., II, 397-400; Bromwich, THSC, 1953, p. 51.

48. Op. cit., II, 391-446; Bromwich, THSC, 1953, pp. 51-54. James Carney, Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin, 1955), pp. 189-242, considers the Diarmaid saga and other Irish aitheda derivatives of the “primitive” Tristan story.

49. The text reads, Otia Merseiana, III, 50: “His name was Angus; however, he was not called so, but MacDichoime, for Dichoime (i.e., Unlovely) was his mother's name, and from her the son was so called. For the mother was a good woman, though she was unlovely.”

50. Not all Celtic dwarfs were ugly. See Schoepperle, op. cit., I, 241-249; Loomis, Arthurian Tradition, pp. 139-145, discusses beautiful, high-minded dwarfs in Celtic and Arthurian fiction.

51. On the fusion of characters see Loomis, Arthurian Tradition, pp. 50 f.

52. W. Stokes, RC, II, 197-199; trans. in M. Dillon, The Cycles of the Kings (Oxford, 1946), pp. 9 f. This story is attached to Labraid Lorc, apparently identical with Labraid Loingsech. The name has no connection with horses. On Labraid Loingsech, cf. O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, pp. 110-117. The story of Labraid Lorc was repeated by Keating, who seems to be the source of the numerous folk-tale versions collected in modern Ireland (Dillon, op. cit., p. 10 n. 1). At least Keating is doubtless the source of the versions printed by Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London, 1866), pp. 248-254, for the narrator said (p. 248) that he had heard a schoolmaster read this story in the history of Ireland. For another version and additional references, see G. Dottin, trans., Contes et légendes d’Irlande (Le Havre, 1901), pp. 201 f.

53. Loomis, Arthurian Tradition, pp. 129 f.

54. The harp and the pipe are obvious duplicates in function. Similarly, the king's nephew, who is said to be skilled in music and who fashions a pipe out of the saplings, is probably a doublet of the harper. The growth of the saplings from the blood of the nephew also suggests another version in which the king actually killed him.

55. Schoepperle, op. cit., II, 270; R. S. Loomis, Comparative Literature, II (1950), 291.

56. Historical MSS Commission, Report on MSS in the Welsh Language, ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans, I Part 2 (London, 1899), 834. The Welsh text is printed on p. 837; an English version is given by J. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx (Oxford, 1901), II, 572 f.

57. Maelgwn Gwynedd is a prominent figure in Welsh tradition: see Loth, Les Mabinogion, “Index des noms propres,” s.v. Maelgwn de Gwynedd; Bromwich, in Studies in Early British History, p. 91 n. 3. His pipers are introduced into this tale probably because tradition recorded a similar experience of theirs: Taliesin placed the bards and minstrels of Maelgwn Gwynedd under a spell so that all that they could do was to pout their lips and play “Blerwm, blerwm” upon their lips with their fingers (The Mabinogion, trans. C. Guest, Everyman ed., pp. 272f.). This furnishes a simple but excellent illustration of the syncretic methods customarily used by Welsh story-tellers.

58. J. Rhys, Y Cymmrodor, VI (1883), 181-183; Celtic Folklore, I, 233 f.

59. Ibid., I, 232, 197; II, 572-574.

60. Béroul, “Index des noms propres,” s.v. Artur.

61. RC, XIII (1892), 485, quoted from J. Cambry, Voyage dans le Finistère … en 1794 et 1795 (Paris, 1799), II, 287. Cf. P. Sébillot, Le Folk-lore de France (Paris, 1904-07), III, 527.

62. On the Ile Tristan, see Loth, Contributions, p. 108; RC, XXXII (1911), 413; Loth, Chrestomathie bretonne (Paris, 1890), p. 235; Brugger, MP, XXII, 182.

63. An incomplete Breton version located near Portzall (Revue des traditions populaires, I [1886], 327 f.) tells of a chieftain who lived alone and slew the barbers who came to shave him. One youth discovered the secret, and to avoid the fate of the others, he cut off the chieftain's head. This recalls the situation in the Irish saga in which, after the king's nephew has discovered the secret, he threatens to cut off Eochaid's head to save his own life.

64. Sébillot, Folk-lore de France, III, 432.

65. Loc. cit.

66. Revue des traditions populaires, VII (1892), 356-359; C. Foulon, Bulletin philologique et historique, 1951-52 (1953), p. 37.

67. On the common phenomenon of fission of characters see Loomis, Arthurian Tradition, pp. 51-54.

68. In the Irish version from the Yellow Book of Lecan the hero is merely a widow's son, and there is no hint of any relationship between him and the king.

69. For another Irish parallel to the decapitation of the dwarf see A. H. Krappe, RF, XLV (1931), 95-99; H. Newstead, RPh., IX (1956), 275-278.

70. Schoepperle, op. cit., I, 242.