[In the following essay, Leach examines the characteristics of the Scandinavian version of the Tristan legend, which was derived from Thomas's Anglo-Norman version of the late twelfth century.]

Deim var ekki skapað
Nema að skilja.

Tristrams Kvœði

In the north-west part of Iceland there is a fjord which until modern times bore the name of Trostansfjord. It lies in a district where many names of Celtic origin have survived since the time when they were first bestowed in the ninth century by Celto-Scandinavian colonists from Ireland and the islands north and west of the Scottish coast. Now in the lists of the Pictish kings of the sixth to the eighth century the name Drostan appears frequently. It is, therefore, by no means unlikely that the name of an heroic Drostan was floated across the waves to Iceland a thousand years ago, and remained there through the centuries to preserve the fame of the obscure Pictish king, who, like the equally obscure Arthur and Roland, was destined to become an immortal hero of romance.

How do we know that Drostan the Pict was he whom we have come to know as Tristan of Lyonesse?¹ In the royal Pictish line the name Drostan usually occurs after that of Talorc, and this lends a strong probability to the supposition that these Drostans were sons of Talorcs. Curiously enough, when Tristan appears in the Welsh triads he is called Drystan the son of Tallwch, and most scholars have accepted his identity with one of these kings of the Picts.

Tristan's appearance in Welsh literature is slight and not altogether dignified, but he seems to have attained early renown there as a lover and as a master of tricks and ruses. In the triads he is mentioned as one of the three diadem-bearers of the Isle of Britain; as one of the three peers of Arthur's court; as one of the three masters of machines; as one of the three lovers—the lover of “Essylt, wife of March”; and finally as one of the three great swineherds of the Isle of Britain. His distinction as a swineherd seems to have consisted in his ability to circumvent the wiles and force of certain illustrious cattle-raiders, for this is the story that is told of him:—“Drystan, son of Tallwch, tended the swine of Marc, son of Meirchyon, while the swineherd went with a message to Essylt. Arthur, March, Kei, and Bedwyr came all four, but they were not able to take a single sow, neither by craft nor by force nor by theft.” This character as a great lover and as master of primitive strategy Tristan maintained throughout mediæval literature.

The Tristan legend was by no means the sole possession of the Welsh; it belonged to the whole Celtic fringe. While Marie de France and the continuator of Béroul assign his birthplace to South Wales, another twelfth-century poet, Thomas, speaks of South Brittany as his home and of a castle Kanoel, probably at the mouth of the Loire. Furthermore, when the story of Tristan's combat with a monster from over the seas and of his wound which could not be healed except by a kinsman of the monster, came to be rationalized, the monster became the brother-in-law of the king of Ireland, and the monster's mysterious home, only to be reached by abandoning oneself to the seas, became the well-known port of Dublin. But it is chiefly with Cornwall that Tristan is forever associated. Not only was there a tradition in the eighth century of a King Mark of Cornwall, not only do the names of Tristan and Isolt cling forever to

The wind-hollowed heights and gusty bays
Of sheer Tintagel, fair with famous days;

but also it has been shown that a few other places mentioned in Béroul's version can be identified with places in Cornwall. Lancien, the Mal Pas, the Blanche Lande can be pointed out with some show of probability today, and popular tradition still finds Lyonesse in the sunken country which lies under the ocean between Land's End and the Scilly Isles.

Though the story of Tristan was not introduced into Ireland, for no allusion is made to it in mediæval Irish literature, yet since the ancient literature of Wales and Scotland preserved to us is scanty, and we have nothing native from Cornwall or Brittany, we must look to the Irish sagas for parallels to the legend of Tristan. Several incidents—such as the rudderless boat, the voyage for healing, the splashing water, the signal chips in the stream, and the carved branch or twig on the highway—are typical features found in Irish tales. Irish, too, is the theme of elopement and forest life, for not only do we find it in the elopement of Diarmaid with Grainne, and of the Sons of Usnach with Deirdre, but it constitutes a whole category of Irish romance. Moreover, Diarmaid and Grainne are driven into each other's arms by fate, the one by the influence of a love-spot, the other through a geis or taboo. So the love-potion, which may have been substituted by an English or French poet for a less familiar Celtic charm, is the compelling force in the tragedy of Tristan and Isolt.

When this somewhat barbaric but picturesque and powerful tale was told by Welsh and Breton minstrels at the courts of England and Normandy, which were permeated by the middle of the twelfth century by the pagan idealism and the fantastic code of love evolved in Provence, the English and Norman romancers saw that here was a supreme opportunity. It was one of them doubtless who composed, in accordance with this amatory creed, a French poem, called the estoire, removing from the hero's career any casual amours that may have been associated with it, in order to make Tristan the lover of Isolt and Isolt alone, and introducing Isolt of Brittany in order to show that even the marriage bond and the desire of the flesh could not break his faith to Isolt of Ireland.

From the stock of the estoire the romance of Tristan forks into two main branches. One flourished mainly in France and Italy, and includes the version of Béroul, (a Norman poem written about 1165 and continued later), and that of Eilhart von Oberg (1185-1189). The other was dominant in England, Germany, and Scandinavia. It derives from the Tristan of Thomas, an Anglo-Norman, who probably was attached to the court of Henry II and wrote about 1175. Of his poem 3,144 lines survive from the latter part, representing only about a sixth of the whole. But his work attained such celebrity that we are able to reconstruct the rest from three mediæval redactions: the English Sir Tristrem, a poor jingling thing, written about 1300; the magnificent German romance of Gottfried von Strassburg, dating from the early thirteenth century; and the fairly close translation in Norwegian prose, made by Brother Robert in 1226.²

Before going on to a discussion of Robert's version we shall do well to review the story as he tells it.

Tristram, nephew of Mark, king of England, spent his youth in Brittany. Coming to Mark's court at Tintagel in Cornwall, he won his uncle's affection by his prowess and his harping. At this time there sailed to Tintagel a mighty warrior named Morhold, who demanded an annual tribute for the king of Ireland. Tristram slew Morhold in single combat on an island, receiving a poisoned wound, from which he suffered without relief. Setting out to sea in search of cure, he was driven by wind and wave to Ireland, where he gave an assumed name, and was healed by Morhold's sister, the queen. To her beautiful daughter, Isond, he gave instruction in writing and harping.

After his return to England, Tristram's enemies urged upon King Mark to take to wife the Princess Isond of Ireland, and to send Tristram on the perilous quest. So he went the second time in a new disguise and freed the land of a fire-breathing dragon. While Isond was healing his wounds, she discovered his identity and wished at first to avenge Morhold. On second thought she spared him, and won her father's approval of Tristram's suit on behalf of King Mark.

On the voyage to England, by a fatal mistake, Tristram and Isond drank together the love-potion intended for King Mark. During the bridal night, Bringvet, the maid, took Isond's place beside the king. Tristram and Isond, under the compelling influence of the potion, continued to satisfy their love in secret. At last the lovers were betrayed to King Mark, who, however, doubted the evidence of his eyes, and exacted from Isond a test of chastity. Before the assembled court she swore an ambiguous oath and bore without injury the red-hot iron. Notwithstanding, Tristram forsook England for a time, sending back to the queen a fairy dog to console her. He returned again, and now Mark, although convinced of the lovers' guilt, compassionately allowed them to leave the court and live in the woods together. Here he discovered them sleeping in a grotto, a naked sword between them, and, once more persuaded of their innocence, he invited them back to court. But not for long; again detected, Tristram fled to the Continent.

Here he married, against his will, Isodd, daughter of the Duke of Brittany, whose name reminded him of Isond the queen, but, faithful to Isond his love, he did not consummate his marriage. At this her brother Kardin took umbrage, until he went with Tristram in disguise to England, and there saw the beauty of Isond and fell in love with her attendant. Soon the two knights were obliged to flee back to Brittany, and here Tristram was injured in war by a poisoned sword and lay at the point of death. Tristram knew that only Isond in England could heal his wound. Secretly he sent Kardin across the sea with a ring as token. His envoy succeeded, and Isond accompanied Kardin back. Long they were delayed by storm and becalmed outside the harbor. Kardin had agreed with Tristram that if he were successful, his sails would be white and blue, but if Isond did not come, he would hoist black sails. Now the sails were glistening blue and white.

Isodd, Tristram's wife, came to him. “Dearest,” she said, “Kardin is come; I see his ship.”

Tristram asked her about the sails. But she had overheard the agreement and told Tristram that the sails were black. Tristram groaned; “three times he called Isond's name and the fourth time he gave up his spirit.”

Isond, arriving too late, died with her arms about his neck. “And it is said that Tristram's wife buried Tristram and Isond on opposite sides of the church, so that they should be separated even in death. But it came to pass that an oak grew out of the grave of each, so high that the branches intertwined above the church, showing how great a love had been between them.”

It is to the source of the Norse translation, to the poem of Thomas the Englishman, that we chiefly owe the psychological refinement and the profound passion that have made the tale of Tristan and Isolt immortal. What was tragic Thomas heightened, what was brutal he refined, and he produced a poem of chivalry and courtesy worthy to be read before Eleanor of Aquitaine or her troubadour son, Richard the Lion Heart. He was little concerned with mere adventure and intrigue, but he cared much for description of courtly life and subtle analysis of emotion. Thomas is almost as delicately and profusely analytical of sentiment as Richardson seven centuries later. Yet for all his preciosity, this twelfth century poet is fresh and ardent. Though like Crestien de Troyes and other French poets, Thomas was influenced by the conventions of courtly love, his native genius burns and glows through the bars of formalism.

M. Bédier in his admirable critique of Brother Robert's translation, says, “That which he most willingly suppressed of his original is the poetry.” This is true if we understand by poetry only those pages of sentimental analysis so characteristic of Thomas. A comparison of surviving passages from Thomas with the Norwegian text shows that when Robert does translate he is so faithful that if both were rendered into English, they would be nearly identical. Robert adds very little of his own, the exceptions being the list of Norwegian exports quoted in a previous chapter, a short prayer put into the mouth of the dying Isond, and the little romantic touch at the end about the oaks entwining their branches over the lovers' graves. The omissions, however, are considerable, and reduce the saga by about a half. One passage of reflection and introspection totaling 143 lines is matched in Robert by a blank. Tristan's revulsion of feeling upon his wedding night, when he catches a glimpse of Isolt's ring, and his long mental conflict is condensed to this:—“This night I must sleep here as beside my wedded wife: I cannot separate from her now, because I have married her in the hearing of many witnesses, and I am not able to live with her as a husband, unless I break my troth and abase my honor. However, let come what will.” It sounds like a school edition of Clarissa Harlowe.

Has Robert lost or gained by his ruthless pruning? It is by no means easy to pass judgment. We have lost many a long passage of dissected passion, and a laboring of the problems of the triangle in its many phases. Though of intense interest to the student of mediæval manners and psychology, these retards are somewhat too technical and prolonged to be of universal and permanent value. They do not possess the magic simplicity with which the sagas treat the emotions and which renders them eternal. On the other hand, Brother Robert has performed too drastic an operation. No one who reads his summary account of the drinking of the potion can help feeling that he has cut away not only the excrescence but also the living flesh of the romance. Though Robert runs no risk of boring the reader, he has fallen into the equal peril of playing only upon the superficial interest of action.

Who was this saga-man, this Robert, who first planted the rose of romance in the stony garden of the North? Of rigid facts we have no more about him than about his contemporary who translated the same poem into German, Gottfried von Strassburg. We know only that Friar Robert came to be promoted to the dignity of abbot, and afterwards translated for King Hákon another romance, the Elie de Saint-Gilles. Elis Saga states simply that “Abbot Robert translated, and King Hákon son of King Hákon bade him translate this Norse book.” The work is undated.

It will be observed that neither in Elis Saga nor in Tristram does Robert make mention of his foreign source. Apparently he takes no pride in being able to understand the valskumál; the Norrœn rendering is the achievement. This brings up the question: Was Robert a Norwegian at all? Was he not rather one of those numerous English clerics who crossed the seas to enter monasteries in the North?

The style of his two sagas does not betray the secret—they could have been composed either by a native Norwegian or a foreigner well versed in his adopted language. His name, however, is an important argument for English nationality. It is not Norwegian but Anglo-Norman. In its present form the name is a French adaptation of the German Hrodebert—“illustrious in council,” or “illustrious in glory.” It occurs in Anglo-Saxon records of the eleventh century, before the Conquest, but in nearly every instance the bearer is definitely known to be a Norman. After the Conquest the name was widespread in England, and not least among the clergy: Fountains Abbey had three abbots named Robert, before 1400. In 1200, as we have seen, Robert son of Sunnolf was taking a cargo to Norway. In Norway, however, the name Robert is not recorded before the time of the two translations containing that signature, and it does not occur again until the fourteenth century, when it appears several times in Norwegian diplomas, in most cases late in the century and borne by clerics. Significant for Robert's English origin is the fact that Tristram and Eli spell the translator's name in the foreign French form popularized by the Normans in England.

A man with a Norman name, a literary clerk, a friend of King Hákon, an abbot: where then was his abbey? The foundation whose members were in closest contact with the Norwegian court, and were likewise most frequently employed for English diplomatic service, was the abbey of Lysa, a day's journey south of the royal residence in Bergen. Clerks of Lysa served as ambassadors to England in 1217, 1218, 1221, 1229, and again as late as 1280. Lysa, like Hovedö, was an English foundation and continued, as we have seen, close to the mother country. From the decade before Tristram was translated, the printed English Rolls supply no less than nine writs concerning ships or monks from Lysa. As for the abbots of Lysa, the first abbot in the second half of the twelfth century was certainly an Englishman, and a later abbot, Richard, about 1265, appears also to have been of that nation, if we may judge from his continued intimacy with Henry III. About 1246 the sister institution of Hovedö had an English abbot, Lawrence. Now the records of Lysa supply us with no abbot from 1194 to 1265. Robert would fill admirably part of the gap.

Robert wrote his Tristram at the time when communication between Norway and England—clerical, diplomatic, commercial—had reached highwater mark. What an amazing array of voyages during the twelve months of 1225, the year before the Tristram was completed! In that summer the king's uncle, Duke Skúli, sent his ship over to Lynn on trade. Hákon himself presented a brace of hawks to Henry III, while the latter reciprocated with a welcome present of grain to Hákon, sent through the archdeacon of Bergen. On August 30, King Henry notified his bailiffs at Lynn, that, despite all previous ordinances, he had given Hákon's subjects permission to take eight thousand bushels of corn out of the country, and bade them not hinder the Norwegians when they came to Lynn to buy goods. Not content with this, Henry—or the guardians of the young king—wrote again, on the following day, to the officials of Lynn to receive in a friendly way the men and merchants of Norway, this protection to last three years. Askeld, archdeacon of Bergen, and Friar William of Lysa were in England this summer, also John Steel, a leading Norwegian noble and a friend of the king, went to England on business, with a shipload of goods, and proceeded for a vigil to the shrine of Becket. In England he met Peter of Housesteads, the newly elected archbishop of Nidaros, on his way back from the pope. Steel left the prelate in England and sailed for Norway late in the summer. At sea he met King Hákon himself and heartened him with the news of Peter's elevation. This evidence of one year's activities is very striking when we consider that it is gathered from the scattered and imperfect records that have been preserved through seven centuries.

No wonder that at a time of such intimacy between the two countries, Anglo-Norman romances were being translated into Norse. What was happening meanwhile in the internal affairs of Norway? Does history throw any direct light upon the circumstances under which Tristrams Saga was written? In 1225, the young king was twenty-one years old and his life was a rich composite of romance and adventure. In the early months of that year he was fighting in Sweden. After Easter he sailed north to Bergen for his wedding with his cousin, the Lady Margaret, Skúli's daughter. According to Sturla, “the liegemen and the best yeomen all over the Gula-thing were bidden. There came, too, many learned clerks. The bridal was set for Trinity Sunday, and lasted five nights, with an honorable feast, as was intended. The king treated all the men in the Yule-hall; but the queen was up in the summer-hall, and the women with her; but the cloister-men were all by themselves in one room, and five abbots were over that company.” So the monks were merry at Hákon's festival. Was it not natural that to celebrate his wedding the young king should have commissioned Brother Robert to translate an Anglo-Norman love-story?

But which? The answer was almost inevitable. The royal house of Anjou seem to have had a special predilection for the romance of Tristan. Thomas himself probably wrote for the favor of Henry II and Eleanor. Eleanor's daughters, Marie de Champagne and Mathilda of Saxony, both were the patrons of poets who wrote of Tristan. King John numbered among his regalia “Tristram's sword,” and there is reason to believe that a magnificent tile pavement formerly laid down at Chertsey Abbey, depicting scenes from Thomas' poem, was commissioned by Henry III in his last years. Hákon, who took the Angevin court for his model, must have known the romance well. There could be no more logical consequence of all the circumstances than that the Tristan of Thomas should have been translated into Norse in 1226.

The history of the Tristan legend in the Scandinavian North does not end with Robert's Norwegian version. Like most Northern romances, Tristrams Saga is preserved to us in Icelandic copies only, and one can never be sure how much the Icelandic scribes may have tampered with the text. From Iceland also we have quite another Tristrams Saga,³ preserved in a fifteenth-century parchment somewhat older, as it happens, than the earliest existing copies of Robert's romance. That this later saga rests upon an imperfect memory of Robert's Tristram, not upon an independent version of the story, is proved by the fact that, while there are many alterations and much new material is added, the saga reproduces several incidents which are recorded only by Thomas and his translators and no episodes which are characteristic only of the Béroul group of romances. The general outline of the events of the Norwegian saga is there, only greatly condensed, the one hundred and twelve printed pages of Robert being compressed into thirty-eight.

The Icelandic author pretends to a greater knowledge of Tristram's ancestry than the English poet. In fact, one-fourth of the saga elapses before the birth of the hero—a proportion quite consistent with the methods of the classical Icelandic family sagas. The names are bungled: Mark is called Morodd, Morhold is called Engres, while the unfortunate Irishman who falsely boasted of having slain the fire-breathing dragon is quite naturally confused with Kay, the vainglorious seneschal of Arthurian romance. Again, Brittany has moved into Spain, which nation is at war with Russia; the sword splinter is lodged in Tristram instead of in Morhold and leads to his discovery by Isodd on the first voyage to Ireland. The dragon-slaying is also telescoped into the first voyage, and there is a remarkable tale of how Tristram killed all his crew when they landed in Ireland. On the return voyage the love potion is not forgotten, but Bringven has advanced to the dignity of Isodd's foster-mother, “daughter of Carl Cusen.” The lovers are in no hurry about going to King Morodd; they conveniently delay three months. King Morodd is more courteous and magnanimous than even Thomas intended, for he offers the princess to Tristram, insisting that it is more fitting that she be his bride.

The king married her, nevertheless, and events ensued which aroused his increasing suspicion. One night, returning from church, he found Tristram and Isodd abed together: so he sent them off to a cave. Here Isodd said, “What else is there to do but enjoy one's self in the cave?” “No,” said Tristram, “let us each go to his own side of the cave.” The king, of course, was listening. Eventually Tristram went to Spain, and there married “the dark Isodd.” At first he was constant to “the fair Isodd,” but at length he yielded to nature and after three years a child named Kalegras was born. Tristram died in Jakobland, and the saga faithfully recounts the incident of the black and white sails. In keeping with Icelandic saga tradition the saga-man adds an account of the hero's family after his death. Tristram's uncle, after this sorrowful dénouement, sent for Kalegras, Tristram's son, and had him declared king over England. He married a daughter of the German Emperor and had a daughter and two sons, about whom there is a long saga. King Morodd penitently went to Jerusalem, where he ended his days in a monastery.

This boorish account of Tristram's noble passion has very properly been called a rustic version in distinction from Robert's court translation. In refinement of style it is as far below Robert as the French prose romance falls short of Thomas. As a tale for the winter fireside, however, the native Icelandic account was more homely than Robert's, and its popularity is attested by the greater number of manuscripts preserved.

One incident of the Tristan story finds a parallel at the end of Grettis Saga.⁴ It is the episode of Isolt's ambiguous oath of wifely fidelity. According to Robert's translation, Isond, on her way to take the oath, had to cross a river by boat. On the other side Tristram was waiting in the disguise of a pilgrim. At her request the supposed pilgrim carried her from the boat to the dry land, where he stumbled and fell on her. Therefore she was able to swear that no man had come near her except Mark and the pilgrim, and bore the hot iron without peril.

In the rustic Icelandic account, the boat does not figure; instead, Isodd comes riding, her horse sticks in a ditch, Tristram in the guise of a beggar pulls her out, and she manages to step over him.

In two respects—the disguise as a beggar, and the muddy ditch—the Icelandic saga corresponds to the Spes incident at the end of Grettis Saga. The history of Grettir, Iceland's most famous outlaw, slain in 1031, concludes with an account which seems rather less than more historical, describing how the hero was avenged two years later.

Thorbiörn, Grettir's slayer, fled to Byzantium—Miklagarth, “the Great City”—and took service in the Varangian guard. Thorsteinn, Grettir's brother, followed and slew him in the presence of the Varangians. He was arrested but released at the instance of a rich Byzantine woman, Spes, who fell in love with him. Her husband surprised them together, but Spes protested her innocence and offered to affirm it by oath. On the day appointed Spes proceeded to the church, accompanied by many noble ladies. There had been heavy rains, the road was wet, and they had to cross a large pool of water before getting to the church. Many poor people were gathered there, ready apparently to carry a parcel or earn an honest coin. Among them was a large-limbed beggar, supported by crutches, who proceeded to carry Spes across the puddle, but stumbled and fell with her at the edge. However, she gave him some money. Going into the church, she took oath that she had given gold to no man and had suffered fleshly defilement of no man except the beggar and her husband. The beggar was, of course, her lover, Thorsteinn.

The story is better told here than in the other Scandinavian accounts, because the saga in which it is found is a work of greater literary merit. It is natural to suppose that the Spes episode is a tag supplied after the Tristram story became familiar in the North. It must be remembered, however, that Grettis Saga is largely historical, and that the incident is told of an Icelander who entered the Varangian service at Byzantium in 1033. Instead of supposing the whole a fabrication, one may possibly hold that the report of Thorsteinn's strategies was actually brought from the Great City with the history of Grettir's revenge; not that the trick was historically performed, but that a merry Byzantine tale was associated with a Northman in the Varangian guard. One version of the unfaithful wife's ambiguous oath was actually current there at this time in the popular Byzantine romance of the loves of Clitophon and Leucippe. If this surmise is sound, we have in Grettis Saga another example of the oral transmission of stories from the Great City suggested in a later chapter. This does not exclude the possibility that the continuator of Grettir knew also Robert's Tristram and that it colored his account of Thorsteinn.

More interesting, however, than the Spes episode in Grettis Saga, is the appearance, in another Icelandic saga, of the framework upon which a large portion of the Tristan story is built. So completely are the characters distorted that, upon first reading, the saga gives one only the vague impression of having been met with before, either in childhood or in dreams. Betrothal by proxy, indeed, is common enough in mediæval literature and need awake little curiosity. But when, on closer scrutiny, we find that, in this new romance, the proxy-wooing is joined by a sea voyage to the motif of the substituted bride, as nowhere in literature save here and in Tristan, we realize that there must be some connection between the two. Probability becomes certainty when we reach, later in the story, a journey for the healing that can come only from a relative of the enemy. Yet the narration of these themes is so different from that in Tristan's career as we know it, so much more radically different from Robert's saga than the rustic Tristram, or than the Oriental Tyodel from its Breton lay, that we seem to have here, not a readaptation of Tristrams Saga, but the survival of a Tristan tradition earlier than the twelfth-century estoire.

Although this saga, the romance of Harald Hringsbani⁵—Harald who slew his father Hring—has never been published, it was as much read in Iceland, to judge from the number of paper manuscripts, as the genuine Tristram. And the romance has sufficient antiquity to command respect. There are two accounts of Harald Hringsbani. The earlier of these exists only in rímur, based, we presume, on a lost saga. Here the geography of the Tristan story is distorted to such an extent that England takes the place of Ireland as the home of the bride across the sea, while the realm of the abused king is Denmark. In the later version, represented by both prose and metrical accounts, even England disappears, giving room to Constantinople—a consequence of the vogue of Byzantine romance.

The scene of the rímur opens in Denmark, which was ruled by King Hring, “over-king over twenty kings.” When his queen died, his son Harald urged him to cease sorrowing and take a young bride. Hring accordingly commissioned the prince to secure for him the hand of Signy, daughter of Erik, king of England. Harald and his retinue sailed in state, their silken sails shot with gold. At the English court they were banqueted, Erik readily granted Hring's suit, and the proxy wooer set sail with the bride. They had, however, conceived an ardent passion for each other and were very unhappy as they approached Denmark. At this juncture appeared Odin in disguise, who is represented as a promoter of strife. He offered a solution which was adopted. A farmer's daughter, likewise named Signy, was persuaded to change places with the bride. But Odin came in another disguise to the king and told him he had been deceived. Hring then tried to burn his son in his hall, but he escaped and offered to leave the land. Hring insisted on revenge and was slain in battle by Harald.

In violent grief over his hard fate, Harald with his warriors set sail over the raging sea. In the course of his adventures he overthrew in single combat a champion named Hermod. Harald was wounded, however, and the dying man declared that no one had power to heal that wound but his sister, who loved Hermod above all things, and would treat his slayer with shame. Harald sent his followers back to Denmark and went forth alone in search of cure. For a twelvemonth he wandered, until he came upon Hertrygg, the Greek emperor, Hermod's sister's son, out to avenge his uncle. Disguised as a beggar, Harald tricked the Byzantine into swearing brotherhood, on condition that he deliver Harald. Compelled by his oath, Hertrygg took Harald to Constantinople as his guest and, by a ruse, persuaded his mother to perform the cure.

In the end Harald and the real Signy reign over Denmark, and Hertrygg and the substituted bride over Byzantium.

The rímur are for the most part bald in their treatment of details. Their kennings are strained to the limit and inferior in conception. When the action, however, is unravelled from the cipher code of rímur metrics, it proves to be straight-forward and dramatic. Only essentials are preserved. In this respect Haralds Rímur Hringsbana bears a stylistic resemblance to the English Sir Tristrem.

The later version of the Hringsbani romance retains the above outlines until the king's death. But England is not mentioned; instead, Signy is the daughter of King Dag of Constantinople. The healing is quite different; the injunction about the relative is removed and the cure performed by a canny dwarf. Harald has adventures with monsters in Asia, and ends his days happily as king of Byzantium. This saga, though distorted, preserves some earlier features, no doubt more completely than the condensed rímur. Among them are passages as beautiful as any in Tristan; for example, the portion describing the wooing by proxy in Byzantium, and the subsequent voyage:

He tried to console her, but she wept all the more. So he took her alone into a cabin and said, “Now tell me the cause of your grief, and I will help it if I can.” “You alone can relieve me,” she said, “you knew my desire before.” “Do not speak so,” said Harald: “that I cannot do, and so it needs must be.” “Never,” she cried, “if I can avoid it, will I behold your father with my eyes! It is pleasanter for me to sink into the sea and never more to see the sun, and this I will do; but though you will all be turned from me, yet will I continue to love you, as my life.”

Thus has the tragedy of Tristan of Leonois become the tragi-comedy of Harald prince of Denmark. The setting is Scandinavian, and some of the incidents, such as the “burning in,” are Norse. Other features are more or less suggestive of Tristan tradition; there are two maidens named Signy, as two named Isond; Mariadok, the accuser of Tristram, is paralleled by the disguised Odin who reveals the deception to Hring; the single combat, the parts taken by Hermod and Morholt, the sisters of the slain, and the sea voyage in search of healing are identical; Hertrygg performs services similar to those of Kardin, Tristram's friend; both are enamoured of the substituted bride. It is, however, the combination of the three basic themes of proxy-betrothal, substitution in bride-bed, and quest of cure that certainly connects Harald with Tristan. These motifs appear singly in other Icelandic tales. But it is only the unique union of the three themes that locks the chain of evidence identifying the Danish-Byzantine prince with his Pictish prototype.

From what stage of Tristan tradition, then, was the Hringsbani story derived? Surely not from Robert's translation. For the dissonances are greater than the harmonies. We are loath to concede such sweeping changes even to the cumulative imagination of habitually exact Icelandic recitation. How much more like is the Spes episode in Grettla! Where is the love potion that even the rustic version retains? Where is that other Isolt who was remembered for centuries in the popular ballads of Iceland? In Hringsbani the substituted bride continues her rôle; in Tristram she is a temporary expedient. And the incident of wound and the voyage of healing is quite out of its setting and attached to another lady later in the story. When once the herbs of healing had been placed in the hands of the lady sought in marriage, could this triple knot of tragedy—cure, proxy-wooer, and substitution—once tied, ever have been disentangled by an Icelandic redactor?

It is easier to suppose that the romance of Harald Hring-killer is descended from a stage in the Tristan tradition earlier than that in the romances derived from the so-called estoire, before the love-potion was introduced, or the voyage of healing led to the first Isolt, or Tristan wedded Isolt of the White Hands. The Icelandic story may possibly represent a simpler, unquestioning form of the tale, when the leech was the second Isolt—a stage in the tradition before some poet placed all the skeins in the hands of his heroine Isolt of Ireland, leaving it to that other Isolt only to serve as a foil to the transcendent beauty of her rival and to try in the furnace Tristan's fidelity.

Hringsbani, moreover, is not the only disguise in which Tristan has come to the North independently of Brother Robert's saga. The other versions arrived, not via England and Norway, but through Germany and Denmark, and in more recent times.⁶ There are, for example, two Danish prose romances. One of them, first printed in 1857, is a translation of the German prose romance based upon Eilhart von Oberg's Tristrant and first printed at Augsburg in 1484. The other Danish account appeared in Copenhagen as early as 1792 and has since been published many times. It also professes to be translated from German and bears the strange title “A Tragical History of the Noble and Valiant Tristrand, Son of the Duke of Burgundy, and the Beautiful Indiana, Daughter of the Grand Mogul, Emperor of India.” The contents are as extraordinary as the title. Although Tristrand and Indiana follows the German prose Tristrant in outline, the hero is the only character who keeps his original name; the countries, too, are all changed, and many details are altered. The German original, now lost, was perhaps intended as a political satire. This version was printed also in Norway, while in Iceland it was made the subject of rímur by the poet Sigurd Breidfjörd (1798-1846).

Tristan has lived on in Scandinavia in the life of the people, in ballad and folk-tale⁷ as well as in written sagas and rímur. Unlike the Icelandic ballads, the Tristram ballads of the Færoes and Denmark do not agree with any existing versions of a Tristan romance, and are apparently based on faint popular reminiscences. The name Isalt-Isolt, instead of Isond-Isodd of the sagas, points to German influence. The hero is called Tistrum or Tistram. The three Danish ballads—all different in theme—contain little in accord with the Tristan romances except that they are love stories. Apparently the names Tistrum and Isalt had become synonyms in the popular imagination for any two lovers. The curious Færoe ballad of true love, however, has slightly more in common with the real Tristan:

Tistram and Lady Isin loved each other, but his parents wished to separate them. They sent him with a letter to the king of France: he should either give him his daughter in marriage or take his life. Tistram refused to be faithless to Lady Isin, and was accordingly hanged. In revenge Lady Isin sailed to France, devastated the country, and took her lover's body down from the gallows; then her own heart broke.

The rustic Icelandic Tristrams Saga had fallen upon a happy designation for the two Isodds: Mark's queen was Isodd Bjarta, Isodd the fair, and she of Brittany Isodd Svarta, Isodd the dark. The same terms are used by an Icelandic ballad on Tristan's death. Again they are employed in an Icelandic fairy tale entitled Isól Fair and Isól Dark. The tale itself, however, is quite independent of the Tristan tradition.

In artistic merit all other ballads about Tristan yield to the Icelandic Tristrams Kvœði. Based upon Robert, it confines its action to the end of the story, telling in lines of naïve beauty the hero's last illness and the hurried voyage of Isodd to save him. For eighteen days she was delayed on the voyage before fair wids drove her to port. Then the other Isodd went in to her dying husband.

These words she spake, Isodd the dark,
          When she had gone within;
“Black are the sails upon the ship
          Which here is lying in.”

Then comes the refrain:

For them it was fated only to sever.
These words she spake, Isodd the dark,
          She said that they were true:
“Black are the sails upon the ship,
          But are not blue.”

Thereat Tristram turned to the wall and died.

They anchored the ship
          Off the black strand,
They bore Isodd the fair
          First to the land.
Long, long was the way
          And narrow the street,
Ever heard she bells a-ringing
          And song so sweet.
Into the church went Isodd;
          A hundred men she led,
Priests were chanting in procession
          Around the dead.

Twice Isodd looked down upon Tristram's body while “the priests stood round on the church floor with candle lights,” and then she gave up her life on his bier. With the same restrained pathos the ballad describes their burial. This ballad of a later age may well have been sung upon the shores of the Icelandic fjord which kept intact the name of that first Drostan, the Pictish king. And the refrain which follows each verse shows how completely the simple Icelandic farmers realized the tragic undertone of the song. Deim var ekki skapaað, nem að skilja—“For them it was fated only to sever.”

Notes

1. On the Tristan story, see J. Bédier, Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, Paris, 1902-1905; W. Golther, Tristan und Isolde in den Dichtungen des Mittelalters und der Neuen Zeit, Leipzig, 1907; G. Schoepperle, Tristan and Isolt, A Study of the Sources of the Romance, London and Frankfurt a. M., 1913.

2. Tristrams Saga ok Ísondar, edited by E. Kölbing, Heilbronn, 1878.

3. The Icelandic Tristrams Saga is edited by G. Brynjúlfsson in Annaler för Nordisk Oldkyndighed, Copenhagen, 1851, pp. 1-160. For rímur, see same, pp. 159-160.

4. For the Grettis Saga, see Chapter XIII.

5. For the Hringsbani analogue, see H. G. Leach and G. Schoepperle, Haraldssaga Hringsbana and the Tristan and Svanhild Romances (Publications of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, II, 1916, 264 ff).

6. For the late Danish folkbook versions of Tristan, see Golther, Tristan und Isolde, 1907, pp. 247-254.

7. For Tristan ballads, see Grundtvig and Olrik, Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, Ridderviser, III, 29-46; Grundtvig, Íslenzk Fornkvæði, I, No. 23; V. U. Hammershaimb, Færösk Anthologi, I, No. 26; G. Brynjúlfsson, Saga af Tristram ok Ísond, Copenhagen, 1878, pp. 339-370. For folk-tales, see J. Árnason, Íslenzka Pjóðsögur, II, 315-326.