[In the following essay, Loomis comments on the critical reception Gertrude Schoepperle's 1913 study of the Tristan legend received, and discusses the origin, development, and transmission of the legend.]

REVIEWS

The reviews of Miss Schoepperle's Tristan and Isolt were, broadly speaking, highly favorable. Her critique of Bédier's reconstruction of the poème primitif in his edition of Thomas's Tristan on the basis of its assumed logical structure and consistency was generally accepted. So, too, was her rejection of his thesis that Béroul, Thomas, Eilhart, the Folie, and the Prose Romance were all derived from a French poem of the early twelfth century, created at one stroke by a single author of genius. Her array of parallels between the surviving Tristan texts, on the one hand, and motifs, situations, and stories in circulation at the time, on the other, was taken as evidence that there was a far more important body of tradition in the romance than Bédier had recognized, even though Kelemina and others questioned the validity of particular examples which she adduced.

Most of the reviewers were impressed by the array of analogues culled from Irish literature, and especially by the similarity to the Tristan romance presented by the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne, which, though most of the texts are late, could be traced back to the tenth century, and which told a tragic tale of the compulsive love of a hero for his royal uncle's wife, and of their flight to the forest. Miss Schoepperle's contention that this formed the nucleus from which developed the great medieval romance was received favorably by most critics, not only because of the basic resemblance in plot but also because it afforded an explanation of the curious episodes of the sword separating the two lovers in their forest retreat and of the splashing water. Joseph Loth was almost, if not quite, alone in asserting that adultery and elopement were too commonplace in life and fiction to prove dependence of the romance on the saga.

Not all reviewers were ready to accept Miss Schoepperle's contention that Eilhart's French source, the estoire, could be taken as the source of Thomas's poem, Kelemina and Nitze being among the sceptics. Huet and Ferdinand Lot questioned the dating of the estoire in the last quarter of the twelfth century, both arguing that the courtly elements were not necessarily attributable to so late a date, and Lot pointing out that it was inconsistent with the dating of Thomas's Tristan before Chrétien's Cligès. Miss Schoepperle's belief that it was Mathilda, daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Poitou, who confided a manuscript of the estoire to Eilhart von Oberge on her return from England to Saxony in 1185, and that this furnishes a terminus a quo for the composition of his translation was challenged and is now pretty generally rejected.

On the whole, the response of scholars to Miss Schoepperle's Tristan may be summed up in the concluding words of Joseph Loth:

L’étude des sagas irlandaises se recommandait d’ellemême; elle pouvait assurer la celticité de traits de moeurs, d’épisodes même qui prêtaient à la discussion. A ce point de vue, les recherches de Miss Schoepperle sont des plus méritoires. … Les analyses des diverses versions du roman sont également faites avec la plus grande conscience, et ajoutent notablement à l’oeuvre de M. Bédier. Les remarques ingénieuses abondent. En somme, le travail de Miss Schoepperle est un véritable mine de renseignements, un répertoire indispensable non seulement à tous ceux qui s’intéressent aux romans arthuriens, mais encore à ceux qui s’occupent du moyen âge et des questions de Folklore.

THE DATING AND AUTHORSHIP OF TEXTS

The theory of Bédier that the reference of Bernard de Ventadour to Tristan as the suffering lover of Yzeut could be dated approximately 1154, though unacceptable to Miss Schoepperle, was upheld by Deister as a probability, but has again been vigorously challenged by Delbouille.

The dating and the provenance of Eilhart von Oberge's Tristrant are still the subject of debate. The editor of the surviving fragments, Wagner, argued that the dialect was that of the Middle Rhine, not of Lower Saxony, and that the poem must have been written about 1170, and in these views he was supported by Van Dam and Ranke. But Wesle in W. Stammler's Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Verfasserlexikon, I (1933), cols. 520-4, was not convinced. In any case the poet must have lived earlier than the official of the court of Brunswick with the same name, of whom records survive.

Similar uncertainty exists as to whether the Béroul fragment was composed by one or two poets. Muret in his edition for the Société des Anciens Textes Français maintained that the first part, which corresponded in substance to Eilhart and which extended to vs. 2754, was the work of a jongleur named Béroul, who twice referred to himself, and that the rest of the poem was added by an anonymous author, who not only contradicted his predecessor violently but also used another source and exhibited certain differences of spirit. Later Muret conceded the possibility of a single author, and has had many followers in this opinion. But Miss Schoepperle, though she did not commit herself, distinguished between the two parts, and recently Raynaud de Lage has adduced strong arguments from the versification, the introduction of new characters, and the absence of the mannerisms of oral recitation in the second part, to render nearly certain the division of the poem between two authors. Only the latter part, then, can be assigned, on the basis of the reference in line 3849 to the epidemic which the Crusaders suffered at Acre in 1191, to a period after that date, and the first section may well be twenty or thirty years older.

Though the terminus a quo of Thomas's poem still remains fixed at 1155, owing to the certainty of his borrowing from Wace's Brut, the terminus ad quem is still an open question. A large number of scholars have accepted the arguments of Gaston Paris and Bédier that Chrétien wrote his Cligès as a sort of counterblast to Thomas's Tristan and that he imitated a word-play, preserved in Gottfried's adaptation of Thomas, on l’amer (love), l’amer (bitterness), and la mer (sea). But not only did Miss Schoepperle reject the dependence of Cligès on Thomas as unproved, but Hoepffner also pointed out that certain of the more specific of Chrétien's allusions to, or imitations of, the Tristan material (such as the golden hair) were inspired by another version than that of Thomas. Jirmounsky, in addition to this argument, showed that the verbal conceit was a commonplace with Latin authors. R. S. Loomis was unable to find before 1195 examples in art of the repetition of the heraldic device on shield, lance, pennon, and conisance, which Thomas assigned to Tristan le Nain, and hence concluded that the poem could not be much more than ten years earlier. The latest editor of Thomas, Professor Wind, though leaning toward a date after Cligès, does not pronounce a final decision. She agrees with Bédier that the poet's professed ignorance of affairs of love does not mean that he was in holy orders, and accepts the general view that he addressed himself to a courtly circle, perhaps to a royal patron. Jonin, however, believes Thomas was a cleric.

THE NAMES IN THE EARLY TRISTAN ROMANCE

Miss Schoepperle adopted a noncommittal attitude to the evidence offered by the names as to the history of the Tristan legend. Bédier, however, even though he minimized the Celtic elements in that legend and believed that all our early texts were derived from a single French poem which owed little to an earlier tradition, somewhat inconsistently defined several stages in the transmission of the story from Pictland to Anglo-Norman Britain by way of Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, on the basis of the names. Later scholars have added considerably to our information on the nomenclature. The following is offered as an amplification and rectification of Bédier's scheme.

Pictish: Drustan=Tristan.

Welsh: Esyllt=Iselt, Iseut; March=Mark; Branwen=Brenguen; Kae Hir=Kaherdin (assimilated to Turkish Kahedin); Bleddri=Bleheri=Pelherin; Caradoc=Cariado.

Breton: Rivelen=Rivalen; Rivelen + (French) reis=Rouland riis, Kanelengres; Rodald=Roald; Morgan=Morgan; Morald=Morholt, Morhaut; Perinis=Perinis; Donuallen=Donoalent, Denoalan; Godoine=Godoine; Houel=Hoel.

French: Blanchefleur; Guenelon; Orri; Ogrin; Estult le Orgillius.

Of the place-names, some can be identified with certainty. Loenois, Tristan's native land according to Béroul and Eilhart, is Lothian, which then extended from the Firth of Forth to the Tweed; in the Prose Tristan it was confused with Leonois, a Breton province. Béroul's Gavoie or Ganoie, whose king was at war with the Scottish king, is Galloway. Carloon or Cuerlion is, of course, Caerleon on Usk. Isneldone, where Perinis found King Arthur, is the Roman fort near Carnarvon, called by the Anglo-Normans “la cité de Snaudone”. Tintaguel, needless to say, is the romantic castle of Tintagel. Le Mont in Béroul is St. Michael's Mount, and Loth identified Lancien with the modern parish of Lantyan in Cornwall. Ermonie, mentioned by the English redactor of Thomas as the land of Tristan's father, represents a not uncommon corruption of Armorique, that is, Brittany.

Some identifications are plausible, others mere guesses. The forest of Morrois, to which the lovers retired, may possibly be the wild region of Moray in northern Scotland. The isle of Saint Sanson, where, according to the Prose Tristan and Chrétien's Erec, the combat with Morholt took place, is probably one of the Scilly Isles of that name, even though this identification puts it far from Tintagel. Béroul surely knew Cornish geography well, but Loth's attempt to place the Blanche Lande, Costentin, the Mal Pas, and Morrois in that county has been met by the reviewers with scepticism. The notion that Leonois, Malory's Lyonesse, was a country lying west of Land's End, which had sunk beneath the Atlantic waves, goes back no farther than the Cornish antiquary Carew in the seventeenth century (Modern Philology, L, 162-70).

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE LEGEND

Since Bédier and Miss Schoepperle wrote, much has been added to our knowledge of the origin, development, and transmission of the Tristan legend. Even as early as 1891 Zimmer had discovered in the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots (977-995) a certain Drest or Drust, son of Talorcan, who reigned about 780, and he had pointed out the equivalence of this name with the Drystan son of Tallwch, who in Welsh texts was the lover of Esyllt, wife of March. This identification was not only accepted by Bédier and many others, but it was confirmed by Deutschbein's proof that a tale about Drust had been interpolated in the ancient Irish saga, the Wooing of Emer. In this interpolation alone the Ulster hero Cuchulainn is accompanied by a certain Drust. The setting is the Hebrides, not far from Pictish territory at the mouth of the Clyde. When Cuchulainn arives at the king's court, he hears wailing and learns that a human tribute is to be given over to warriors from Ireland. He kills them, but is himself wounded. Though others claim credit for the victory, the king's daughter does not believe them, and is able to recognize Cuchulainn as he takes a bath. The king offers her to him as a bride, but he refuses. Once granted that Drust was the original hero of this episode, is it not obvious that here is reflected the Pictish source of the Morholt episode and of the discomfiture of the false claimant? By great good fortune, then, we have preserved to us the outline of the original saga which was attached to Drustan, the Pictish king, the nucleus of the famous romance.

If Sidney Hartland's great study of the legend of Perseus may be relied on, it is probable that the Pictish saga is a descendant of the classical story of Perseus and Andromeda which had drifted far to the northwest. Its localization in this region may possibly have left traces in the geography of the French romances, where Tristan's homeland is Loenois and the forest to which he and Isolt fled was Morrois. Loenois is certainly Lothian, and Morrois is most plausibly identified as the wild region of Moray, the former adjacent to the southern border of Pictland and the latter lying deep within it. Conceivably, therefore, these lands of Tristan's birth and exile may owe their mention in French romance to Drust's original connection with what is now Scotland.

The Pictish saga, besides passing over to Ulster to be incorporated in the Cuchulainn cycle, must have passed southward by way of the Britons of Strathclyde and Cumberland into Wales, and here an extraordinary process of accretion began. The literary remains concerned with Drystan son of Tallwch (except for a very doubtful fragment from the Black Book of Carmarthen which contains the name Diristan) are unfortunately late. Though two Esyllts are listed among the goldentorqued ladies of Arthur's court in Kulhwch and Olwen (ca. 1100), Drystan and March son of Meirchiawn are first mentioned in Rhonabwy's Dream of the early or middle thirteenth century—strangely enough, among Arthur's counsellors! But there is no proof that the Welsh Drystan material at this stage had been influenced by the French romances, and it is safe to assume that the tradition was considerably older than the texts. Noteworthy is the fact that Drystan, March, and Esyllt are persistently associated with Arthur. In a thirteenth-century ms., Peniarth 16, we read:

Drystan son of Tallwch, who guarded the swine of March son of Meirchyawn, while the swineherd went to ask Esyllt to come to a meeting with him. Arthur was trying to get one pig from among them, either by deceit or by force, but he did not get it.

A later version magnifies Drystan's cleverness and prowess by adding March, Kei, and Bedwyr to Arthur as unsuccessful pig-snatchers. Such evidence as we have, then, indicates that already in the Welsh stage Drystan had been attracted into the Arthurian orbit, that he was noted for exceptional cunning and strength, and that he was involved in an affair with Esyllt, the wife of March.

This love-affair was evidently the most important accretion to the Pictish tale of Drust. As already noted above, it was Miss Schoepperle's great contribution to show that, as developed in the estoire, the tragic story of Tristan and Isolt showed a marked affinity to the famous Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne and must, in fact, have been derived, even though indirectly, from some version of it. For there was a correspondence in the relationship of the three principal characters, Diarmaid being, like Tristan, the lover of his uncle's wife; there was a similar compulsive force which brought the lovers together; in both stories the lovers dwelt for a long time in the forests, subsisting on game and moving from place to place. Miss Schoepperle clinched the matter by pointing to parallel incidents, the woman's reaction to the water which splashed against her leg, and the placing of a barrier (stone or sword) between the lovers as they slept. Even though the full form of the Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne has come down to us in no manuscript earlier than the seventeenth century, the saga is mentioned in a tenth-century list, and may be centuries older. Thus the heart of Tristan's love-story is Irish.

If further proof be needed that this saga exerted a powerful influence on the Tristan romance in the Welsh stage, it is provided by the short Welsh tale entitled Ystoria Trystan. This evidence was disregarded by Miss Schoepperle, Loth, and Kelemina, apparently because we have no copy earlier than 1550, but Sir Ifor Williams in his Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry declared that the verse elements were much older than the linking prose passages, and that the narrative closely resembled the Diarmaid and Grainne tale in Irish. In fact, there are nine points of likeness, some of them very specific details. Significant is the fact that Kae Hir, the Sir Kay of Arthurian romance, appears as the friend of Trystan and asks Esyllt to bestow her handmaid on him, just as Kaherdin appears in Thomas's poem as Tristan's friend and with Isolt's consent wins her handmaid as his mistress. Of course, the equation of Kaherdin with the brother of Isolt of the White Hands must have been made much later in the development of the romance, since, as Miss Schoepperle argued and as we shall see in due course, the second Isolt belongs to the last stages.

Two other Irish love-stories may have had some influence. One is the tragic tale of Deirdre, which has so strongly appealed to modern Irish poets and playwrights. Like the Elopement of Diarmaid and Grainne, it tells of the passion of a young hero, Naisi, for the destined bride of an old king, their elopement and wanderings, and the attempts of the king to catch them. At last, they were persuaded to return with an assurance of safety, but Naisi was treacherously killed, Deirdre never smiled again or raised her head from her knee, and a year later crushed her head against a rock. Miss Schoepperle proposed, with good reason, that at a stage before the addition of Tristan's exile and marriage, the romance had a similar ending with the return of the lovers from the forest with an assurance of forgiveness from Mark—an assurance broken when he found the two together. Much less plausible is Thurneysen's attempt to connect the saga of Cano mac Gartnain with the romance of Tristan. To be sure, this too is a tragic tale of a man's love for another's wife, but except for the fact that the husband's name is Marcan, there is little resemblance. The only certain major Irish influence on Tristan is that of Diarmaid and Grainne.

There are, however, quite a few elements which show enough similarity to motifs or situations in Irish literature to be judged of Celtic origin, but whether derived ultimately from Ireland or derived from similar materials current in Wales or Cornwall or even in Brittany, it is often difficult to determine. According to Cormac's Glossary (ca. 900) King Finn had a fool who spied on Finn's wife and revealed her infidelity to his master. Béroul and Eilhart give a roughly similar account of King Mark's dwarf who spied on Tristan and Isolt. Miss Schoepperle cited several instances from Irish literature of chips of wood cast into a stream to convey a message, but none of them corresponds closely enough in the attendant circumstances to be accepted definitely as the source. The same may be said of the analogues she cited for Tristan's carving a message on a hazel rod and laying it on the road where Isolt was to pass, as described in Marie de France's Chèvrefeuille. So, too, the voyage of Tristan in a rudderless boat in the hope of healing may well be a Celtic feature, but there is no precise parallel in Irish.

Two episodes, treated by Miss Schoepperle, though they have analogues in Irish, are more closely paralleled in Welsh. Mark, according to Béroul, had the ears of a horse and managed to keep the secret until his confidant, the dwarf, told it to a bush in the hearing of the barons. Essentially the same story was related of March in a Welsh manuscript of the sixteenth century and in the folklore of the Lleyn peninsula as late as 1882. The so-called incident of “the harp and the rote”, which involves the abduction of Isolt by a stranger as a result of Mark's rash promise and her rescue by Tristan, is unquestionably Celtic, with analogues in Irish and Arthurian romance, but it comes close enough to the episode of the rash boon in Pwyll to render it fairly certain that it was absorbed directly from a variant version of the mabinogi. Indeed, as an illustration of Tristan's resourcefulness and skill in music, “the harp and the rote” belongs with the other evidence for Tristan's reputation among the Welsh for cunning—a reputation which in all likelihood was responsible for his later fame as a master of venery.

If one may hazard a reconstruction of the Welsh saga of Drystan, it had little to say of his parentage and boyhood, for it is significant that in the French romances his father's name is Breton and his mother's name French, and his birthplace and early home is Brittany. Probably the story began with his arrival at a royal court and followed the outline of the Pictish tale of Drustan. It continued on the pattern of the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne, the princess of the Pictish tale being carried over and taking the role of Grainne. Drystan, Esyllt, and March were substituted for Diarmaid, Grainne, and Finn. There was no potion exercising its compulsive force on the lovers simultaneously, and though Esyllt may have put a spell on Drystan so that he eloped with her to the forest, he rejected her embraces and placed a stone between them each night. Only after the incident of the splashing water did he yield. After successfully eluding the efforts of March to catch them, the lovers were finally persuaded by the intervention of Arthur to return to the court, but they continued to meet surreptitiously, and, though often suspected, managed to deceive or outwit March. Finally, March discovered them together and murdered Drystan. Esyllt died in her lover's arms or committed suicide. Into some such composite framework minor incidents were fitted—the betrayal of March's secret deformity, “the harp and the rote”, Kae Hir's intrigue with Esyllt's maid, and perhaps others from the fund of current non-Celtic fiction. Needless to say, in this oral stage every cyvarwydd told the saga with individual and sometimes wide variations from the outline sketched above; some, probably, emphasized the romantic aspect and the lovers' fidelity; other what one might call the fabliau elements of bedroom comedy and successful dupery.

Mrs. Bromwich has suggested that in Welsh tradition March's court was in Glamorgan; in any case when the legend traveled south, the centre of the action was moved to Tintagel on the coast of Cornwall, where the ruins ever since have sheltered memories of the famous lovers. This new localization and the choice of the isle of St. Sanson as the site of the combat with Morholt are the only novelties which we can attribute with considerable plausibility to the passage of the legend through Cornwall at this early stage. The alternative situation of Mark's court at Lancien, modern Lantyan, which we find in the first part of Béroul, may well represent a genuine local tradition picked up by the poet, who was certainly acquainted with the country, but since it has left no traces in any other version, it could hardly have enjoyed much currency, and Loth's other geographical speculations, based on Béroul, have been properly received with scepticism.

This elaborate legend of Tristan passed on to Brittany to undergo further change and expansion. Between 1035 and 1045 a lord of Vitré named Triscan or Tristan attained a certain celebrity because of his quarrels with the Duke of Brittany, and his father was named Rivalon or Rivelon. It can hardly be a coincidence that Thomas transferred Tristan's homeland from Loonois to Brittany, assigned him a seneschal with the Breton name of Roald, described his war with the Duke of that land, and, in agreement with Eilhart, called his father Rivalon. Whether this Triscan or Tristan of Vitré and other Triscans of the same period were named after the Welsh Trystan or not, it is hard to say, but it seems fairly clear that the names were confused and that the hero of the French romances derived his father's name and inherited his war with the Duke of Brittany from the historic baron of Vitré. The Breton influence on the early part of the romance and the lack of specifically Celtic ingredients render it most likely that the affair of Rivalon and Blanchefleur, their deaths, and the upbringing of their orphan son by the faithful Roald were innovations, lacking a traditional basis. Probably some ingenious Breton, struck by the similarity of the name Tristan to the French adjective triste, invented a new etymology for the name and gave the birth-story a sombre cast.

Three elements in the Tristan romances have counterparts in modern Breton folklore. The story of King Mark's equine ears, current in Finistère in 1794 and for a century afterwards, was presumably imported as a component part of the legend from Wales. On the other hand, the death of the hero on hearing the lie about the sail, which forms the conclusion of the romance in Thomas and Eilhart, bears a close resemblance to a folktale collected on the islands of Ouessant and Molène some fifty years ago and was probably a native contribution. So, too, was Tristan's combat with the dragon which, Van Hamel has shown, is paralleled in modern Breton folklore. This folktale, an offshoot of the Perseus and Andromeda legend, was apparently combined in Brittany with the other version of which Drust was the hero, thus giving us two combats in which Tristan, though victorious, was left severely poisoned, and employing both the discomfiture of the false seneschal by means of the dragon's tongue from the Breton version and the recognition in the bath from the Pictish version.

Tristan's boast of his mistress and its justification by her beauty and even that of her handmaids, as they ride by, form an episode which was classified by Miss Schoepperle as a wide-spread folktale and such it is in modern times; but it may be claimed as a Breton addition, perhaps a Breton invention, since the earliest forms are found in the Breton lais of Lanval and Graelent. Moreover, the corresponding Italian folktales, as Levi has shown, derive from Breton originals through the fourteenth-century cantare of Liombruno and its many printed editions.

The curious episode of the Salle aux Images, the subterranean hall which Tristan had built and where he resorted secretly to caress the statue of Isolt, bears so marked a resemblance to Geoffrey of Monmouth's tale of the subterranean chamber which King Locrine had made and where he was wont to visit secretly his mistress Estrildis that we may feel sure of some relationship between the two narratives. Though the name Estrildis might suggest that Geoffrey had borrowed the story from a Welsh tale of Esyllt, Drystan's mistress, it is hard to see how the episode would have fitted into the saga when, as yet, Drystan had no jealous wife. One may be rightly cautious in accepting Geoffrey's statement that his source was a book brought from Brittany, yet considerable material did come to him from across the Channel, and the odds favor a common Breton source, more or less remote, for both versions of the clandestine visits to a mistress in a subterranean chamber.

Miss Schoepperle was able to cite Oriental parallels for such fabliau themes as the Tryst under the Tree and the Ambiguous Oath, but she did not assert Oriental derivation. Though these themes were coupled with Celtic motifs, such as the chips on the stream, the presumption is that they were not absorbed into the legend till a late stage, perhaps when Breton story-tellers wandered abroad and added to their repertoire fresh stories of jealous husbands, wayward wives, and tricky lovers.

The most important discovery concerning the latter part of the Tristan romance was made by Samuel Singer, who proved that the idea of a second Isolt, the unconsummated marriage, and the offended brother of the bride were taken over from the famous Arabic love-story of Kais and Lobna. Through what channels it had passed before it came to Brittany, no one can say, but that this pathetic plot was incorporated at the Breton stage can hardly be doubted when one considers the geography and the personages. The Arab romance afforded, moreover, examples of a rarefied passion which, when ascribed to Tristan, raised him high above more earthy lovers. Like Kais, Tristan, when separated from his lady, marries another woman for the ultra-romantic reason that she bears the same name. Like Kais, he is encouraged to do so by her brother. Like Kais, he cannot bring himself to consummate the marriage and thus gives offense to her relatives. Like Kais, Tristan, in Eilhart, is buried with his first love in one grave.

Thus the Celtic and Arabic tales had come from the West and the East to unite and form a harmonious whole which was singularly adapted to the expression in narrative form of the new cult of idealized extramarital passion of which the troubadours of Provence were the lyrical mouthpiece. For Isolt, as for Grainne, the claims of her husband were as naught beside the claims of love. For Tristan, as for Kais, the claims of his wife were as naught beside the claims of love. It seems probable that at this stage, if not earlier, Tristan as an ideal lover could no longer be depicted as hanging back, like Diarmaid, before the advances of an infatuated woman, and the potion was introduced to bring about a mutual and overpowering attraction. The episode of the separating sword, however, survived as a relic of the older story and as testimony to Tristan's original resistance to Esyllt's overtures.

It was in Brittany, then, that the legend of Tristan and Isolt was expanded into a tragic love-story on a scale comparable to that of Paris and Helen. Though it included much that was episodic and unessential and much that was hardly above the level of farce, the main structure was grandiose and certain situations afforded opportunities for lofty treatment, of which Thomas and Gottfried von Strassburg took full advantage.

BLEHERIS

Before the romance came into the hands of the poets, it was an oral tradition. To this fact there is ample testimony. Béroul himself refers scornfully (vs. 1265) to the conteor; Peter of Blois testifies that the histriones moved their audiences to tears by their fables of Arthur, Gawain, and Tristan. Bédier quoted the significant passage in which Renart, the fox, disguised as a “jongleur breton”, asserts his knowledge of lais concerning Tristan and “Dame Iset”. Marie de France asserts that she has heard the lai of the Honeysuckle as well as finding it in writing. Thomas is explicit: “Entre ceus qui solent cunter Et del cunte Tristran parler, Il en cuntent diversement: Oï en ai de plusur gent.” Indeed, the poets themselves expected to have their stories recited, as is proved by the addresses of Béroul and Thomas to a listening audience. Thomas goes on to invoke, in favor of his statement that Kaherdin accompanied Tristan to Britain, the authority of one Breri, who knew the deeds of all the kings and counts who have been in Britain. Bédier and Miss Schoepperle held that this reference was merely a device to cover the poet's departure from a common tradition, and they may well be right; but even so, the existence of Breri is not disproved. Others have accepted Breri's existence, but have sought to identify him either with a historical bishop named Bleddri (983-1022), or with a landowner of South Wales of the same name, who may have acted as an interpreter between the Welsh and the Normans in the first third of the twelfth century. Both identifications are pure guesses, and are refuted by the fact that Giraldus Cambrensis, about 1194, referred to that famous fabulator, Bledhericus, who came a little before his time. A fabulator or fableor was a professional story-teller, not an official interpreter or a wealthy landowner, and 1022 is over a century before Giraldus' birth about 1147. Further testimony comes from the Second Continuation of Chrétien's Perceval (formerly ascribed to Wauchier), where we read that Bleheris, who was born and brought up in Wales, told a tale of Gawain and a dwarf knight to the Count of Poitiers, who loved it more than any other. Chrétien de Troyes and Eilhart unconsciously reveal an association in their minds between this Bleheris and Tristan, for the first lists Bliobleheris and Tristan together in Erec, and the second introduces a minor character under the name of Pleherin. Finally, the author of the so-called Elucidation, prefixed to Chrétien's Perceval, mentions a knight of Arthur's Blihos Bleheris, who knew such good tales that no one tired of listening to him. All this testimony, conscious and unconscious, converges to prove that there was a renowned Welsh conteur named Bleddri and that he included in his repertoire tales of Tristan. His visit to Poitiers seems to be confirmed by the fact that two troubadours connected with that household, Bernard de Ventadour and Cercamon, refer familiarly to Tristan as a lover. Kellermann's attempt to dispose of this singularly concordant evidence because the manuscripts vary as to the forms of the name Bleheris and because it was mistakenly attached to a knight of Arthur's court should not be taken too seriously.

If we do recognize the validity of the evidence, we must come to some further conclusions. Bleheris must have been fluent in French in order to be understood at the court of Poitou and to win a reputation on the Continent. His stories must have been derived mainly from the Breton rather than from his native tradition. There is no need to suppose with Brugger that he ever composed in verse; the common medium of the conteurs was prose. He must have possessed rare histrionic gifts, for he alone of all the reciters of Arthurian tales has left us his name. Whether we should also ascribe to him a share, small or large, in co-ordinating the mass of materials which made up the Breton heritage and in producing the romance of Tristan substantially as we know it from Eilhart, is a question imposible to answer.

THE EARLY POETS AND THEIR PATRONS

According to a hypothesis developed by R. S. Loomis, the influence of Bleheris on the court of Poitou may be detected not only in the alluions of the troubadours to Tristan but also in the fact that scions of that house in the latter half of the century seem to have favored poets who dealt with the theme, briefly or at length. The daughter of Eleanor of Poitou by Louis VII of France, Marie de Champagne, was, for a time at least, the patroness of Chrétien de Troyes, who tells us that he had written a poem on King Mark and Iseut la Blonde. Eleanor's second husband, Henry II of England, is usually identified with the noble king to whom Marie de France dedicated her lais, including Le Chèvrefeuille. The Anglo-Norman Thomas, surely a court poet, may have written for Eleanor's circle, since he described the caparison of Tristan's steed as red embroidered with golden lions and this device was probably that of the royal house. Whether this interest on the part of the descendants of the Counts of Poitou was primarily due to the posthumous influence of Bleheris, may be questioned, for, as we have seen, the romance of Tristan must have largely taken shape before his time and there were other fabulatores who could make their audiences weep over Tristan's sufferings. In any case, the interest of this same royal house continued into the thirteenth century. King John's regalia included in 1207 a soi-distant “sword of Tristram”, and there is a fair probability that the Chertsey Tiles which illustrate Thomas's poem were commissioned by Henry III a few years before his death. Edward I before his accession owned a version of the Prose Tristan, which came into the hands of Rusticien de Pise. It should be added, of course, that Eleanor of Poitou and her descendants were not the only regal enthusiasts for the Tristan story, but, strange to say, I can find no others recorded before 1339, when Pedro IV of Aragon bought a manuscript of Meliadus, a history of Tristan's father.

THE EPISODIC POEMS

Levi argued cogently against the thesis that the Breton lais formed a new type which was created solely by Marie de France, and that all examples of later date were mere imitations of her work. He proved the popularity of Marie's Chèvrefeuille by citing many allusions. There has been a spirited debate as to the interpretation of this poem. Mrs. Frank, though she overlooks Miss Schoepperle's treatment of the subject, nevertheless agrees that Tristan carved on the hazel rod not only his name but also a message summarized in vss. 63-78, and she cited examples of inscriptions on wooden tablets and wands. She is supported by the Norse translation and by the statement in the poem itself that the Queen “knew all the letters” on the rod,—a strange remark if there were only the letters of Tristan's name. Spitzer, however, regards this as too prosaic an interpretation of the text and argues that the symbolism of the hazel and the honeysuckle was readily divined by the Queen and that there was no need for Tristan to spell it out. Le Gentil very rightly contends that this theory, though attractive, imputes more subtlety to Marie than the poem itself justifies.

Hoepffner, in his edition of the Berne Folie Tristan, abandoned his earlier view that this poem and the Oxford Fólie were derived from a common source, and maintained with solid reasons that the latter was an adaptation of the former in order to harmonize it with Thomas's poem and to arrange in chronological sequence the allusions of Tristan to the past history of his amour.

VARIOUS EPISODES

Vinaver in his article on the love potion supports Miss Schoepperle's theory that Eilhart and Béroul represent the original tradition which limited the efficacy of the philtre to three or four years, but he suggests that the abatement of its power was merely an illusion in the minds of the lovers. Vinaver also points out, as does M. Marx in his more recent article on the wakening of passion in the lovers, that in Thomas's account they were already enamored of each other before they drank the potion. To Vinaver this seems a deliberate alteration by Thomas of an earlier tradition represented by Eilhart, whereas Marx finds here a vestige of the original version, taken over from a lai.

In another article Marx treats the discovery of the lovers in the forest and notes that according to Béroul King Mark, when convinced by the separating sword of their innocence, leaves his own in its place, substitutes a ring for that which Iseut wears, and places his glove so that it will shield her face from the rays of the sun. Though maintaining that there are analogues for such actions in Irish sagas, Marx believes that they represent a triple claim—investiture by sword, ring, and glove—and that the king thereby asserts symbolically his right to the loyalty of his nephew and his wife.

Ranke in the Schoepperle memorial studies called attention to the fact that the two scenes connected with the ambiguous oath carved on the French ivory casket at Leningrad were immediately preceded by another depicting Tristan and Isolt lying naked in bed together. Eilhart sheds no light on this concatenation since he has nothing to say of the equivocal oath, and neither Béroul II nor Thomas describes an assignation at which the lovers were observed while in bed, and which caused Isolt to resort to the compurgation by oath. Ranke argued from the casket that there must have been such an assignation in the text followed by the carver since otherwise this bedroom scene would have no specific literary basis. Ranke's case would be stronger if there were in the carving any indication of the presence of an observer.

Miss Newstead, taking full account of Miss Schoepperle's findings regarding the chips in the stream and of Krappe's study of the dwarf, has given an excellent analysis of the whole complex of material which went into the Tryst beneath the Tree.

CONCLUSION

In the last ten years various ambitious attempts have been made to account for the rise and development of the tragic romance of Tristan, among them Mergell's Tristan und Isolde (Mainz, 1949) and James Carney's Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin, 1955), pp. 189-242, but their results are highly speculative. Miss Schoepperle's work remains, after more than forty years, the most solid foundation for research in this vast and fascinating field.