SOURCE: “Problems of the Tristan Legend,” in Romania, Vol. 53, 1927, pp. 82-102.

[In the following essay, Loomis examines several areas of critical disagreement regarding the Tristan legend: the influence of the Welshman Bleheris on the development of the legend, the relation of the legend to the Irish tale of Diarmaide and Grainne, and the dating of Thomas's poem.]

Readers of Romania are aware that in vol. LI M. Ferdinand Lot attacked with some severity the theory, proposed by Miss Weston and elaborated by myself, that a certain Welshman Bleheris was to be regarded as an important figure in the development of Arthurian romance¹. Giraldus Cambrensis, Thomas, the author of Tristan, Pseudo-Wauchier, and Wauchier de Denain, all refer to this Bleheris though under somewhat different forms of the name; and there are other less certain references to a Blihos Bleheris and a Master Blihis, who may be identical with him. M. Lot maintains that of these six authors, only Giraldus and Thomas speak from authentic knowledge. In particular he disputes the credibility of Wauchier's statement that Bleheris was born and brought up in Wales and told tales to a Count of Poitiers, who loved “l’estoire” more than any other did. This and the remaining allusions to Bleheris he regards as disingenuous inventions, having no basis in fact beyond what was derived from the reading of Giraldus Cambrensis.

Now it is the chief value of M. Lot's article, in my opinion, that he has led us to perceive that when an author refers, as Wauchier does, vaguely to a Count of Poitiers, there was probably some one outstanding Count of Poitiers whom he had in mind and whom his readers would recognize. Dr. Brugger has argued that the noble in question is Henry Fitzempress, who for two years before his accession to the throne of England in 1154 enjoyed the title of Count of Poitou². But no one fifty years or more later would have referred to Henry by the title, and he would not have been understood if he had. William VIII of Poitou, whom Miss Weston³, Prof. Levi⁴, and I have urged as the probable patron of Bleheris, may be questioned on similar grounds, though he cannot be altogether rejected. The only count of Poitiers who was celebrated at the end of the twelfth century as a personality and a patron of arts was William VII, the famous troubadour. Miss Weston⁵ and Prof. Singer⁶ preceded M. Lot in this identification, but it is M. Lot's argument which compels me to agree in his conclusion: “Wauchier de Denain, s’il a pensé à un conte de Poitiers en particulier, a dû songer à Guillaume VII”⁷.

But M. Lot is doubtful after all whether any historic figure lies behind the allusion, and denies strenuously that Wauchier had any historic basis for the association of count and conteur. He proposes a new and ingenious theory: Wauchier had read Giraldus Cambrensis' Descriptio Kambriae, in which the famous fabulator Bledhericus is mentioned, and had also read the romance of Joufrois, in which he found a jongleur-loving Count of Poitiers. He merely put two and two together. Taken by itself, the theory is possible. But search M. Lot's article for proofs of the influence of either of these works on Wauchier, and there is none. How, then, does M. Lot arrive at certainty in the matter? Having pointed out that two editions of the Descriptio appeared in 1194 and between 1213 and 1215 respectively, he continues⁸: “L’une ou l’autre a donc pu être connue de Wauchier de Denian, dont l’activité littéraire couvre le premier tiers du xiii^e siècle. Entreprenant d’écrire une suite au Perceval le Gallois de Chrétien de Troyes, Wauchier était porté à se procurer et à lire une description du pays de Galles (Cambria). Y voyant invoquée l’autorité d’un ‘famosus fabulator’ il a pris tout naturellement ce personnage comme garantie de ses propres récits, obéissant à la préoccupation du temps d’invoquer des autorités pour les histoires, surtout quand elles étaient de pure fantaisie.” In brief, the argument is simply: Wauchier could have read Giraldus: ergo he did. What color of plausibility the theory possesses it derives from the assumed falsity of all citations of authority by medieval historians and romancers. But this premise would also force us to believe that Layamon did not draw upon Wace because he cites him, and would work havoc with other known derivations. When M. Lot comes to the question of Joufrois, he is so carried away by his hypothesis that he exclaims⁹: “Gageons que Wauchier de Denain venait de lire le roman de Joufroís au moment où il écrivait la continuation de Perceval.” But again M. Lot fails to bring anything more than his enthusiasm to prove that what was possible was a fact. Of positive evidence for M. Lot's view there is not a trace.

We come to the alternative theory which M. Lot rejects, namely, that Wauchier reports a reliable tradition that Bleheris told his tales to a certain Count of Poitiers. This theory enjoys the support of scholars like Miss Weston, Levi, Brugger, Nitze, and Brown. It deserves a serious refutation. M. Lot's attack is contained in these two sentences¹⁰: “Les deux seuls personnages qui ont connu, et de réputation seulement, Breri-Bledhericus, Thomas et Giraud de Barry, sont l’un un Anglo-Normand, l’autre un Gallo-Normand. Imaginer que la réputation d’un ‘fabulator’ gallois ait pu passer sur le continent ´par la voie orale et lui survivre longtemps, c’est supposer un fait dont il n’y a aucun autre exemple.” True enough. But the word “réputation” begs the whole question at issue. It assumes that Bleheris did not in person cross to France, the very point which M. Lot is called upon to demonstrate. But instead of a demonstration he offers us a neat example of petitio principii.

There is nothing in his argument to convince anyone who does not presuppose that medieval citations of authority are uniformly spurious and that Welsh nationality precludes any share in the propagation of Arthurian romance on the Continent. There is for me something hard to understand in M. Lot's position. For many years in the pages of Romania¹¹, he has demonstrated the presence of Welsh elements, particularly proper names, in French romances of the Round Table, and in the very issue in which he attacks Bleheris, he propounds that Lancelot himself owes his name to the Welsh Llenlleawc¹². More than that, he has stoutly denied that Wace and others who refer to the propagators of Arthurian legends as Bretons or Britones could mean any but Welshmen, though he admits that the words themselves as applied to contemporaries usually meant Bretons, and though the words Gallois or Wallenses are never applied to the conteurs¹³. Bleheris is the only Welshman, clearly specified as a transmitter of the Arthurian legend. Yet M. Lot gags at Bleheris. Why? Because there is no other example of a Welshman who enjoyed such a reputation on the Continent. In other words, simply because he was a Welshman! This argument will appeal least of all to those who accept M. Lot's own articles in Romania, and who see no reason why a French-speaking Welshman, of whom there must have been many by the year 1100, should not have crossed to the Continent and made himself famous as a conteur.

If M. Lot in the first part of his article seems to have mistaken a possibility for a certainty, in the end he has mistaken an impossibility for a probability. Granting as he does that Giraldus had authentic knowledge of a real Bledhericus, M. Lot attempts to determine what he did to make himself famous since he could not have charmed the Count of Poitiers with his tales. M. Lot concludes that Bledhericus was not a storyteller at all, but a serious historian, and recommends that students of early British history search for surviving traces of his work. He is tempted to identify him with a certain Bledri or Blethery, Bishop of Landaff from 983-1022¹⁴. It is obvious that these suggestions are in flat contradiction to Giraldus' words, which qualify him as a fabulator. In the first part of his article M. Lot consistently implies that the term means a professional reciter of tales: his argument turns on this interpretation. In 1896 he wrote¹⁵: “Breri n’est pas un barde; c’est un conteur (fabulator), et c’est par cette dernière classe qu’était conservée l’épopée celtique en Galles et en Irlande.” Now how can one maintain that Giraldus, a learned and well-informed cleric, who would certainly have known if this Bledhericus had written serious history, referred to him by so derogatory a term as fabulator¹⁶? One might as easily suppose that a Supreme Court Justice, author of erudite treatises on the law, should be described in his obituary merely as a famous writer of detective stories. It is also unlikely that Giraldus would say of one who flourished nearly 175 years before his time that “tempora nostra paulo praevenit”. Of this expression M. Lot once held that “it may mean anything from ten to a hundred years; we might say that Bonaparte lived a little before our time¹⁷”. Perhaps, but hardly the Young Pretender, Charles Edward. There is a gap of 172 years between the publication of the Descriptio Kambriae and the death of Bishop Bledri. In sum, if M. Lot attributes any authority to Giraldus' words, he cannot with consistency surmise that Bledhericus was a bishop, who wrote a Latin history of Britain.

This latter hypothesis M. Lot bases on Thomas's well-known statement that Breri knew “les gestes e les cuntes de tuz les reis, de tuz les cuntes ki orent esté en Bretaigne”. Adopting Golther's interpretation¹⁸, M. Lot declares¹⁹: “Il n’y a pas de doute: pour Thomas ‘Breri’ est un historien qui possède à fond l’histoire de ‘Bretagne’”. Are then the words geste and cunte limited in meaning to learned history, and are counts and kings of Britain mentioned only between the covers of Latin chronicles? None should know better than the distinguished author of Étude sur le Lancelot en Prose that such is not the case. Yet on this premise his deduction rests. As a matter of fact, Thomas's description of Breri is in entire accord with Giraldus. A famous conteur of Arthurian themes would inevitably be one who knew the gestes and cuntes of Uther, Leodegan, Lot, Pelles, Erec, Galeschin, and the multitudinous kings and nobles whose wars, loves, and adventures make up the cycle of the Table Round. M. Lot continues: “L’œuvre de Breri est nécessairement en latin, non en gallois, d’abord parce que cette dernière langue était inconnue de Thomas, et que même s’il l’avait possédée, il n’aurait pas renvoyé ses lecteurs à un auteur écrivant en un idiome impénétrable, ensuite parce que Giraud de Barry, reproduisant quelques lignes de Bledhericus, fait une citation latine, non une traduction.” Here are three reasons given, the first of which is withdrawn in the next breath, the second is quite contrary to probability, since if Thomas was trying to milerad his readers, as M. Lot believes, he would, more likely than not, employ a reference his readers could not check up, and the third is a statement for which I find no warrant in the text. How does M. Lot know that Giraldus is not translating Bledhericus' remarks from the Welsh? Though I am among the first to acknowledge the great contribution M. Lot has made to historic and literary science, I frankly confess that his conclusions regarding Bleheris seem founded on false premises and misinterpreted evidence. Those scholars who are moved by his appeal to search for the Latin works of Bishop Bledri have my sympathy.

Thus far I have dealt only with M. Lot's own opinions. Let me pass to his criticism of my views. In the first paragraph on p. 401 he gives a very fair summary of my conclusions. “Ce fait capital que l’amour courtois a trouvé son véhicule narratif dans la matière de Bretagne doit, dans une large mesure, être mis sur le compte de Bleheri.” But in the next paragraph he attributes to me this fantastic thesis: “Si les concepts de l’amour courtois, inconnus de l’antiquité, ont pu naître chez nous, c’est grâce au pollen fécondant transporté du Galles.” May I refer the reader to these sentences in my article²⁰: “The theories with which the Midi was aflame and which the troubadours celebrated in lyric form, Bleheris exemplified in his burning tale of Tristram and Ysolt.” “It seems probable then that the legend of this hero was known in Brittany early in the eleventh century; that there the story of Ysolt of the White Hands was invented and developed; and that it was this already expanded legend that Bleheris knew and brought to Poitiers.” The reader may judge how accurately M. Lot has reproduced my views.

Having held up to ridicule this distorted version of my conclusions, he dismisses them with scarcely any discussion of the facts on which I felt it necessary to found them. Let me review the evidence briefly²¹. Thomas cites Breri particularly as an authority on the Tristan legend. In Crestien's Erec a knight Bliobleheris, whose name is sometimes confused in MSS. with Bleheris, is mentioned as sitting next to Tristan. In Eilhart's Tristant there is a minor character Pleherin, whose name, M. Lot admits, may easily be derived from Bleheris. It seems not unreasonable to conclude that though Thomas alone had any clear conception of Bleheris' relation to the Tristan legend, Crestien vaguely connected the names, and Eilhart or his source, when put to it to supply a name, used one that was familiar in the Tristan tradition. To object that the association in the latter cases is incorrect and unintentional shows little understanding of the human mind. Modern psychology has demonstrated the importance of just such uncontrolled associations. Let us suppose that a folklorist, visiting an Irish village in quest of stories, should learn from one old man that his version of the exploits of Diarmaid was backed by the authority of a famous reciter of tales, by the name of Barrett, a real person who had died some time before. A second old man in telling a tale of Diarmaid introduces the name of Barrett as that of a minor character. A third old man in the course of another narrative mentions together the name of Diarmaid and a somewhat distorted form of the name Barrett. Would not the folklorist, knowing that Barrett had actually lived and told such stories as these, be justified in concluding that the unconscious linking of Diarmaid and Barrett in the minds of the last two men was not an accident but a definite corroboration of the statement of the first old man?

The coincidence in the testimony of Thomas, Crestien, and Eilhart becomes even more striking when one realizes that while two early Tristan romances, those of Thomas and Eilhart, suggest derivation from a tradition going back to Bleheris, most of the other early evidence on the Tristan story outside of Wales points more or less directly towards Eleanor of Poitou, granddaughter of that count of Poitiers, the presumptive patron of Bleheris²². Of the poets who treated the Tristan legend or allude to it, Crestien wrote at the court of Eleanor's daughter, Marie de Champagne; Thomas and Marie de France must have been in or close to Eleanor's own entourage; Bernard de Ventadour and Cercamon we know were in intimate association with the gay young countess. Five threads, therefore, connect the Tristan legend with one reared in the court of Poitou. “Especially noteworthy is the fact that Tristan is first mentioned in Continental literature by two troubadours immediately associated with” Eleanor and the court of Poitou. It is this body of evidence, so curiously corroborative of Wauchier's statement, of which M. Lot, in attacking my theory, says not a word. Without offering the slightest explanation for the familiarity of Bernard de Ventadour and Cercamon with the Tristan legend in the decade 1150-1160, before any Northern French author, he declares that the journey of Bleheris to Poitiers is a “chimaera bombinans in vacuo”.

There is still another group of facts which militates against M. Lot's theory and with which he must deal. He has failed to realize the significance of Miss Weston's chapter on the Chastel Orguellous, of which the Bleheris citation is merely a part. She there points out that Wauchier seems to be drawing on a series of disconnected though sometimes admirable tales, and refers to them as the branches of a grand conte. He appeals to his audience in the manner of reciters, and proposes that they say a pater-noster for the soul of a certain man of Loudun. There are also the significant lines²³: “Puis vous ferez le vin doner; Tant m’orrez dire e conter. Seingneurs, la branche se depart Du grant conte, se Dieu me gart. Des or orrez comment il fu. De ce qu’avez atendu: Cil de Loudon [variant Lodun] racontera Que ce riche romans dira.” Of this Dr. Brugger remarks acutely: “Cil de Loudon is no doubt a minstrel, who was a remanieur of Bledri's Gawain compilation … He was a native of Loudun near Poitiers²⁴”. If M. Lot's interpretation be applied here, we must believe that Wauchier was so anxious to impose on his readers of the thirteenth century and on the Celtists of the twentieth that he deliberately sprinkled through his verses the mannerisms of the conteurs, invented besides the visit of Bleheris to Poitiers an anonymous minstrel from Loudun near Poitiers, and asked for a paternoster for the soul of the mythical minstrel. It seems to me that M. Lot requires more of our credulity than Wauchier.

In the Zeitschrift für Französische Sprache, XLVII, 162, Dr. Brugger also has dealt with the Bleheris problem, and with many of his points I agree. For him Bleheris was a figure as important as Crestien de Troyes in the evolution of Arthurian romance. He also rejects from consideration Bledri ap Cadivor, a Welsh chieftain, as identical with the fabulator. But there are points on which we differ. He goes farther than I in taking literally the specific indebtedness which Wauchier acknowledges to Bleheris, and presumably accepts the other passage in which the Welshman's authority is invoked.

Personally I am not confident that he was the source of Thomas and Wauchier in more than a general sense. The intervening steps of oral tradition would inevitably produce considerable changes. Dr. Brugger refers to Bleheris as “Dichter”, but there is no evidence to show that he was anything but a reciter of prose tales. His identification of the Count of Poitiers with Henry Fitzempress I reject for reasons already given. I also regret that I am among those whom he suspects of not reading his work because they do not accept his arguments regarding Blihos Bleheris. Of this knight who appears in the Elucidation prefixed to the Conte del Graal, one reads that “si tres bons contes savoit que nus ne se peust lasser de ses paroles escouter”. Miss Weston and other scholars have been struck by the singular appropriateness of these lines in case there were a confusion of Bleheris and Blihos Bleheris. Dr. Brugger, however, produces a list of knights who recounted their adventures, and argues that they are conteurs in the same sense as Blihos Bleheris. I have looked through the list, but none conveys the same clear implication that he had a repertory of tales stored in his memory (not merely a knowledge of his own adventures) and that people were in the habit of listening to him for hours at a time. These are the attributes of Blihos Bleheris, and the reason Miss Weston's suggestion has had so many adherents is because these are the attributes of a professional conteur. Since the writer of the Elucidation knew of Master Blih[er]is as an authority on Arthurian tradition, it is quite possible that he knew other facts about him, which by a strange confusion he attached to the knight. If Dr. Brugger should note in an American novel of today an Italian count named Emilio Caruso, who had such a soul-stirring voice that no one who heard him could forget it, would he not recognize a reminiscence of the famous operatic singer? Or would he maintain that because the real Caruso was not named Emilio and was not a count, and because other counts had been known to sing, the description of Emilio was not suggested by Enrico?

One cannot be too literal-minded in investigations of material so nebulous, transmitted by men so little serious as these conteurs must have been. Does not Crestien rage at their capacity for mutilating the stories they tell in the presence of kings and counts²⁵? These broken and distorted hints, these confused echoes of the facts are not to be wondered and caviled at, but rather to be expected. If they form a consistent pattern, we can only congratulate ourselves on our luck. Such a pattern we seem to possess in the case of Bleheris and his work.

Another debated problem in the realm of Tristan studies is the relation of the Continental legend to the insular and to the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne. Miss Schoepperle first urged that the central situation of the French romances had its source in the Irish saga. M. Joseph Loth poured over the theory the vials of his sarcasm²⁶. It would be superfluous for me to go over the ground, for any reader can turn to the parallels which Miss Schoepperle adduced for the splashing water and the separating sword, the latter feature being comprehensible only by reference to the different conditions of the Irish story²⁷. But I may bring forward a new bit of evidence which proves the Welsh Tristan legend to be even more profoundly indebted to the same Irish saga than the French.

In the very year before M. Loth denied any connection between the French romance and Irish aithed, he had published the Welsh Ystoria Trystan²⁸. Let me point out ten obvious resemblances between this charming tale and the Irish Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grainne²⁹.

1. The relationship of the characters is identical. Diarmaid is the lover of his uncle's wife, as is Trystan.

2. Both pairs of lovers escape to the forest.

3. In the Irish tale, Muadhan, who became Diarmaid's attendant, “dressed a bed of soft rushes and of birch tops” for the lovers³⁰. In the Welsh, immediately after the mention of Trystan's page, we read “A couch of leaves was made for them.”

4. The lovers in both tales are surrounded in the wood by the vengeful husband and his allies³¹.

5. Both ladies are terrified. When Diarmaid hears the warning shouts, he wakes Grainne, but refuses to flee. “Fear and great dread seized Grainne when she heard that³².” Compare with this: “When Esyllt heard the talking around the wood, she trembled between the two hands of Trystan.”

6. The friends of the lover refuse to harm him. Oisin and Oscar, for instance, cry: “Come out to us, and none will dare to do thee harm, hurt, or damage³³.” When Trystan, sword in hand, attempts to break through, March's allies said: “‘Shame upon us if we interfere with him.’”

7. The hero passes unscathed through the troops of his foe. When Diarmaid is told “Here are Fionn … and four hundred hirelings with him; … and if thou wouldst come out to us, we would cleave thy bones asunder,” he “arose with an airy high exceeding light bound, by the shafts of his javelins, … and went a great way out beyond Fionn and beyond his people without their knowledge³⁴.” Trystan likewise “met March ap Meirchion, and then March said, ‘I will kill myself in order to kill him.’ … Thereupon Trystan went through the three battalions uninjured.”

8. The wronged husband summons a king to his aid. Fionn summons the king of Alba³⁵ and March summons Arthur.

9. Finally a friend comes to the lover and arranges a reconciliation. Aonghus makes peace between Diarmaid and Fionn, King Cormac playing an important part³⁶. So Gwalchmai persuades Trystan to return to Arthur, who makes peace between him and March.

10. The lovers are allowed to remain together. In the Irish, Diarmaid and Grainne for a time before the ultimate tragic ending settle in Rath Grainne³⁷. The Welsh tale also gives them to each other but forever. Called on to decide whether Trystan or March should enjoy Esyllt, Arthur adjudged her to one while the leaves were on the wood and to the other while the leaves were not on the wood, and gave March the choice. He chose the leafless season; whereupon Esyllt blessed the holly, the ivy and the yew, which kept their leaves throughout their lives, and thus made her Trystan's as long as he lived.

As far back as 1903 Mr. John asked the question³⁸: “Are we to trace any connection with the tale of Demeter and Persephone? And if so what is the connection, that of primitive community of myth or of late borrowing?” In 1883 Gaston Paris in a distinguished article proved that the abduction of Guinevere by Meleagant was a variant of the Persephone myth and certainly not a late borrowing³⁹. In 1924 I proved that the abduction of Winlogee (Guinevere) on the Modena sculpture (1099-1106) originated in an Irish tale of the abduction of Blathnat by Curoi, and of her rescue by Cuchulinn, the sun-hero, after a battle lasting from Nov. 1 to the middle of spring⁴⁰. Now Blathnat is a diminutive meaning Little Flower, and Grainne is also a diminutive meaning Little Grain⁴¹. There is abundant evidence, as I show in my Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance, that the Irish worshipped a vegetation goddess under many names. The goddess Tea, worshipped at Tara, was descended from Ith, “Grain”, and was married to Eremon, the “Plowman⁴²”. All this creates a probability that Grainne is a romanticised vegetation goddess⁴³. And it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the mythological suggestions which crop up in the story of Esyllt, Grainne's counterpart, are survivals of the original significance of the Elopement of Diarmaid and Grainne, which have been effaced in the extant late forms of the very ancient Irish legend.

There can be no shadow of doubt that this legend of Diarmaid and Grainne is the model for the Welsh Ystoria Trystan⁴⁴, since the opposite relationship is out of the question. There is also reason to suppose that the Welsh tale, in some form or other, has furnished in turn at least one episode to the French romance, the love of Kaherdin for Ysolt's handmaid. In the Welsh we read⁴⁵ that Kae Hir (the Tall) was in love with Golwg Hafddydd (Summer Day Visage), Esyllt's attendant. He goes to Esyllt and tells her of Trystan's escape. She blesses him and says that he will obtain a golden mistress. He replies that he desires no golden mistress but Golwg. Whereupon she declares that Golwg shall be his. According to Eilhart's Tristrant⁴⁶, based of course on a French poem, Kehenis woos Gymele, Isalde's maid, but she scorns him. But Isalde says: “For Tristan's sake, I will give you one of my maids to bear you company. Choose Brangene or Gymele as may please you, and I will bid her be with you tonight.” Kehenis asks for Gymele, but she by the use of a magic pillow prevents the satisfaction of his passion that night. Thomas relates the same story about Kaherdin and Bringvain, but adds that after two tantalizing nights the lover finally has his desire⁴⁷. Can the bestowal of Esyllt's maid on her lover's friend, which appears in both stories, be regarded as fortuitous especially when the friend's name in Welsh is Kae Hir and in the French Kaherdin, a corruption probably due to assimilation to the Turkish name Kahedin or Kaardin⁴⁸?

The conclusion is unavoidable that the Irish elopement tale of Diarmaid and Grainne formed the nucleus of the Welsh and French Tristan legends. It is also clear that some Welsh accretions to that nucleus, which are lost to us in their Celtic form, are probably imbedded in the French romances. But we must not believe that these Welsh materials passed directly into France through the agency of Bleheris. Dr. Brugger prudently warns us⁴⁹: “His Cymric descent indicates little or nothing as to the origin of his narrative materials.” Neither can we believe that the Anglo-Normans had any considerable share in the transmission, since the Waldef passage which so largely influenced Gaston Paris has been questioned by M. Bédier and altogether rejected by other scholars⁵⁰. The Welsh legend must have passed through a Cornish stage, for most of the Continental versions make the injured husband king of Cornwall, and all lay certain crucial scenes in Tintagel or its neighborhood. I am far from subscribing, however, to M. J. Loth's theory of the Cornish origin and immediate transmission of the legend from Cornwall to France⁵¹. The introduction of Lancien and the chapel of Saint Samson seem to me late localizations, made after French conteurs had begun to cater to audiences in England. At least, these details cannot have deep roots in tradition since Béroul is the only poet who knows them. There are signs that the legend had taken root in Brittany as early as 1000, since M. Bédier pointed out a considerable number of Breton names in the romance⁵² and we have records of three historic Bretons by the name of Tristan before 1050⁵³. One of them, a lord of Vitré, seems to have influenced the legend in turn. Curiously enough, he was the son of a Rivallon or Ruivallon⁵⁴, and since the account of these two real persons in the Chronique de Vitré is quite uncontaminated by the romance and bears all the earmarks of genuine history, it is highly probable that the hero's father, in Gottfried and Eilhart, owes his name to a reminiscence of Ruivallon lord of Vitré. M. Bédier pointed out that in the name “Rouland riis” which the same figure bears in Sir Tristrem there is a corruption of Rivallon⁵⁵. M. Muret and Dr. Brugger in turn, noting how closely R and K resemble each other in manuscript, suggested that “Rouland riis” was related to the name which the Norse Saga and Gottfried give to Tristan's father, “Kanelengres⁵⁶”. All these suggestions lead to the conclusion that the original form was “Rivalon” or “Riuelen reis⁵⁷”. This could have produced easily both “Rouland riis” and “Kanelengres”. When Gottfried says, “Sin rehter name was Riwalin, sin anam was Kanelengres, … kunec uber daz lant ze Lohnois⁵⁸”, he is putting together two versions of the same fact; namely that Tristan's father was Riualen, king (reis) of Loonois. On the name Loonois I accept the theory proposed by M. Lot⁵⁹ and conclusively demonstrated by Dr. Brugger in his admirable article⁶⁰, and it points, together with the name of Tristan himself, toward the region of Lothian and a Pictish king as the starting points of the legend. The names which Sir Tristrem and Gottfried assign to Tristran's fatherland, Ermonie and Parmenie, seem to me certainly corruptions of Armorique, since it is a dependency of the Duke of Brittany, and since Hertz has shown that the transformation of Armorica into Armenia occurs more than once in documents⁶¹. Gottfried, then, in the statement quoted above was combining the ancient tradition which made Tristan's father king of Lothian with the later Breton tradition which confused him with Ruivallon, father of the historic Tristan, lord of Vitré and vassal of the Duke of Brittany.

That the development of the Second Ysolt theme took place mainly in Brittany seems clear from the localization, the presence of such names as Carhaix, Nantes, Hoel, a second Rivalin, etc. The suggestion for the Second Ysolt may have come, as M. Lot pointed out⁶², from Wales, for two Esyllts are mentioned together in Kilhwch, though whether these are really two distinct personages or simply the same person with two epithets, as are so many in the same list, we cannot determine. That the story of the First Ysolt still retains a vestige of the Irish tradition that Diarmaid for a long time spurned Grainne Miss Schœpperle demonstrated in her discussion of the separating sword. But the Second Ysolt, once created, could take over this humiliating part of the tradition, and we find the incident of the splashing water attached to her. This and the motif of the black and white sails are the only Celtic traits which Miss Schœpperle could discover connected with the Second Ysolt⁶³. And this is natural enough, for Prof. Singer has made the highly significant discovery⁶⁴ that the story of the Second Ysolt and her brother Kaherdin follows in all essentials the Arabic story (dated 687) of Kais and Lobna,—a fact which gives added point to the substitution of Turkish Kaherdin for Welsh Kae Hir. All this development I believe took place on Breton soil, so consistently is the background Breton.

That the Bretons used alien material cannot be regarded as incredible ever since Prof. Kittredge demonstrated the use of the classic tale of Orpheus in the Breton lai of Sir Orfeo⁶⁵. Nor is it hard to conceive that a Welshman should have adopted a Breton version of the Tristan romance. Geoffrey of Monmouth, contemporary of Bleheris, and like him “nes e engenuis en Gales”, employed as the foundation of the Historia Regum Britanniae a book which he attests was brought from Brittany and which the internal evidence of proper names shows to have contained insular Arthurian tradition in Bretonized form⁶⁶. It is quite on the cards, then, that a Welsh conteur should have gone to Brittany for his materials.

Needless to say, a legend which now included the romantic Irish aithed, with its motif of the deserted husband, and also the romantic Arabic story, with its motif of the spurned wife, lent itself perfectly to illustrate the theories of courtly love. It would seem to be the most momentous of the achievements of Bleheris that he brought this tale to the court of William VII at the crucial time. There could not have been a more perfect narrative vehicle for the spirit of the age than this composite romance. Told with some of the colorful detail characteristic of contemporary Welsh prose and with the dramatic fire which the great conteurs possessed, the story must have been moving indeed. If the passionate Eleanor of Poitou heard it in her girlhood, as seems probable, from the lips of Bleheris himself, if is not unnatural that we should find traces of the romance wherever her influence was felt, and that Thomas, when he wished to assure his readers of the authenticity of his version, should refer to Breri as his warrant.

A curious link between Eleanor and the Tristan of Thomas is found in a poem of Ramon Vidal de Bezaudu, describing the marriage of Eleanor's daughter to Alfonso of Aragon in 1170⁶⁷. In the Modern Language Review, XVII, 24-8, I proved that Thomas must have assigned to his hero the cognizance of a gold lion on a red field, and that it was probably intended as a piece of heraldic flattery to some patron of the English royal house. Now the poem in question says that Eleanor's daughter wore a mantle of ciclatoun: “Vermelhs ab lista d’argen fo, E y hac un levon d’aur devis.” If there was any doubt whether this was a device adopted early by Henry II and his family, it must dissolve before this quotation. Thomas certainly had a patron in Henry, Eleanor, or one of their children.

The heraldry of Thomas is significant not only for his court connections but also for his date. In the same article, I proved that his poem must have contained the detail of the gold lions embroidered on Tristan's horse-trappings. In his later description of the gigantic Tristan le Nain, Thomas says that his shield, lance, pennon, and “conisance” were all blazoned or de vair fretté⁶⁸. There can be no doubt that when Thomas wrote, a very elaborate repetition of the heraldic device was fashionable. The earliest known example of heraldic housings is 1178⁶⁹; and the earliest representation of such a multiplied armory known to me is in the De Rebus Siculis of Petrus de Ebulo which cannot be earlier than 1195⁷⁰. Allowing a margin of ten years, we arrive at the year 1185, and until earlier instances of this armorial protusion are brought to my attention, I shall consider that as early a date as our evidence on this point will allow.

This conclusion does not square with the date which Gaston Paris and M. Bédier have endowed with the weight of their authority, namely before 1170⁷¹. They argued that Crestien's Cliges, written in that year at latest, is manifestly a counter-blast to some Tristan romance very like that of Thomas, and that Crestien's use of the word-play on amer-mer-l’amer is conclusive proof that he took it from Thomas. The argument is indeed weighty, but cannot be regarded as conclusive since it is disputed by Foerster, Wilmotte, Miss Schœpperle, Ranke, and Kelemina⁷². Granting as I do that Crestien is the borrower, I nevertheless am not convinced that his source was necessarily Thomas. The whole course of this article has shown that Bleheris established a tradition, saturated with the ideals of courtly love which Crestien attacks in Cligès. Very probably there were versions of the romance before 1170 which Crestien and Thomas both used. Nor is it out of the question that the word-play on mer-amer-l’amer was in their common source⁷³.

I believe it now possible to state quite definitely the steps in the growth of the Tristan legend. It will be seen that in general the steps approximate those traced by M. Bédier in his masterly edition of Thomas.

1. The Pictish king Drostan son of Talorc, his kingdom of Loonois, and the forest of Morois.

2. The Welsh legend of Trystan mab Tallwch, largely modeled on the Irish Aithed of Diarmaid and Grainne, which still retained traces of mythic significance. Association with Arthur.

3. The localization in Cornwall (ante 1000).

4. Localization of enfances and conclusion in Brittany. Development of Second Ysolt. Remodeling of conclusion on basis of Arabic tale.

5. Transmission of tale to the court of Poitou by the Welshman Bleheris before 1137, and establishment of fixed tradition. Infusion of courtly love element.

6. Spread of story in two main forms: the Bleheris tradition represented by Eilhart, Béroul, Thomas; a Breton tradition largely independent of Bleheris, represented by the Prose Tristan⁷⁴.

Notes

1. For extensive bibliography of the Bleheris problem see Modern Philology, XXII, 123 n.

2. ZfSL, XXXI², 158-60.

3. Romania, XXXIV, 100.

4. E. Levi, I lais e la leggenda di Tristano, 69.

5. J. L. Weston, Legend of Sir Perceval, I, 294.

6. Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ph. hist. Kl., 1918, No. 13, p. 10.

7. Romania, LI, 404.

8. Ibid., 402 f.

9. Romania, LI, 404.

10. Ibid., 402.

11. Romania, XXIV, 321-330, 497-528, XXV, 1-32, XXVII, 529-73, XXVIII, 1-48, 321-47, XXX, 13-21.

12. Romania, LI, 423.

13. For discussion and meaning of words Breton, Brito, etc. cf. A. B. Hopkins, Influence of Wace, 114 ff.

14. The identification was first made in J. L. Weston, Legend of Sir Perceval, I, 294 f.

15. Romania, XXV, 23.

16. Cf. on these conteurs Huet's article in Moyen Age, XXVIII, 234; Wauchier's continuation of the Conte del Graal, ed. Potvin, vv. 28373 ff. The tone of Wace, Crestien, and Wauchier towards these conteurs is decidedly supercilious.

17. Folklore, XVIII, 285.

18. W. Golther, Tristan und Isolde, 139 ff.

19. Romania, LI, 406.

20. MLN, XXXIX, 325, 327.

21. Ibid., 320 f.

22. MLN, 322 f. Prof. Ranke has kindly referred me to the following work which shows that Eilhart had no connection with Eleanor's daughter Matilda of Saxony, but wrote in the Rhineland: Kurt Wagner, edition of Eilhart, Teil I, 11.

23. Op. cit., I, 239, 242 f.

24. Modern Philology, XXII, 185 n.

25. Erec, vv. 22-5.

26. Rev. Celt., XXXV, 380 ff. Cf. Comptes rendus de l’Acad. des Inscr., 1924, 122 f.

27. G. Schoepperle, Tristan and Isolt, II, 413 ff., 430 f.

28. Rev. Celt., XXXIV, 377. I quote, however, from the edition of T. P. Cross, Studies in Philology, XVII, 93 ff.

29. For bibliography of this tale, cf. Schoepperle, op. cit., 599, n. 2, 415 n.

30. Transactions of the Ossianic Soc., III, 79.

31. Ibid., 66.

32. Ibid., 67.

33. Ibid., 71.

34. Ibid., 75.

35. Ibid., 163 ff.

36. Ibid., 169 ff.

37. Trans. of Oss. Soc., 171.

38. Transactions of the Guild of Graduates, University of Wales, 1903, 17.

39. Romania, XII, 508.

40. Romanic Rev., XV, 266.

41. Thurneysen, Irische Helden und Königsagen, 28; Handbuch des Altirischen, I, 169.

42. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, XXXIV, C, 300.

43. Just as Blathnat's lover Cuchulinn has many solar traits, so Diarmaid is often called Diarmaid «of the Bright Face», «with the Fiery Face», and a modern folktale calls him Son of the Monarch of Light. Cf. Folklore, XVII, 452 n.

44. The Diarmaid story is certainly as old as the tenth century (Schoepperle, II, 393), whereas the Ystoria Trystan first occurs in a MS. of 1550.

45. Studies in Philology, XVII, 106.

46. Eilhart's Tristrant, ed. F. Lichtenstein, 294 ff.

47. Thomas, Tristan, ed. Bédier, I, 340.

48. ZfrP, XLII, 482.

49. ZfSL, XLVII, 169.

50. Thomas, Tristan, II, 316; ZfSL, XXXII², 138; Bonner Studien z. Eng. Phil., IV, xxiii; L. Hibbard, Med. Romance in England, 102.

51. J. Loth, Contribution à l’étude des romans de la Table Ronde, 60 ff. Cf. the reviews in Romania, XLIII, 121; Romanic Review, III, 431; and the notices ZfSL, XLVII, 227; Bruce, Evolution of Arthurian Romance, I, 184, n. 58.

52. Thomas, Tristan, ed. Bédier, II, 122 f. Note also that Moraldus appears in a Breton document of about 1075. Cf. H. Morice, Mémoires pour servir de preuves, I, col. 436.

53. MLN, XXXIX, 326 f.

54. Pierre le Baud, Chronique de Vitré (bound with Histoire de Bretagne, Paris, 1638), 7; Rev. de Bretagne, XVIII, 435-9.

55. Thomas, Tristan, éd. Bédier, I, 3 n.

56. Romania, XXVII, 610; Archiv für das Studium, CXXIX, 138.

57. Rivelen appears in a Breton document of the first half of the eleventh century, and Riwellenus in 1123. Cf. H. Morice, Mémoires pour servir de preuves, I, col. 337, 546. This proves how unreliable M. Loth is on his own ground, for in Contributions, 100, we read: «L’affaiblissement de -on en -en est, en somme, tardif en armoricain; à part Roallen (p. 295, en 1080) et Graalend, p. 750, en 1124-1125, je n’en vois guère d’exemple avant le xiv^e siècle.»

    My explanation of the name Kanelengres seems decidedly more natural than the tours de force of Brugger, Archiv für das Studium, CXXIX, 138 ff, of Zimmer, ZfSL, XIII, 96-99, and of Loth, Contributions, 105 f.

58. Vv. 320-25.

59. Romania, XXV, 16 f.

    Romania, LIII.

60. Modern Philology, XXII, 159.

61. Tristan und Isolde, tr. W. Hertz, ed. 3, 490.

62. Romania, XXV, 29 f. Cf. Thomas, Tristan, ed. Bédier, II, 115 n.

63. Schoepperle, Tristan and Isolt, 414, 438; Rev. Celt., XXXVII, 323.

64. Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften, phil. hist. Kl., 1918, No. 13, p. 9. The story is in Hammer-Purgstall, Literaturgeschichte der Araber, II, 412.

65. American Journal of Philology, VII, 176 ff.

66. R. S. Loomis, Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (Columbia University Press, 1927), 344 f.

67. Mila y Fontanals, De los trovadores Obras, II, 133 n.

68. Vv. 2182-4.

69. E. Bertaux, L’art dans l’Italie méridionale, I, 493. On this date cf. Nuovi Studi Medievali, vol. II (1906), p. 104 ss.

70. Ed. E. Rota, pl. 36, 39; ed. G. B. Siragusa, pl. 36, 39.

71. Journal des Savants, 1902, 347-5; Thomas, Tristan, ed. Bédier, II, 53-5.

72. Foerster, Cliges³, lvi-lviii; Wilmotte, L’évolution du roman français, Bulletin de l’Acad: roy. de Belg., 1903, no. 7, 67; Schoepperle, op. cit., I, 179; F. Ranke, Tristan und Isolt; J. Kelemina, Geschichte der Tristansage, 105.

73. Prof. Nitze has generously called it to my attention that the mer-amer word-play occurs independently in the seventeenth century and in Robert de Boron's Joseph.

74. Cf. Schoepperle, op. cit, II, 439-6.