Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/672

Rh 648 ROMANCE Irish king of treason before King Arthur, is probably part of the original tale. He goes with the absolved monarch to Ireland at his request, and is prayed to accompany Yseult to Cornwall, whither her father sends her as King Mark's bride. Yseult's mother delivers a philtre or love -potion to Brangian (or Bronwen), her daughter's nurse, which the latter is commissioned to give Yseult to drink on the wedding-day, in order that she may conceive a true wifely affection for her stranger husband. Brangian, however, gives it to Tristan and Yseult, who drink, unconscious of the spell that is about to influence their lives. They love each other at once and for ever. During the voyage they land on an island, where Tristan, by overcoming an enchantment, proves that he and his companion are the best knight and fairest lady in all the world. They reach Cornwall at last, and think with dread on the approach of the fatal night which is to separate them and to make King Mark aware of his bride's fault. A device, which appeared to the old romancers one of easy performance, is suggested by Brangian, who, to save her mistress's honour, takes her place on the marriage night, trusting that King Mark's carousals and the darkness will cover the fraud. The scheme is carried out satisfactorily ; but the fair Yseult hires two ruffians to slay Brangian, lest the fact should ever come to light. The intending murderers, however, are smitten with pity, and simply leave their victim bound to a tree, from which position she is soon afterwards rescued. As her rescuer was Palamedes, the Saracen knight, who must be looked upon as one of the inventions of Helie de Borron, we may venture to hope that Yseult's unwomanly cruelty formed no part of the original story. Palamedes is a magnanimous and interesting char- acter, who loves Yseult with a purer love than Tristan, and who spends his life in a generous antagonism to his rival. The man who invented Palamedes and Guiron must have been himself a knight of the noblest type. The intrigue of the two lovers is carried on for some time, till Mark's suspicions are aroused and Tristan leaves Cornwall. Again he receives by treachery a poisoned wound ; but, as he cannot return to Mark's court to obtain healing at the hands of the fair Yseult, he decides upon going to Brittany, to seek a remedy there from her cousin, the white-handed Yseult, who is equally expert in treating wounds. She cures him and falls in love with him ; he marries her from gratitude. The descrip- tion of the wedding night proves that he still loves the other Yseult, for he remains faithful to her in the most material point, the white-handed lady being so innocent that she is unaware of the slight cast upon her charms. He makes his wife's brother Peredur or Pheredur his confidant, and the two quit Brittany to- gether and reach Cornwall. A fresh source of misery opens for him now, as Pheredur falls in love with fair Yseult. Tristan becomes insane and wanders away ; but after some time he is brought back to the court, where Yseult restores him to reason, at the cost, how- ever, of reawakening the jealous wrath of King Mark, who compels him to quit Cornwall, making him swear never to return. Helie's Tristan now joins the Round Table company at King Arthur's court, and King Mark, still unsatisfied, goes thither also with the purpose of bringing about his nephew's death. The unfavourable view of Mark's character is here heightened by making him speak and act in the most ridiculous manner. Arthur reconciles the uncle and the nephew ; Tristan goes back with Mark, and frees Cornwall from an invasion by the Saxons ; but he fails to win favour from the king, who puts him in a dungeon. He is released by an insurrec- tion and King Mark himself is imprisoned ; Tristan flies with Yseult and is received in Joyeuse Garde by Lancelot, until King Arthur brings about a fresh reconciliation, and Yseult is restored to Mark along with his kingdom. Tristan now returns to his neglected wife, but finds that a revolt has fortunately saved him from the necessity of repaying her devotion with caresses. He goes forth to fight, and subdues the rebel count, but is sorely wounded again. The white- handed lady tends him, cures him, and becomes his wife in deed as well as in name. He quits her once more, and renews his secret intercourse with fair Yseult in Cornwall, until discovery compels him to return to Brittany. In giving his aid to the unsuccessful prosecution of an amour by his brother-in-law he is once more poisonously wounded. He comes to such a dangerous pass that at last he sends a secret messenger to fair Yseult, to bring her back with him if possible. Should she be able and willing to come the ship is to be rigged with white sails ; with black, on the con- trary, if the mission is unsuccessful. Tristan's anxiety comes to the knowledge of white-handed Yseult, who, seized with sudden jealousy, when the white-sailed vessel comes gaily dancing over the waves, goes to her sick husband and tells him that the sails are black. He bids her at once farewell and dies of a broken heart. Fair Yseult, on reaching land, hears of his death, makes her way to the chamber where his corpse is lying, and dies upon her dead hero's breast. Their bodies are conveyed to Cornwall, along with Tristan's sword, formerly Morhoult's, and Mark learns the story of the love- potion. Seized with pity, he has the two lovers buried not far from each other, and a wondrous tree extends its branches to overshadow their two graves. Palamedes: Meliadus and Guiron. This, the last romance written by any of the original writers of the Round Table stories, Melia was composed by Helie de Borron about 1220 at the desire of and Henry III. of England (who paid him noble guerdon for his labour). Guiron. He had already made Palamedes (the Saracen knight finally baptized and adopted to the Round Table) so prominent and so noble a char- acter in nis Bret, or romance of Tristan, that the king wished for another book on the subject. Since the story was to be one of knightly courtesy, its name should be Palamedes. As that hero takes only a minor part in the transactions of the story it is diffi- cult to believe that he meant the name as other than a metaphor. The book is divided into two distinct tales, one relating the adven- tures of Meliadus, who begat Tristan upon the adulterous queen of Scotland, and the other those of a knight whose name appears here for the first time, Guiron le Courtois. 1 Meliadus is a dull and clumsy composition, chiefly remarkable for the circumstance that it alludes to the Charlemagne romances, and includes among its per- sonages Aryhoan of Saxony, ancestor of Ogyers le Danois (Ogier the Dane). Even the account which it gives of Tristan's birth is wholly at variance with that which the writer had already given (or accepted) in the romance of Tristan and Yseult. As for Guiron, the beauty of his character redeems the tediousness of the narrative. From the point of view of human noble-mindedness it is the best of all the Arthurian tales, Guiron being equally free from the criminal sensuality of Lancelot and Tristan on the one hand, and distant from the superangelical purity of Galaad and Perceval on the other. Under the most trying circumstances he keeps himself chastely aloof from sin, although love is mutual between himself and his friend's wife ; and, when on one occasion he reflects how near he has been to the verge of criminality, he strikes his own sword into his breast as a punishment. It is needless to say that he does not die but lives to see that same friend, Denain le Roux, carry off a maiden on whom he (Guiron) has bestowed a more justifiable affec- tion. When, after a year's vain search, he meets his false friend and his ravished lady-love together, he fights and conquers Denain but spares his life, and goes away with the lady, still in love with her. Denain exhibits his friendship and gratitude effectually after- wards, but the story is left unfinished, Guiron and Bloye having been entrapped by treachery and lying still within the walls of a dungeon. The author refers to his Meliadus for an account of their liberation ; but this simply shows that he intended to rewrite Meliadus. Fifty or sixty years later Rusticien of Pisa abridged the Palamedes, and inserted the incidents of the two in his compila- tion of Arthurian romances, now lost as a whole, although usually confounded with the Morte Arthur. From his compilation the printed Meliadus and Guiron were further abridged and finally printed so in separate form. Ysaie le Triste, Arthur de Bretaigne, and Perceforest are three Ysaie, romances which had also considerable vogue, but, although they Arthus belong to the Arthurian cycle, they have no real connexion beyond de Brel the use of British names and the supposed kinship of the heroes aigne, with those of the old stories. Almost as much might be alleged and against the Meliadus and the Guiron, but they were at least written Perce- by one of the first authors of the genuine works, and he had pre- forest, sumably some acquaintance with the British folk-legends. The fact that Rusticien of Pisa about 1270-75 abridged and compiled in a single great book the scattered and discordant stories of the earlier period, at the request of Prince Edward (afterwards Edward I.) of England, is universally conceded. That compilation has never been printed ; it is even uncertain whether any MS. in existence repre- sents it, for, although the English Morte Arthur is usually supposed to have been compendiously translated from it, we may infer with greater probability that Sir Thomas Malory used an earlier compila- tion, perhaps the work of Helie de Borron. One reason to justify such a conjecture may be found in the absence of Guiron and Meliadus from the English book, which would hardly be the case if the former notion were correct, since we know that Rusticien published an abridged text of those two works. Rusticieii's compilation could in fact only be recovered approximately by re- uniting the texts of the various Arthurian romances as printed in French in the 15th and 16th centuries, these abridged and inferior texts having apparently been derived or rewritten from his book, not from MSS. of the separate old romances. The Morte Arthur was printed by Caxton from Sir Thomas Malory's MS. translation or adaptation made in England not many years before the printer's establishment at Westminster. As an early English text and as the only existing homogeneous embodiment of the ancient Franco- British romances, it is of the highest interest, while at the same time it breathes the earnest and simple feeling which animates the originals, differing thus toto ccelo from the colder, more arti- ficial, and less interesting narratives which were invented in tho 15th century, and of which the Ysaie, Arthus de Brelaigne, and Perceforest are examples. All three may be referred to the first half of that century, although it has been alleged that the second was written in the 14th. Ysaie forestalls to some extent the type of the 16th and 17th century French romances. It is an early instance 1 Guiron appears to be the Breton or Cymric word which means " " true," or " honest," and is a fitting title for the hero. loyal,"