Entre ceus qui solent cunter
E del cunte Tristran parler,
Il en cuntent diversement:
Of en ai de plusur gent.
Asez sai que chescun en dit
E co qu'il unt mis en escrit,
Mes sulun ço que j’ai oï
Nel dient pas sulun Bréri
Ky solt les gestes e les cuntes
De tuz les reis, de tuz les cuntes,
Ki orent este en Bretaingne.”
(Thomas, i, 377).
These are not the words of a man who is following a complete and authoritative poem; judging from the context of the other references to Bleheris he was rather a collector and versifier of short episodic tales, and it seems far more natural to understand Thomas as having wrought into one complete and consecutive form the various poems with which the name of Bréri was associated, than to hold that that, or a similar, work had already been achieved by another.
Thomas’s work, fortunately, fell into the hands of a true poet in the person of Gottfried von Strassburg, whose Tristan und Isolde is, from a literary point of view, the gem of medieval German literature. Gottfried is a far greater master of style than Wolfram von Eschenbach, and his treatment of some of the episodes, notably the sojourn in the woods, is most exquisite. He did not live to complete his poem, but happily he carried it up to the point where the original fragments begin, so that we can judge very fairly what must have been the effect of the whole, the style of the two poets being very similar. Inspiring as the Tristan story is, it seems improbable that it should have been handled, and that within a comparatively short period, by three writers of genius, and that of these three the first, and greatest, should have utterly disappeared! The translators of Thomas do not fail to quote him as their source, why then has no one quoted the original poet?
Besides the version of Thomas, we have a fragment by a certain Beroul, also an Anglo-Norman, and a German poem by Eilhart von Oberge, both of which derive from a common source. There also exists in two manuscripts a short poem, La Folie Tristan, relating how Tristan, disguised as a fool, visits the court of King Mark. This poem is valuable, as, presuming upon the sufficiency of his disguise, Tristan audaciously gives a resume of his feats and of his relations with Iseult, in this agreeing with the version of Thomas. The "Gerbert" continuation of the Perceval contains the working over of one of two short Tristan poems, called by him the Luite Tristran; the latter part, probably a distinct poem, shows Tristan, in the disguise of a minstrel, visiting the court of Mark. Here the tradition is more in accordance with Beroul.
Besides the poems, we possess the prose Tristan, an enormous compilation, akin to the prose Lancelot, where the original story, though still to be traced, is obscured by a mass of later Arthurian adventures. The interest here centres in the rivalry between Tristan and Lancelot, alike as knights and lovers, and in the later redaction, ascribed to Helie de Borron, the story is spun out to an interminable length.
Certain points of difference between the poetical and the prose versions should be noted. Tristan is here the son of Meliadus, king of Loonois; his father does not die, but is decoyed away by an enchantress, and the mother, searching for her husband, gives birth to her child in the forest and dies. Meliadus marries again, and the second wife, jealous of Tristan, tries to kill him. Mark has another nephew, Andret, who is Tristan’s enemy throughout the romance. Mark himself is a cowardly, treacherous and vindictive character. Some of the early printed editions follow the original version of Tristan’s death, now found in one manuscript only (B.N. 103), the majority represent him as having been stabbed in the back by Mark in the presence of the queen, as we find in Malory, who drew the larger portion of his compilation from the prose Tristan. It should be noted that Tristan is never more than superficially connected with Arthur, an occasional visitor at his court; though in its later form ranked among the Arthurian romances, the Tristan is really an independent story, and does not form a part of the ordinary cyclic redaction. The Italian prose text, La Travola ritonda differs from the French in adhering to the original version, and is classed by N. Bedier among the derivatives from Thomas. Like the story of Perceval that of Tristan has been made familiar to the present generation by Richard Wagner’s noble music drama, Tristan und Isolde, founded upon the poem of Gottfried von Strassburg; though, being a drama of feeling rather than of action, the story is reduced to its simple elements; the drinking of the love-potion, the passion of the lovers, their discovery by Mark and finally their death.
Bibliography.—Thomas, Roman de Tristan, ed. J. Bedier (2 vols., Societé des anciens textes français, 1902, 1905); Beroul, Roman de Tristan (ed. E. Muret. same series, 1903); E. Kolbing, Die nordische und die englische Version der Tristansaga (1877, 1883), pt.i., Tristrams Saga, pt. ii., Sir Tristrem. "La Folie Tristan" was published by F. Michel in his Tristan (1835), a collection of all the extant fragments of Tristan poems; "Tristan Menestrel" from the Perceval, ed. J. L. Weston and J. Bedier (Romania, vol. xxxv., Oct. 1906). Gottfried’s Tristan und Isolde has been several times published; the best editions are those of Bechstein (1890) and Golther (1889); modern German versions by Kurz, Simrock and Hertz; English prose rendering, J. L. Weston, 2 vols. {Arthurian Romances, No. ii.). Cf. also Piquet, L'Originalite de Gottfried de Strassburg (1905). Eilhart von Oberge, Tristan, ed. Lichtenstein (1877); La Tavola ritonda, ed. Polidori, (3 vols., 1864-1865). There is no modern edition of the prose romance, but a detailed analysis of the contents, compiled from the numerous manuscripts in the Paris Library, was published by E. Loseth in Le Roman en prose de Tristan (1890). The general reader will find Gaston Paris’s study of the legend in Poemes et legendes du moyen âge most interesting; also Joseph Bédier’s popular retelling of the tale Tristan et Iseult. For Wagner’s version cf. J. L. Weston, Legends of the Wagner Drama. For an exhaustive study of the Tristan legend and literature, see the recent work by Professor Golther; also an examination of the Welsh fragments by Ivor John in the Grimm Library. (J. L. W.)
TRISTAN DA CUNHA, the general name for a group of
three small volcanic islands belonging to Great Britain, situated
in the South Atlantic, the summit of the largest being in
37° 5′ 50″ S., 12° 16′ 40″ W. They are about 2000 m. W. of the
Cape of Good Hope and about 4000 m. N.E. of Cape Horn
and lie somewhat north of a line drawn between the two capes.
St Helena lies about 1500 m. N.N.E. of the group. The
islands rise from the submarine elevation which runs down
the centre of the Atlantic and on which are likewise situated
Ascension, St Paul’s Rocks and the Azores; the average
depth on this ridge is from 1600 to 1700 fathoms, while depths
of 3000 fathoms are found on each side of it, The depth
between the islands is in some places over 1000 fathoms.
Tristan, the largest and northernmost island, has an area of 16 sq. m., is nearly circular in form, about 7 m. in diameter, and has a volcanic cone (7640 ft.), usually capped with snow, in the centre. Precipitous cliffs, 1000 to 2000 ft. in height, rise directly from the ocean on all sides, except on the north-west, where there is an irregular plain, 100 ft. above the sea, and 212 m. in length and 12 m. in breadth. A stream crosses the northern end of the plateau, falling over the cliff edge in a fine cascade. The crater of the central cone contains a fresh-water lake about 150 yds. in diameter. This and other crater lakes are said never to be frozen over.
Inaccessible Island, the westernmost of the group, is about 20 m. from Tristan. It is quadrilateral in form, the sides being about 2 m. long, and its area is about 4 sq. m. The highest point (1840 ft.) is on the west side; all round there are perpendicular cliffs about 1000 ft. in height. At the base of the cliffs in some places are narrow fringes of beach a few feet above the sea-level.
Nightingale Island, the smallest and most southern of the group, is 10 m. from Inaccessible Island. Its area is not more than 1 sq.m. Its coasts, unlike those of the other two islands, are surrounded by low cliffs, from which there is a gentle slope up to two peaks, the one 1100 ft., the other 960 ft. high. There are two small islets—Stoltenkoff (325 ft.) and Middle (150 ft.)—and several rocks adjacent to the coast.
The rocks of Tristan da Cunha are felspathic basalt, dolerite, augite-andesite, sideromelane and palagonite; some specimens of the basalt have porphyritic augite.[1] The caves in Nightingale Island indicate that it has been elevated several feet. On almost
- ↑ On the occurrence in Tristan da Cunha of rock of continental type (gneiss) see E. H. L. Schwarz of the Geological Survey, Cape Colony, in the Transactions South African Philosoph. Soc., No. 16 of 1905.
