Stories of Gawain and other knights.
Taking these in order, the first, which is the largest in bulk, is also, and necessarily, the most difficult to summarise in short space. It is sometimes said that the prominent figure in the earlier stories is Gawain, who is afterwards by some spite or caprice dethroned in favour of Lancelot. This is not quite exact, for the bulk of the Lancelot legends being, as has been said, anterior to the end of the twelfth century, is much older than the bulk of the Gawain romances, which, owing their origin to English, and especially to northern, patriotism, do not seem to date earlier than the thirteenth or even the fourteenth. But it is true that Gawain, as we have seen, makes an appearance, though no very elaborate one, in the most ancient forms of the legend itself, where we hear nothing of Lancelot; and also that his appearances in Merlin do not bear anything like the contrast (similar to that afterwards developed in the Iberian romance-cycle as between Galaor and Amadis) which other authorities make between him and Lancelot.[52] Generally speaking, the knights are divisible into three classes. First there are the older knights, from Ulfius (who had even taken part in the expedition which cheated Igraine) and Antor, down to Bedivere, Lucan, and the most famous of this group, Sir Kay, who, alike in older and in later versions, bears the uniform character of a disagreeable person, not indeed a coward, though of prowess not equal to his attempts and needs; but a boaster, envious, spiteful, and constantly provoking by his tongue incidents in which his hands do not help him out quite sufficiently.[53] Then there is the younger and main body, of whom Lancelot and Gawain (still keeping Tristram apart) are the chiefs; and lastly the outsiders, whether the "felon" knights who are at internecine, or the mere foreigners who are in friendly, antagonism with the knights of the "Rowntabull."
Of these the chief are Sir Palomides or Palamedes (a gallant Saracen, who is Tristram's unlucky rival for the affections of Iseult, while his special task is the pursuit of the Questing Beast, a symbol of Slander), and Tristram himself.
Sir Tristram.
The appearance of this last personage in the Legend is one of the most curious and interesting points in it. Although on this, as on every one of such points, the widest diversity of opinion prevails, an impartial examination of the texts perhaps enables us to obtain some tolerably clear views on the subject—views which are helpful not merely with reference to the "Tristan-saga" itself, but with reference to the origins and character of the whole Legend.[54] There cannot, I think, be a doubt that the Tristram story originally was quite separate from that of Arthur. In the first place, Tristram has nothing whatever to do with that patriotic and national resistance to the Saxon invader which, though it died out in the later legend, was the centre, and indeed almost reached the circumference, of the earlier. In the second, except when he is directly brought to Arthur's court, all Tristram's connections are with Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland, not with that more integral and vaster part of la bloie Bretagne which extends from Somerset and Dorset to the Lothians. When he appears abroad, it is as a Varangian at Constantinople, not in the train of Arthur fighting against Romans. Again, the religious part of the story, which is so important in the developed Arthurian Legend proper, is almost entirely absent from the Tristram-tale, and the subject which played the fourth part in mediæval affections and interests with love, religion, and fighting—the chase—takes in the Tristram romances the place of religion itself.
His story almost certainly Celtic.
But the most interesting, though the most delicate, part of the inquiry concerns the attitude of this episode or branch to love, and the conclusion to be drawn as well from that attitude as from the local peculiarities above noticed, as to the national origin of Tristram on the one hand, and of the Arthur story on the other. It has been said that Tristram's connections with what may be roughly called Britain at large—i.e., the British Islands plus Brittany—are, except in his visits to Arthur's court, entirely with the Celtic parts—Cornwall, Ireland, Armorica—less with Wales, which plays a strangely small part in the Arthurian romances generally. This would of itself give a fair presumption that the Tristram story is more purely, or at any rate more directly, Celtic than the rest. But it so happens that in the love of Tristram and Iseult, and the revenge and general character of Mark, there is also a suffusion of colour and tone which is distinctly Celtic. The more recent advocates for the Celtic origin of romance in general, and the Arthurian legend in particular, have relied very strongly upon the character of the love adventures in these compositions as being different from those of classical story, different from those of Frankish, Teutonic, and Scandinavian romance; but, as it seems to them, like what has been observed of the early native poetry of Wales, and still more (seeing that the indisputable texts are older) of Ireland.
A discussion of this kind is perhaps more than any other periculosæ plenum opus aleæ; but it is too important to be neglected. Taking the character of the early Celtic, and especially the Irish, heroine as it is given by her champions—a process which obviates all accusations of misunderstanding that might be based on the present writer's confession that of the Celtic texts alone he has to speak at second-hand—it seems to me beyond question that both the Iseults, Iseult of Ireland and Iseult of Brittany, approach much nearer to this type than does Guinevere, or the Lady of the Lake, or the damsel Lunete, or any of Arthur's sisters, even Morgane, or, to take earlier examples, Igraine and Merlin's love. So too the peculiar spitefulness of Mark, and his singular mixture of tolerance and murderous purpose towards Tristram[55] are much more Celtic than Anglo-French: as indeed is the curious absence of religiosity before noted, which extends to Iseult as well as to Tristram. We have no trace in Mark's queen of the fact or likelihood of any such final repentance as is shown by Arthur's: and though the complete and headlong self-abandonment of Iseult is excused to some extent by the magic potion, it is of an "all-for-love-and-the-world-well-lost" kind which finds no exact parallel elsewhere in the legend. So too, whether it seem more or less amiable, the half-coquettish jealousy of Guinevere in regard to Lancelot is not Celtic: while the profligate vindictiveness attributed to her in Sir Launfal, and only in Sir Launfal, an almost undoubtedly Celtic offshoot of the Arthurian Legend, is equally alien from her character. We see Iseult planning the murder of Brengwain with equal savagery and ingratitude, and we feel that it is no libel. On the other hand, though Tristram's faithfulness is proverbial, it is an entirely different kind of faithfulness from that of Lancelot—flightier, more passionate perhaps in a way, but of a less steady passion. Lancelot would never have married Iseult the White-handed.
It is, however, quite easy to understand how, this Tristram legend existing by hypothesis already or being created at the same time, the curious centripetal and agglutinative tendency of mediæval romance should have brought it into connection with that of Arthur. The mere fact of Mark's being a vassal-king of Greater Britain would have been reason enough; but the parallel between the prowess of Lancelot and Tristram, and between their loves for the two queens, was altogether too tempting to be resisted. So Tristram makes his appearance in Arthur's court, and as a knight of the Round Table, but as not exactly at home there,—as a visitor, an "honorary member" rather than otherwise, and only an occasional partaker of the home tournaments and the adventures abroad which occupy Arthur's knights proper.
Sir Lancelot.