What more fitting than that the grave of Tristram and Iseult should have been at Tintagel, where the sea they loved came with its strong and awful tides, and now
“Sweeps above their coffined bones
In the wrecked chancel by the shivered shrine”?
The deep sea guards them and engirds them, and no man shall say where the lovers lie in their last sleep. King Mark buried the two in one grave, and planted over it a rose-bush and vine, the branches of which so intermingled that they became inseparable. Arnold, Swinburne, and Tennyson have best told the whole story in our language in modern times. But it is no slight task to trace the literary history and development of the beautiful theme. A German minnesänger of the twelfth century, Gotfrit of Strasburg, is the first to whom the romance is ascribed, though Scott and others have claimed for Thomas of Ercildoune (Thomas the Rhymer) the best poetic version, only one copy of which is extant. A thirteenth-century manuscript, which contains a French metrical version of the romance, has been noted by Lockhart as citing the authority of Thomas the Rhymer for the story of Tristram and Iseult; but Thomas’s version was totally different from the prose romances. Great efforts have been made at one time and another to prove the story to be of English, French, and German origin, but at least this much is assured—the principal scenes are English, and the leading events in the history of Tristram, the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, occur at Tintagel. He journeyed to Ireland to bring back the daughter of the queen of that country, and he journeyed to Brittany to bring back his own wife, that Iseult of the White Hand who failed to win his love. His adventures as a Knight of the Round Table took him, as was usual, over much territory and to foreign lands; but it is to Cornwall that the interest always returns, and in which it is concentrated. Among the “wind-hollowed heights and gusty bays” of Tintagel, and within the “towers washed round with rolling foam,” the knight and the damsel wedded to King Mark, who had saved him from torture and death, lived their lives of forbidden love. The Minstrel-knight suited his voice to the mellow chords of his harp, and wandered about the woods and beside the sea in the May-time of his happiness with Iseult the Queen. And when the knight had wedded another Iseult, it was at Tintagel that Mark’s wife, with her passionate thoughts, her sorrow, and her despair, sat alone in a casement and heard the night speak and thunder on the sea “ravening aloud for ruin of lives.” Such words can be easily comprehended by those who have seen Tintagel in storm, the wind roaring, the seas flashing white, a blinding mist of rain between the heavy sky and the weltering waves. The rage of the elements, the vehemence of the warring tide, the dash and the recoil at the castle-base, have only their parallel in the human passion which was too strong for life itself to withstand, when deserted Iseult saw before her the corpse of her lover. Tristram, ill-fated from birth, was doomed to die by treachery. He was wounded, and learnt that he could only be healed by the magic art of the woman he loved, of her who had cured him before. He sent for Iseult to cross the sea in order to save him, and commanded the messenger to hoist a white sail if she consented and was on her way. The white sail was hoisted, but the other Iseult, the faithful but neglected wife, could not resist saying what jealousy prompted—that the sail was black. Sir Tristram immediately expired. Malory’s romance declares that the knight met his death at the hands of King Mark, who slew him “as he sat harping afore his lady La Beale Isoud, with a trenchant glaive, for whose death was much bewailing of every knight that ever were in King Arthur’s days.”
The literary history and the variations of the extremely ancient and supremely sorrowful story can only be adequately treated in such a volume as that of M. Losseth, who has given an account of twenty-four manuscripts containing Tristram’s history, of six works in the French National Library, of Malory’s version, and of one Italian, two Danish, and one German translation or original rendering. Some have attributed the authorship to Cormac of Ireland in the third century; others believe the Welsh bards first sang it; the French claimed it for their trovères, but have now admitted its British origin. Yet it is remarkable how French, Cornish, and Irish histories intermingle in the romance, and how the magic element occasionally enters, spoiling it as history but enriching it as a legend. The story is one of such pathos that the predominating influence of the Celt in suggesting and shaping it must instantly be recognised. But so many have worked on the theme, early and late—none perhaps with such superb effect as Wagner—that the primitive conception is apt to be forgotten or ignored; it has been overlaid with details gathered from many lands, and embellished by the poetic fancies of many races. The story has become European; Beroul, Christian of Troyes, Thomas of Brittany, Robert the northern monk, Eilhard of Oberge, Gottfrid and the other early Germans, the Provençal minstrels—all these have altered and added to the tale of the knight who slew the sea-monster, the Morhout, saved the Cornish maidens from shame and death, was wounded by a poisoned arrow, healed by Iseult the Beautiful, and both of whom, drinking of a magic love-potion intended for Iseult’s destined husband, afterwards experienced all the joys and pangs of an unhallowed love which Dante himself could not refrain from celebrating and condoning. The story abounds in mystic symbolism, or, rather, that symbolism has been found in it; and the inevitable Sun-god myth has been perceived in its details.
Tintagel, a picture in the waters, is at its best when the sky becomes a rose above it, and the sun dipping into a golden bath leaves a track gleaming like pearl across the shoaling sea. The waves as they rise and fall make emerald and purple lines in moments of magic change, and their crests of foam sparkle jewel-like with a thousand instantaneous lights. Then “all the rippling green grows royal gold” as the sun, like a splendid bubble, floats on the water’s edge. Round the pointed brown rocks are fringes of white foam ever widening and contracting; the oncoming waters with an exultant bound sometimes spring high in fountains and then sink slowly and gently as if fairy spires were dissolving in thinnest powder. Again, with a roar and an access of strength, the waves return impetuously, raging and grinding, churned as by some mighty hidden wheel into yeasty foam. Vista-like the long bright track, now a deep red band, leads back to the inner chambers of the sun, and the sea draws the orb into its dark, mysterious depths. The waves lace themselves around the pinky-green islets, and the verdant headlands, succeeding each other in almost interminable series till the eye catches the gleam of the Lizard lights, begin to soften mistily away behind the twilight veil. A little ship, far off, skims over the sea-rim and disappears; a tiny cloud floats up like a loose silken sail, silvery white. The seagulls and the choughs flit about the broken arches of the castle, and shadows fall long and deep across the deep ravinous path leading inland from the precipitous heights.
At such time Tintagel is telling its own story, weaving its own romance; and words seem vain when those shattered columns, those fallen walls, that unbridged chasm, are there to make the tale. Of the after-history of the place what matters it? We would fain have the story end, as it began, with Arthur and Guinevere, King Mark, Mage Merlin, and Tristram and Iseult. Every roll of the breakers is a voice from the past, and every crumbling chamber a chapter in that history which only the true poet transcribes. Yet even while such thoughts are forcing themselves upon the mind of the beholder of a typical August sunset over Tintagel, the end of the day will be near. The arc of the sun blazes upon the sea-line, an edge of fiery carmine, and a fleecy train of cirrus-cloud crimsons with the last rays. Slowly and yet perceptibly the light dies away and leaves the heaving sea mystically dusk and the world full of shadows. Darkness looms over Tintagel. The overhanging crags look as if they might crack, break off, and thunder down into the open-mouthed sea below. The black chough wheels about the ruins—the spirit of Arthur, say the people, revisiting the scene of his glory. Arcturus, the star of Arthur, glistens in the blue sky right over the castle height, and Arthur’s Harp shapes itself more dimly further east—for the constellations themselves were named after the puissant king. The tide is at its height and has flooded the little stony beach to which a steep path leads; the caves are full; on the horizon the night-clouds come up and shape themselves into fantastic forms of towers, and the real which are near, and the imagined which are far, scarce can be distinguished.
Photo: R. Webber, Boscastle]
BARRAS HEAD, TINTAGEL