TRISTRAM is tire hero of a British legend, which originally had no connection with the stories of king Arthur and the round table, although later minstrels sought to inter weave them. Briefly, the legend goes as follows: Tristram, son of Rouland Rise, lord of Ermonie, and Blanche Fleur, sister of Mark, king of Cornwall, having lost both parents at the period of his birth, is brought up for the first 15 years of his life at the•court of the monarch who had slain his father, after which he proceeds to Cornwall, and is acknowledged by his uncle, who appoints him his heir and successor. Having received a severe wound in a duel, he is cured by Ysolt or Ysonde, daughter of the queen of Ireland; and, on his return to Cornwall, informs his uncle of the marvelous beauty of the Irish princess. Mark is charmed, and sends his nephew to Dublin, at the head of a select body of knights, to solicit her hand in mar riage. The king's suit is successful, and Tristram escorts her on her voyage to England, but both having unwittingly partaken of a love-potion (which was intended for Mark), they are immediately inflamed with a criminal passion for each other, which is the source of all their subsequent misfortunes. Ysolt is married to the king of Cornwall; but, by the help of her clever maid, Breuqwain, she contrives to have numerous secret inter views with her lover, and for some years succeeds in allaying the jealousy and suspicions of her husband. At last, however, Tristram is banished from Cornwall, and goes to Wales, where he performs prodigies of valor. His uncle again becomes reconciled to :aim, and invites him back to his court, where the amours of the incorrigible lovers are renewed. A renewed banishment is the consequence, and Tristram goes abroad to Spain, Ermonie, Brittany, iu the last of which countries he marries another Ysolt, called, for distinction's sake, Ysolt with the white hand, daughter of the duke of Brittany. In one of his exploits he is desperately wounded, and can only be cured by Ysolt of Corn wall. He dispatches a messenger to the princess, telling him that on his return he is to
hoist a white sail as he approaches the coast of Brittany, if Ysolt accompanies him; but if not, a black sail. The queen of Cornwall hastens to save her lover; and as the vessel nears the shores of France, Tristram's wife, Ysolt with the white hand, recognizes the white sail, and, fired with jealous hate at the thought of a rival's approach, hurries to her husband's chamber, and tells him the messenger's ship is coming in with black. sails spread. Tristram, in an agony of disappointed love, sinks back and expires. When the queen of Cornwall lands, and hears of his death, she rushes to the castle, throws herself on his corpse, and dies beside him. King Mark subsequently learns the story of the love-potion, and buries the twain in one grave, planting over Ysolt a rose-bush, and over Tristram a vine, which grew up so inextricably intertwined that no man could ever separate them.
The popularity of the story in the middle ages was unbounded. The scene of the principal exploits, and the residence of the principal personages, is Cornwall, from which one is disposed to claim a British or Welsh paternity both for the legend and the literature; and this is the view that underlies sir Walter Scott's argument in behalf of the purity of the metrical version of Sir Tristram which he published (ed. 1806) from the Auchinleck MS., and which is considered to be the composition of Thomas the Rymer (q.v.). As early as the middle of the 12th c., however, the legend had become a favorite throughout the whole of France; and it subsequently found its way into Spanish, Italian, German, Scandinavian, Slavic, and Greek 'literature. Tristan and Isolde is the subject of one of Wagner's operas. See Michel's Tristan (1835), and Bossat's