Tristrem, or TRISTAN, the hero of a Breton or Cornish romance, originally unconnected with the Round Table cycle, although later interwoven with it. Tristrem was the love-child of King Mark of Cornwall's sister and Roland of Ermonie, and at fifteen repaired to Cornwall, where he charmed the whole court by his minstrelsy. He slew Moraunt in mortal combat, and lay ill three years of the wounds received, but was borne to Ireland, and there cured by Ysolt or Ysonde, daughter of the queen. On his return to Cornwall he told his uncle of the marvellous beauty of the Irish princess, and was sent to solicit her hand for him in marriage. Tristrem escorted Ysonde on her voyage to England; but both unwittingly drank of a love-potion intended for Mark, and from that day to the day of their death no man or woman could come between their loves. Ysonde was married to the king of Cornwall, but by the help of her clever maid, Brengwain, had many a secret interview with her lover. Tristrem was banished from Cornwall, but again brought to his uncle's court, and again their inevitable loves began anew. Next he wandered to Spain, Ermonie, Brittany, and here married another Ysonde—her with the white hand, daughter of Duke Florentine—but he could not forget his love for Ysonde of Ireland. Grievously wounded in battle, he sent a messenger to bring her to him. 'If you bring her with you,' he charged him, 'hoist a white sail; if you bring her not, let your sail be black.' Soon the ship is sighted, and Tristrem asks eagerly what is the colour of her sail. It was white; but Ysonde of Brittany, her heart filled with bitter jealousy, told Tristrem the sail was black, whereupon the heart-sick lover sank back and died. Ysonde of Ireland threw herself in passionate despair upon his body, and died heart-broken beside him. King Mark subsequently learned the story of the love-potion, and buried the twain in one grave, planting over Ysonde a rose-bush, and over Tristrem a vine, which grew up so inextricably intertwined that no man could ever separate them.
This romantic story is beyond a doubt of Celtic origin, but its intrinsic beauty early carried it widely across western Europe. It had very probably a mythological origin, and it recalls in more than one point the legend of Theseus. The oldest poem on the subject is that of Béroul, about 1150, extant only in a fragment. Several fragments of the story of the 12th and 13th centuries were edited by Francisque Michel (Lond. 1835). About the end of the 12th century Eilhard of Oberge composed his Tristrant (Strasb. 1877), the ultimate parent of many versions in later German Volksbücher. Gottfried of Strasburg's Tristan und Isolde, an unfinished poem of almost 20,000 lines, belongs to the first quarter of the 13th century. Soon after Gottfried's death his fine poem was feebly continued by Ulrich of Türlheim and Henry of Freiburg. The extant English poem, Sir Tristrem, dates from about the close of the 13th century. It was first edited by [Sir] Walter Scott in 1804; later by Eugen Köbling (Heilbronn, 1882), and George P. McNeill for the 'Scottish Text Society' (1886). Scott ascribed the authorship to Thomas of Ercildoun, and is followed by Mr McNeill. In the 13th century also a Norse version was made, Tristrans Saga ok Ísondar (edited by Eugen Köbling, Heilbronn, 1878). We find allusions enough to the story in French fabliaux, in Dante, Petrarch, Boiardo, and Ariosto, in Chaucer, Lydgate, and Gower; in 1469 a prose romance on the subject of Tristan, son of King Meliadus of Leonnois was printed at Rouen, and was soon translated into German. The Spanish romance of Don Tristan of Leonis appeared at Seville in 1528; the Italian, I due Tristani, at Venice in 1555. It also became associated with the romances of the Round Table, and we find it in its place in Sir Thomas Malory's famous composition of these, the Morte Darthur. Hans Sachs worked the subject into a tragedy, and in 1588 a long poem on the love of Tristano and Madonna Isotta was printed at Venice. In 1841 appeared Karl Immermann's unfinished Tristan and Isolde; Wagner's operatic poem, which preserves all the essential points of the story, was first produced in 1859. A later work is the tragedy by Ludwig Schneegans (1865). In modern English poetry we have Matthew Arnold's poem, Tristram and Iseult, expressing exquisitely the pity of the story from the side of Iseult of Brittany; 'The Last Tournament' in Tennyson's Idylls of the King, closely based on Malory; and the Tristram of Lyonesse of Swinburne, a splendid poetic realisation of the theme.
See the Introductions to the editions of Eugen K��lbing and G. P. M'Neill; also Golther, Die Sage von Tristan und Isolde (Munich, 1887); vol. xxx. (1888) of the Hist. litt��raire de la France; and Romania, vols. xv. and xvi.