A while ago, I wrote a poem based somewhat upon the Tristan legend, and specifically the end of it, called 'The Death of Trystan'. In this brief article, I seek to explain what my inspiration for it was.
A while ago, I had been doing some reading on the subject of the Arthurian legend. I had been doing surface-level reading concerning the Tristan legend-- by which I mean that I'd been reading the Wikipedia articles concerning it, and I was inspired to write a piece about Tristan's death-- that is, concerning his death at the hands of his jealous uncle, King Mark, by means of a spear.
Concerning the meter of the poem, it largely came to me out of nowhere-- I literally just came up with the particular meter used in the poem by complete accident. I then arranged that particular metric form with the rhythm of the hooves of a galloping horse in mind.
The section where Trystan is telling Esyllt the stories of Diviciacus and Betis and Gadiferre is a lengthy reference to The Romance of Perceforest, a lengthy prequel to the Arthurian romances, concerning the many adventures of Perceforest, Arthur's ancestor, and his various knights and companions. Diviciacus was a Celtic chieftain who invaded Britain, and conquered part of the south of the country, according to Julius Caesar in his Commentary on The Gallic Wars. In the Romance of Perceforest, it is Alexander the Great who conquers Britain, his ship being blown there during a storm, while he's sailing to India in order to attend the coronation of the king there. I thus thought it only fitting to identify this fictitious invader with an actual historical invader of Britain.
Having now read Nigel Bryant's The Perceforest Reader, I can say definitively that I have gotten a number of things wrong. I refer to Gadiferre being given the name 'forest-piercer', for instance, but in the actual romance it is Betis who is christened 'Perceforest'. I also refer to how 'these two saw that Darnant died'-- this is blatant nonsense, because, in the romance, Betis kills Darnant entirely by himself. My reference to 'Zellanda' also relates to a section of Perceforest, specifically the story of Troylus, one of Perceforest's knights, and his romance with Princess Zellandine of Zelland. In the Romance, Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep as a result of a curse laid upon her by a goddess when she was a baby, the sleep itself coming on while Zellandine is visiting Perceforest's court during a day of great feasting.
The final line of the piece 'And Trystan sang no more' was one of the first lines of the piece which I conceived of. I don't know how I feel about my alternation between multiple different verse forms. I don't know whether to be angry at myself for inconsistency, or whether to feel proud at my ingenuity with regards to how I composed these stanzas.
When I refer to Trystan as March's 'own son', I mean that he is his stepson. There is not a single version of the Tristan legend where Mark is Tristan's father. In the Prose Tristan, and variants of the legend derived from it, a knight named Meliodas is Tristan's father. In German variants of the legend, however, such as Gottfried Von Strassburg's Tristan, Tristan's father is a king named either Riwalin or Rivalen, depending on the version. Welsh variants of the legend, however, Tristan's father is an otherwise unattested personage named Tallwch. The Welsh Triads mention 'Trystan son of Tallwch' in a group of triads describing Arthur's knights. The narrative of How Culhwch Won Olwen in The Mabinogion, meanwhile, mentions the name 'Trystan son of Tallwch' in the court-list. It's likely though that the historical personage upon whom Tristan is based, the Pictish warrior Drustanus, was likely the son of the historical equivalent to Mark, Cunomorus. There's a stone menhir in Cornwall which reads 'Here lies Drustanus, son of Cunomorus, with the lady Ousilla'. It is likely this stone which marks the grave of the historical Tristan.
The word 'cyn', for the record, means 'dog' in Welsh, and is pronounced 'cun', which is why I rhymed it with 'one'.
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