es 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 mediaeval affections and interests
with love, religion, and fighting--the chase--takes in the Tristram
romances the place of religion itself.

[Footnote 54: Editions: the French _Tristan_, edited long ago by F.
Michel, but in need of completion; the English _Sir Tristrem_ in
Scott's well-known issue, and re-edited (Heilbronn, 1882), with
excellent taste as well as learning, by Dr Koelbing, who has also given
the late Icelandic version, as well as for the Scottish Text Society
(Edinburgh, 1886) by Mr George P. McNeill; Gottfried of Strasburg's
German (_v._ chap. vi.), ed. Bechstein (Leipzig, 1890). _Romania_, v.
xv. (1886), contains several essays on the Tristram story.]

[Sidenote: _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,