Mark of Cornwall


Mark of Cornwall was a king of Kernow in the early 6th century. He is most famous for his appearance in Arthurian legend as the uncle of Tristan and husband of Iseult, who engage in a secret affair.

King Mark

In Old Welsh records, Mark is recorded as "March son of Meirchion" and is variously associated with North Wales, South Wales or South-West Scotland. Some identify King Mark with King Conomor of Dumnonia.
In Wrmonoc of Landévennec's Life of St. Pol de Leon, he refers to a "King Marc whose other name is Quonomorus." Also rendered Cunomorus, this name means literally the 'Hound-of-the-sea'. An inscription on a 6th-century gravestone near the Cornish town of Fowey memorializes a certain "Drustanus son of Cunomorus" and it has been conjectured that this is the "Tristan son of Mark " of legend.
There is a monument believed by some to refer to Tristan at. The Tristan Stone is a granite pillar near Fowey, Cornwall, originally situated at Castle Dore. The stone has a mid-6th-century two line inscription which has been interpreted as reading DRVSTANVS HIC IACIT CVNOWORI FILIV'S. A now missing third line was described by the 16th century antiquarian John Leland as reading CVM DOMINA OUSILLA. Ousilla is a Latinisation of the Cornish female name Eselt. The stone led to Mark's association with Castle Dore.

In the legend

In most versions of the story of Tristan and Iseult, King Mark of Cornwall is Tristan's uncle. His sister is Tristan's mother, Blancheflor alias Elizabeth/Isabelle, or, in some later versions, he is related to Tristan's father, Meliadus.
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Mark sends Tristan as his proxy to fetch his young bride, the Princess Iseult, from Ireland. Tristan and Iseult fall in love, and, with the help of a magic potion, proceed to have one of the stormiest love affairs in medieval literature. Mark suspects the affair and eventually his suspicions are confirmed. In some versions, he sends for Tristan to be hanged, and banishes Iseult to a leper colony. Tristan escapes the hanging and rescues Iseult from her confinement. Mark later discovers this and eventually forgives them, with Iseult returning to Mark and Tristan leaving the country. The story is cyclical with Mark suspecting Tristan and Iseult of adultery and then believing they were innocent. This happens again and again in the story. In Béroul's version, Tristan and Iseult are never in grave danger due to the narrator's declaration that he himself and God were on their side. King Mark, in the role of husband, is not portrayed as idealistic as other kings in Arthurian literature who were only portrayed in the role of king and not the personal role of husband.
Marie de France's Breton lai Chevrefoil tells a part of the Tristan and Iseult tale. The lai begins with an explanation that Mark was enraged with Tristan's affair with his wife, and thus banished him from Cornwall. Tristan spends a year in his own land of South Wales, pining away for Isoude. Eventually, his sorrow grew so great that he went against Mark's order and hid in the woods of Cornwall, taking shelter with villagers only at night. Eventually Tristan comes to hear that Mark plans to hold a feast for Pentecost, and that Isoude would be riding through the forest to attend. He finds the path the queen is most likely to take, and lays on it a hazel stick he stripped the bark off of and carved his name into. Isoude recognizes the sign and stops her party to rest, sneaking away with her maid Brangwaine to see Tristan. During this illicit meeting, Isoude helps Tristan with a plan to win back the favor of King Mark. Marie de France ends the poem by telling the reader that the lai Tristan composed was called "Goatleaf" in English or "Chèvrefeuille" in French, and that the very lai he composed was the one the reader just finished.

"King Mark slew the noble knight Sir Tristram as he sat harping before his lady la Belle Isolde."|alt=
In the Prose Tristan, Mark's character deteriorates from a sympathetic cuckold to a downright villain. He rapes his niece and then murders her when she produces his son, Meraugis. He murders his brother Baldwin as well. In earlier versions of the story, Tristan dies in Brittany, far away from Mark; but in the Prose Tristan, Mark stabs Tristan while he plays the harp under a tree for Iseult. This version of Mark's character was popular in other medieval works, including the Romance of Palamedes and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. In these, Mark is usually seen as ruling Cornwall from Tintagel Castle and is often a sworn enemy of Arthur's jester knight Dinadan and even the destroyer of Camelot after the death of Arthur.

Horse's ears

Mark has become associated with a Celtic variant of the story of Midas and his donkey ears from Greek mythology, due to a pun on marc which is a Celtic word for "horse". The episode already occurs in Tristan by the 12th century French poet Béroul, where the dwarf divulges the secret that "Mark has horse's ears" addressing a hawthorn tree, in the presence of three lords.
There is a Breton legend which appeared in print in 1794, in which March was initially the king of Cornouaille, France, seated at Ploumarch. The king kills every barber who knows the secret about his ears, except one, who speaks the secret into the sand.. Reeds subsequently grow from that spot, and the plants are harvested to make into reeds for the oboe. When the instruments are played, it sounds to the audience as if the music is saying the king has horse's ears. John Rhys recorded a Welsh tale that differs little from the simpler Breton version.
An embellished version collected by blends the legend of Ys, with the premise that Marc was condemned by Gradlon's daughter . March tried to hunt her when she was assuming the guise of a doe and had his ears exchanged with those of his prized horse Morvarc'h.

In modern culture