16 July 2022

Sir Tristram

 

Sir Tristram (RFW 003.04-06)

In Finnegans Wake Sir Tristram represents the Oedipal figure, the younger man who confronts the protagonist HCE, precipitates his fall, and takes his place, becoming in the process the new HCE. The cycle continues as a new Oedipal figure arises to take his place. And so on ad infinitum et nauseam.

Joyce’s Oedipal Siglum

Tristram was borrowed by Joyce from the Arthurian romance of Sir Tristram and Iseult. In an earlier article—Finnegans Wake and the Bywaters Case—I showed how Joyce, for a while at least, envisaged Finnegans Wake as a modern retelling of that old tale. As his ideas developed, however, the novel outgrew this concept and became something much bigger. But the story of Tristram and Iseult, with its Oedipal triangle (in which Tristram and his uncle King Mark of Cornwall are rivals for the love of the Irish princess Iseult), is woven into Joyce’s story of an ordinary family in Chapelizod, on the western outskirts of Dublin.

Tristram and Iseult

Joyce’s principal source for the details of this tale was Joseph Bédier’s prose-poem Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut, which Joyce knew in both the original French and Florence Simmonds’ English translation. This is a key text for a proper understanding of Finnegans Wake.

The romance of Sir Tristram and Iseult was also the inspiration for Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde which was possibly Joyce’s first encounter with the story. This connection is hinted at by the phrase violer d’amores, which echoes the name of a seven-stringed musical instrument, the viola d’amore. (The viola d’amore, however, is not actually heard in Wagner’s opera.) Wagner’s principal source was Gottfried von Strassburg’s Middle High German romance Tristan.

The Peninsula of Howth Head

Sir Amory Tristram

There is also a reference here to a historical figure, an Anglo-Norman knight who accompanied the military adventurer John de Courcy on his Irish campaigns. In his letters Joyce called him Sir Amory Tristram, but variant spellings can be found in the primary sources. Whatever his actual name, he was the first Lord of Howth and the founder of the St Lawrence family, from whom the later Barons and Earls of Howth came. He is thought to have built the first Howth Castle, a wooden structure about a kilometre east of the site of the current castle (Ball 26). His story is preserved in The Book of Howth, a manuscript compiled, it is thought, in the 16th century by his descendant Christopher St Lawrence, 8th Baron Howth.

Samuel Lewis, a London publisher of topographical dictionaries and atlases, had the following to say about Howth:

In 1177, Sir Amorey Tristram and Sir John de Courcy landed here at the head of a large military force, and totally defeated the Danish inhabitants in a sanguinary battle at the bridge of Evora, over a mountain stream which falls into the sea near the Baily lighthouse. This victory secured to Sir Amorey the lordship of Howth, of which his descendants have continued in possession to the present day, under the name of St. Laurence, which Almaric, third baron, assumed in fulfilment of a vow previously to his victory over the Danes near Clontarf, in a battle fought on the festival of that saint. The territory of Howth was confirmed to Almaric de St. Laurence by King John, and is now the property of Thomas, 28th baron and 3rd Earl of Howth. (Lewis 10)

Walter Harris, author of The History and Antiquities of the City of Dublin, compiled in this work:

An alphabetical list of such English adventurers as arrived in Ireland during the first sixteen years from the invasion of the English [i.e. 1169-1185], collected partly from Maurice Regan [secretary to Diarmait Mac Murchada] and Giraldus Cambrensis, two contemporary writers, and partly from records (Harris 239-240).

This alphabetical list contains the following entries:

  • Sancto Laurentio (Almarick de)

  • Sancto Laurentio (Nicholas de) son to the former

In Volume 5 of A History of the County Dublin, Francis Elrington Ball gave a lengthy and detailed account of the St Lawrence family. His principal source for this was The Book of Howth:

The Book of Howth

... a sixteenth-century compilation of annals, historical tales, and legends, which is preserved in the Lambeth Palace Library, London, and has been printed in the Carew Series of State Papers (Carew MS 623). But doubt has been thrown on its authenticity, owing to the compiler drawing inspiration from the Arthurian legend, and stating that Almeric was promised by John de Courcy half his conquests. (Ball 23-24)

The Book of Howth was also mined by the Welsh historian Meredith Hanmer when he compiled his Chronicle of Ireland in 1571 (published in 1633), but in his account of the exploits of John de Courcy he also cited a Latin manuscript translated into English at Armagh in 1551:

He [John de Courcy] served King Henry the second in all his warres, and in France he met with a worthy Knight, Sir Amoricus Tristeram, who married Courcy his sister, and whether it was derived of the Ladies name, or for that they were married on Saint Laurence day, ever after hee and his posterity after him, was called Sir Amoricus de Sancto Laurentio, whence the Noble house of Howth is lineally descended ... These two Knights became sworne brethren in the Church of our Lady at Roane; where solemnely they vowed to serve together, to live and dye together and equally to divide betweene them what they wanne by the sword ... Sir Amoricus de Sancto Laurentio, accompanied him into Ireland ... they landed at Houth and there fought a cruell fight by the side of a Bridge, where Sir Iohn de Courcy being sickly, taried abord the shippe. Sir Amoricus being Chieftaine and Generall of the field by land, behaved himselfe worthily; many were slaine on both sides, but Sir Amoricus got the victory, with the losse of seven of his owene blood, sonnes, uncles and nephewes, whereupon for his singular valour and good service there performed, that Lordship was allotted unto him for his part of the conquest. (Hanmer 297-298)

St Lawrence Family Tomb

In the story of Almeric Tristram (or whatever his name was), truth and legend have not yet been properly sifted. It has been suggested that the Evora referred to by Samuel Lewis was actually the Newry River in County Down, the early Irish name of which was Iubhar (Ball 24-25). John de Courcy first travelled to Dublin after the death of Strongbow in 1176, five years after the Normans had captured the city, so he is unlikely to have encountered any opposition in Howth. He did, however, campaign extensively in Ulster, where he was breaking new ground. According to Gerald of Wales, he fought five battles in that province:

As to John de Courcy, he gained the victory in two great battles at Down ... He had a third engagement at Ferly ... His fourth battle was fought at Uriel, where he lost many of his people, and the rest were put to flight. The fifth battle was fought at the bridge of Ivor, after his return from England; and in this he came off victorious. Thus he gained the victory in three engagements, and was unsuccessful in two skirmishes, in which, however, the enemy’s losses were far greater than his own. (Forrester et al 280-281)

In his Chronicle, Meredith Hanmer included both battles:

They landed at Houth and there fought a cruell fight by the side of a Bridge ...

Not long after, Sir _Iohn de Courcy_ went into England, where the King in regard of his good service, made him Lord of Conoght and Earle of Ulster; upon his returne (saith Stanihurst) which was in the Canicular daies, he fought at the Bridge of Ivora a cruell battaile, and prostrated his enemies, with great honour. (Hanmer 297 ... 313)

Today, the Evora is often identified with the Bloody Stream, which flows into the Irish Sea to the west of Howth Harbour. Samuel Lewis, however, seems to have placed the memorable battle on Whitewater Brook, which flows into the sea near the Bailey Lighthouse. But neither of these rivulets is wide enough to warrant the building of a bridge: one can literally step across them. And if de Courcy fought the Battle of the Bridge of Ivora upon returning from England with his commission to assume the Earlship of Ulster, it was surely in Ulster that the battle took place.

This blending of history & romance and of fact & fiction, which has been repeated unashamedly by a succession of local historians (eg Weston St John Joyce), would surely have appealed to Joyce.

The Martyrdom of St Lawrence (Tintoretto)

St Lawrence

According to one story, the family name of St Lawrence refers to the Spanish saint of the 3rd century, whose feast day falls on 10 August. It is sometimes claimed that the Battle of Evora was fought on that day, but according to Lewis it was the third Lord of Howth (also called Almeric) who adopted the saint’s name in fulfilment of a vow, after securing a significant victory over the Danes near Clontarf on that date. Ball mentions both stories (5-6). Hanmer, however, has two different tales altogether: Sir Amoricus Tristeram married John de Courcy’s sister on that saint’s feast day, or his wife’s maiden name was St Lawrence.

It is a happy coincidence that the Patron Saint of Dublin is also a St Laurence. Lorcán Ua Tuathail, to give him his Irish name, was actually the Archbishop of Dublin when Amory Tristram arrived on these shores. We shall be meeting him in a later chapter of Finnegans Wake (I.7), where he has been given a starring rôle in The Fable of the Mookse and the Gripes.

The Protestant Parish Church of Chapelizod, St Laurence’s Church, is named for him, as is one of the principal thoroughfares of the village.

All grist to Joyce’s mill.

St Laurence’s Church, Chapelizod

North Armorica

Armorica is the ancient name for Brittany. Joyce believed that Almeric Tristram was born in Brittany (Letters I 15 November 1926). In Joseph Bédier’s Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut, Tristan and Iseut die in Brittany.

The fundamental theme of Finnegans Wake is the endless cycle of life, which is played out in history as well as in the lives of the men and women who make up history. As I pointed out in an earlier article: The history of the world is the story of the family writ large. In Finnegans Wake this endless cycle is often reflected in the way in which the history of the Old World is repeated in the New World—North America.

Ball includes an interesting quote on the possible meaning of the name Almeric:

Miss Yonge says (“Hist. of Christian Names,” ed. 1884, pp. xxiii, 331 )) that “Almeric” is equivalent to the Italian “Amerigo,” the name from which “America” is derived. (Ball 23, fn 1)

Was Joyce aware of this? Probably not. Finnegans Wake abounds in happy little convergences like this.

Napoleon Accepts the Surrender of Madrid, 4 December 1808

Penisolate War

By writing Finnegans Wake, Joyce is waging his own war, not with the sword but with the pen—a penicillate war. Joyce was also a writer in exile: a pen in isolation. The phrase also relates to at least two historical wars:

  • The Peloponnesian War, between Athens and Sparta, and their respective allies, which was named for the Peloponnesian Peninsula.

  • The Peninsular War, between Wellington and the Napoleonic French, which was named for the Iberian Peninsula.

One of the battles of the Peninsular War was the Battle of Évora. Howth, of course, is also a peninsula, so Sir Tristram’s Battle of Evora—assuming there ever was one—was yet another peninsular war: history repeating itself, again.

Finally, penisolate war also suggests the late war of the penis, an interpretation underscored by the suggestion that Sir Tristram was a violer d’amores: French: violeur, rapist.

The double note of love [Italian: amore, love] and war is to become the pervasive theme of Finnegans Wake ... Under many appearances, love and war are the constant life expressions of that polarized energy which propels the universal round. (Campbell, Robinson 27)

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

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