Genesis and narrative function of causative elements in the Tristan and Isolt Legend: from Celtic epic to Medieval European Tradition

The famous Celtic love-triangle story has its specific “syntax” in which the motif of the irrational beginning of the transgressive love fulfills a plot-forming (or a predicative) function. In Deirdre legend this impetus is represented by the image of a black raven who drinks fresh red blood poured on the white snow. This scene reveals in the maiden’s mind the image of her future lover (compare with the “black-red-white” episode in “Táin bó Fraich”). In late story on Diarmaid and Graiine the transgressive lover is described also having black hair and red cheeks (and white teeth), but the motif is transformed into an ornamental detail and losses its plot-forming function. The oral version of the story, preserved in folk-tradition, supplies this loss by the introduction of the motif of a spot of love (ball seirce) that has Diarmaid, making him irresistible to any woman. In the Tristan-story the same (or rather – analogical) plotforming motif is transformed into a “love-potion” given by Isolt’s mother and drunk by mistake by heroes. This magic drink of love really echoes the sleep-drink prepared by Grainne, but it is not so easy to say what motif is initial because of supposed oral versions of Tristan–legend in British Islands. The main narrative element of the story-frame is presumed to be a magus (druid, old hag, Isolt mother etc.) who fulfills the functions of Fate.

In the modern Polish novel “Tristan 1946” by Maria Kuncewiczowa (1967) the function of “love-potion” fulfills a disk with Cesar Franck’s symphony. The novel has the same “narrative syntax” but the action moved to the postwar Europe and the strategy of the author represents a kind of a game with the reader who must guess all allusions.

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