In
Tennyson´s epic poem
Idylls of the King, Lyonesse is the place where the final, epoch-shattering battle between
Mordred and
King Arthur takes place. In the older
Arthurian romances, Lyonesse is the
birthplace of Sir Tristan, and it is supposed to have bordered
Cornwall in the southwest of England. No historical evidence of Lyonnesse has been found, and the academic consensus seems to be that the
French author of the Prose
Tristan got his British geography catastrophically wrong, and that he really meant
Lothian in Scotland.
There
are,
however,
those who
believe that Lyonesse was a real realm which once reached from the
Scilly Islands to
Land´s End. The people of
Penzance and southwestern Cornwall certainly seem fond of stories about
sunken lands,
church bells in the deep, and
drowned forests. According to
family legend, the ancestor of the local
Trevelyan family was a sole survivor who rode across the causeway to Cornwall as Lyonesse crumbled into the sea behind him.
posted by the_unutterable
on Sep 27, 2008 -
14 comments
World Tales : See folk tales, myths and legends from around the world, brought to life by twenty Australian animators.
posted by dhruva
on Jan 2, 2007 -
7 comments