page_title: Tristan
section_title: The Tristan Stone
hierarchical_section_title: Tristan / The Tristan Stone
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque detailing the history of the Tristan Stone
context_page_description: Tristan, also known as Tristram or Tristain and similar names, is the hero of the legend of Tristan and Iseult.
context_section_description: Possible evidence for his roots in South West England is the 6th-century inscribed granite pillar known as The Tristan Stone, or The Longstone (Cornish: Menhir, meaning long stone), set beside the road leading to Fowey in Cornwall. It measures some 2.7 m (7 feet) in height and has been set in a modern concrete base. Until the 1980s it was in its original position some yards from the coastal road in a field near the turn down to the small harbour of Polkerris. It was then closer to Castle Dore and may have been the origin of the association of this site with the story of the tragic love of Tristan and Iseult. There is a Tau cross on one side and a Latin inscription on the other side, now much worn, reading:
  DRVSTANVS HIC IACIT
  CVNOMORI FILIVS
  
  [Drustanus lies here, son of Cunomorus]
  
  It has been suggested, and is confidently asserted on the plaque by the stone, that the characters referred to are Tristan, of which Drustan is a variant, and Cynvawr Latinized to Cunomorus. Cynvawr, in turn, is said by the 9th-century author Nennius, who compiled an early pseudo-historical account of King Arthur, to be identified with King Mark known in alias 'QVONOMORVS'. Around 1540, John Leland recorded a third line now missing: CVM DOMINA OUSILLA ('with the lady Ousilla': Ousilla is conceivably a latinisation of the Cornish Eselt), but missed the badly weathered first line ('DRUSTANVS HIC IACIT') which has led Craig Weatherhill to speculate that this third line could have been lost by stone fracture, but which has also led Goulven Peron to propose to see 'OUSILLA' as a particular reading of 'DRUSTANVS'.
caption: The stone's history plaque
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