[Cornish—margh; Breton—marc’h; and Welsh—march]. Significantly, in Beroul’s twelfth century rendering of Tristan and Iseult’s story, the poet actually states that Mark has ears like a horse.

Reference to Mark of Cornwall comes into the medieval “Lives” of several Celtic saints. In the “Life of St. Pol de Léon,” written about a.d. 880 by Urmonek, a monk of Landévennec in Brittany, we are told that St. Pol (who gave his name to Paul, near Penzance) was Mark’s chaplain. Mark had a beautiful set of hand bells. When Pol left Cornwall to take his mission to Brittany, he asked Mark for one of the bells. Mark refused. When Pol was on the Ile de Baz, near Roscoff, a fisherman caught a large fish, and on cutting it open one of Mark’s bells was found inside and it was given to the saint. A sixth century hand bell is preserved with St. Pol’s relics in the cathedral of St. Pol de Léon in Brittany.

In this same “Life” the author tells us that Mark had another name “quem alio nomine Quonomorium vocant” (whose other name was Quonomorius). This would be the Celtic name Cunomor or “hound of the sea.” Urmonek further says that he was a powerful monarch under whose rule lived peoples speaking four different languages. We hear of him as usurping the rule of King Judal of Dumnonia and being defeated by the diplomacy of St. Samson (ca. a.d. 490–ca. 565), whose “Life,” written within fifty years of his death, is by far the earliest biography extant of a British Celtic saint. Marcus Cunomorus also comes down in Breton tradition, as well as Cornish, as the ruler of Carhaix in Cornouaille. There is also a Carhays in Cornwall associated with Mark. In Breton tradition, Mark is an unscrupulous tyrant.

See Tristan and Iseult for reference to the “Cunomorus Stone” near Castle Dore.

Math, Son of Mathonwy

[W] Lord of Gwynedd. Regarded as a god of increasing wealth. He can live only if his feet are held in a maiden’s lap, unless the turmoil of war prevents this. He loses the services of his foot holder through the intrigues of his sister’s sons, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy. This is the intrigue that results in the death of Pryderi. It is Gwydion who advises Math to take Aranrhod, his sister, as his new foot holder. But Aranrhod, after a test, turns out not to be a maiden. Math could be cognate with the Irish