LEONNOYS LYONESSE

LYONNESSE  Or LEONAIS, a legendary country off the south coast of Cornwall, England . Lyonnesse is the scene of many incidents in the Arthurian romances, and especially in the romances of Tristram and Iseult . It also plays an important part in purely Cornish tradition and folklore . Early English chronicles, such as the Chronicon e chronicis of Florence of Worcester, who died in 1118, described minutely and without a suggestion of disbelief the flourishing state of Lyonnesse, and its sudden disappearance beneath the sea . The legend may be a greatly exaggerated version of some actual subsidence of inhabited land . There is also a very ancient local tradition, apparently independent of the story of Lyonnesse, that the Scilly Islands formed part of the Cornish mainland within historical times . See Florentii Wigorniensis monachi Chronicon ex chronicis, &c., ed . B . Thorpe (London, 1848-1849) .