CORNISH LITERATURE The earliest extant remains of Cornish consist of proper names, loth century glosses and a i2th century vocabulary. The names occur among manumissions of serfs in the Bodmin Gospels (Revue Celtique, i. 232) and in Domesday Book. Glosses are found in a volume at the Bodleian and also in a treatise on Donatus by Smaragdus, abbot of Saint-Mihiel, which is at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (Archiv. fiir celtische Lexicogra phie, iii. 249). These remains belong approximately to the loth century. The vocabulary occurs in a i2th century ms. (Cott. Vesp. A. XIV.) at the British Museum. Prof. Max Forster has shown that this is a translation of Abbot Aelfric's famous Latin-Anglo Saxon Glossary. Though the language is termed Old Cornish, itrictly the forms in the vocabulary correspond to those of Mid. Welsh and Mid. Breton.
The earliest known piece of connected Cornish consists of 41 lines of verse dealing with the subject of marriage. This may be a fragment of drama, and was written about i400 (Revue Cel tique, iv. 258). A little later comes the Passion of Our Lord or Mount Calvary, a versified narrative (259 stanzas) of the events of the Passion based on the Gospel and apocryphal narratives (Stokes, Trans. of the Philological Society, 1860-61, appendix). But the bulk of Cornish literature is made up of plays, of which the earliest form a trilogy named Ordinalia, the oldest copy of which is a i5th century Oxford manuscript. They were pub lished by Edwin Norris in two volumes under the title of The Ancient Cornish Drama (1859). The first play, Origo Mundi, begins with the creation and ends with the building of Solomon's temple. The second, Passio Domini, gives the history of Christ from the temptation to the crucifixion. The third, Resurrectio Domini, continues the second without interruption, and ends with the resurrection and the ascension. It embraces the har rowing of hell, the legend of St. Veronica and Tiberius, and the death of Pilate. In addition to the biblical narrative, apocryphal sources have been extensively drawn upon in the work, as in the Passion of Our Lord. The Gospel of Nicodemus is very much in evidence throughout. The plays are of learned origin and are imitations, if not adaptations from English (and possibly French) sources. Practically no originality is displayed (though many of the events are represented as having taken place in well-known Cornish localities), except in the comic or sarcastic parts. There are many signs of linguistic impurity in these plays, and one is fully prepared for the debasement which increasingly occurs in the later works.
The next play to notice is Ordinale de Vita Sancti Mereadoci, Episcopi et Confessoris, the ms. of which was written in i5o4 and is now Peniarth ms. Io5 at the National Library of Wales. It was published under the titles Beunans Meriasek, The Life of St. Meriasek, by Stokes in 1872. The play deals with the life and death of Meriasek (in Welsh Meiriadog, in Breton Meriadek), son of a duke of Brittany, and the legend of St. Silvester and the emperor Constantine, though Meriasek belongs to the 7th century and St. Silvester to the 4th. The construction of the play is unskilful, and, as le Braz has shown, the author drew his mate rials from Latin and English sources. Something truly Cornish might have been expected in a play based upon an early patron saint of Camborne, but no immediate Cornish traditions appear, the story of Meriasek having been taken from a Breton source. At the end of each of the two parts of the play the minstrels are bidden to pipe and the spectators to dance and carouse. The usual comic element is supplied by Constantine's quack doctor, by torturers, outlaws and crucifiers. The language is more recent than in the dramas published by Norris, and English words are on the increase. The last play is that published by Stokes in 1864 under the titles Gwreans an Bys, The Creation of the World, from the oldest ms., which is at the Bodleian and dated 161i. This copy was written by William Jordan of Helston. The play greatly resembles the Origo Mundi of Norris's edition, of which whole passages have been borrowed. The language shows considerable signs of decay, English words occur in plenty, and Lucifer and his angels are often made to speak English.
Later original compositions in Cornish are Nebbaz Gerriau dro tho Carnoack ("A few words about Cornish") by John Boson (Iourn. of the R. Inst. of Cornwall, 1879) and Dzhuan Tshei an hor ("John of Ram's house"), a folk-tale printed with a Welsh version by Lhuyd in his Arcliaeologsa Britannica and with an English version in Pryce's Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica (179o). Andrew Borde's Booke of the Introduction of Knowl edge (1542) contains some Cornish conversations (ed. by Stokes, Rev. Celtique, iv. 262, and Loth, Arch. f uer Celt. Lex, i. 224). A number of words and phrases occur in Carew's Survey of Corn wall. Lhuyd's preface to his Cornish grammar is written in Cor nish, and he also wrote an elegy in Cornish on William of Orange. In addition there are fragments of Cornish consisting of songs, verses, proverbs, epigrams, epitaphs, maxims, letters, conversa tions, mottoes and translations of passages ' of Scripture, the Creed, etc. They are enumerated, classified and described by Jen ner in his Handbook. In recent years there appear signs of a reviving interest being taken by Cornishmen in Cornish as a living language. A few poems and short stories (including trans lations) have been published. But the general barrenness of Cornish literature is to be regretted all the more when one thinks that it is to the land where Cornish was once spoken that the world probably owes the Matter of Britain. (See Loth, Rev. Celtique, xxxiii. 2 5 8-31 o. ) Norris, The Ancient Cornish Drama (2 vols. 1859) ; H. Jenner, Handbook of the Cornish Language (1904) ; A. le Braz, Le Theatre celtique (19o5) ; L. C. Stern, Die Kultur d. Gegenwart, i. xi. i., pp. 131-132. (H. LE.)