Middle Cornish Literature

Passhyon agan Arloedh circa 1375 (The Passion of our Lord, also known as Mount Calvary), a poem of 259 eight-line verses.

An Ordinale Kernewek (The Cornish Ordinalia) circa 1400, is a religious drama in three parts, in total nearly nine thousand lines of medieval Cornish verse, telling of: Dallethvos an Bys (The Origin of the World); Passhyon Krist (Christ's Passion); and Dasserghyans Agan Arloedh (Resurrection of our Lord). These are more commonly known in the academic world by their Latin names, or abbreviations of them, as: Origo Mundi (OM); Passio Christi (PC); and Resurrexio Domine (RD). The trilogy which makes up the Cornish Ornidalia is beyond doubt the most important piece of literature surviving from the Middle Cornish period. The three plays were designed for open air performance at parish feast days, the stage being a circular amphitheatre called in Cornish plen an gwari.

Bywnans Meriasek (The Life of Meriasek) is a play about the patron saint of Camborne. It is also of the Middle Cornish period, dated 1504, but probably copied from an earlier original. Bywnans Meriasek is the longest single work in Cornish literature, running to 4568 lines of verse, and is the only complete life of a saint to survive in Britain.

Bywnans Ke (The Life of St Kea) is a play still being researched as it only came to light in a Welsh library in 2002. It features parts of Arthurian stories and has an amount of previously unknown words in Cornish and new meanings for existing words. It is believed to have been written around the same time as Bywnans Meriasek.

Pregothow Treger (The Tregear Homilies) circa 1555-57, are a series of 66 sermons translated by John Tregear from the English of Bishop Bonner. Nest to nothing is known about Tregear except that he was a cleric and that it must be supposed that he was a native speaker. The purpose of these translations is also by no means clear but we must be grateful that the text was written and has survived. These homilies provide us with the first examples of traditional Cornish prose, as opposed to verse, which we have.

Gwrians an Bys (The Creation of the World) was transcribed by William Jordan of Helston, dated 12th August 1611, but from earlier material, and runs to 2549 lines of verse. It belongs linguistically to the Middle Cornish period and has many similarities in content with the first play of the Ordinalia, although the formal structure of earlier plays, the strictness of the metre and the liveliness of the play suggests a move towards freer use of prose.

(Text taken largely from A Very Brief History of the Cornish Language by Graham Sandercock and published by Kesva an Taves Kernewek)