The Middle-Cornish Play Beunans Meriasek

The Middle-Cornish Play Beunans Meriasek Robert T. Meyer It is now exactly one hundred years ago that William Watkin Edward Wynne (1801-1880) discovered among the Hengwrt manu­ scripts in the library he had inherited at Peniarth, Merionethshire, Wales, a small paper quarto volume 8J/s> X 6 inches in an old brown leather binding. 1 He transcribed some passages from this book and sent them with an inquiry to Canon Robert Williams, at that time considered the foremost authority on Cornish because of his Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum: a Dictionary of the Ancient Cornish Language of Cornwall (Llandovery-London, 1845). Canon Williams wrote back at once that this was indeed a treasure, the book in question being the Ordinale of St. Meriadoc as its title proved: Ordinale de vita Sancti Mereadoci episcopi et confessoris. Wynne had unwittingly discovered a text of great importance to all students of the Cornish language and of late mediaeval drama. Up to this time only five Cornish Mysteries were known and had been printed and translated; these Williams had utilized in the production of his dictionary. He hastened to tell the world of Celtic scholarship of the newly discovered text and published the first thirty-six lines of the play that same year in Archaeologia Cambrensis (1869). A search was made for a competent person to edit the entire text as soon as possible. It was Williams himself who suggested that Whitley Stokes (1830-1909), whom he called “one of the greatest philologists of the age, and a most accomplished scholar,” be given access to the manu­ script at Peniarth. Later the book was deposited for three months in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, for the convenience of the editor. The text and translation were printed in 18722 and Stokes gave full credit to Mr. Wynne for having discovered the manuscript and for having allowed him to use it. We have not only the testimony of Stokes concerning the discovery of the manuscript in 1869, but the letters from Wynne, Williams, and Stokes are still extant and pre­ served in the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth.3 All of this should be sufficient to correct Henry Jenner’s erroneous claim in his Handbook of the Cornish Language (London, 1904) that Stokes him­ self had discovered the manuscript. I We are not certain of the time of the composition of the play. To be sure, there is a colophon which says that it was finished in 1504. 54 Robert T. Meyer 55 But it may be a copy of a somewhat older text. Stokes and others as Jenner who followed him, claimed that the scribe was someone named Hadton who may also have been the author. But thanks to the efforts and scholarship of a recent Cornishman who was also much interested in the revival of Cornish as a literary language, Robert Morton Nance (1873-1949), we can now read: finitur per Dominum Rad[ulphum] Ton. This must have been a priest named Ralph Ton. Now there was a Richard Ton who was curate of Crowan near Camborne in 1597. Meriasek is the patron saint of Camborne; a well and rock there are named for him. Some believe that he may have brought the name with him, “de Campbon,” or “ Campibonensis.” 4 However, cam is Cornish for “crooked” and bron means “hill,” and the form of the name in the twelfth to fourteenth century episcopal registers is Cambron , Camberoun.5 Stokes thought of the play as standing midway between the earlier Ordinalia and the Early Modern Cornish drama Gwreans an Bys (Creation of the W orld). Previous dating of the Cornish Ordinalia ranged all the way from c.1275 to c.1450. A recent article by Professor David C. Fowler makes a thorough examination of the place-names and suggests a date somewhere between 1300-1375, or more narrowly, between 1350 and 1375.6 Now the language of Beunans Meriasek is still pure Middle Cornish. Both the infixed and suffixed pronominal forms are used, but there is a greater admixture of Middle English vocabulary. It may well be about one hundred years later than the Ordinalia, let us say 1475-1500. As for...