The Middle-Cornish Play Beunans Meriasek

Abstract

It is now exactly hundred years ago that William Watkin Edward Wynne (1801-1880) discovered among the Hengwrt manuscripts in the library he had inherited at Peniarth, Merionethshire, Wales, a small paper quarto volume 8^2 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 Sancii Mereadoci episcopi et confessons. 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 manuscript 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 preserved 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 himself had discovered the manuscript.