Scawen, at the end of the seventeenth century, speaks of these miracle-plays, and considers the suppression of the Guirrimears,[52] or Great Plays or Speeches,[53] as one of the chief causes of the decay of the Cornish language.
“These Guirrimears,” he says, “which were used at the great conventions of the people, at which they had famous interludes celebrated with great preparations, and not without shows of devotion in them, solemnized in great and spacious downs of great capacity, encompassed about with earthen banks, and some in part stone-work, of largeness to contain thousands, the shapes of which remain in many places at this day, though the use of them long since gone.... This was a great means to keep in use the tongue with delight and admiration. They had recitations [pg 260] in them, poetical and divine, one of which I may suppose this small relique of antiquity to be, in which the passion of our Saviour, and his resurrection, is described.”
If to these mystery-plays and poems we add some versions of the Lord's Prayer, the Commandments, and the Creed, a protestation of the bishops in Britain to Augustine the monk, the Pope's legate, in the year 600 after Christ (MS. Gough, 4), the first chapter of Genesis, and some songs, proverbs, riddles, a tale and a glossary, we have an almost complete catalogue of what a Cornish library would be at the present day.
Now if we examine the language as preserved to us in these fragments, we find that it is full of Norman, Saxon, and Latin words. No one can doubt, for instance, that the following Cornish words are all taken from Latin, that is, from the Latin of the Church:—
Abat, an abbot; Lat. abbas.
Alter, altar; Lat. altare.
Apostol, apostle; Lat. apostolus.
Clauster, cloister; Lat. claustrum.
Colom, dove; Lat. columba.
Gwespar, vespers; Lat. vesper.