At St. Just-in-Penwith and Perranzabuloe the plain-an-gware, place of the play, is more or less carefully preserved. The populous district of Plainangwarry in the parish of Redruth also reminds the inhabitants of the days of old and the years that are past. In more than one manorial extent, as, for example, in that of the manor of St. Buryan, the writer has found a tenement, described as Plainangware, the site of which is now unknown. It is not improbable that every considerable Cornish parish had formerly a space reserved for the mystery and miracle play.

No attempts have hitherto been made to revive these plays in Cornwall.[[42]] A graduate of Missouri University, visiting the Plain-an-gware at St. Just, informed the writer that in New York, with the assistance of wealthy patrons, the Cornish plays had been successfully rendered by members of the University. In Brittany there has been of late years a notable revival of the mysteries on modern lines in the Breton language. Under the direction of an enlightened clergy, encouraged by eminent Celtic scholars, the plays are attracting the attention of many besides those for whom they have been written. The marked histrionic ability of the players, most, if not all, of them simple country folk, the atmosphere of reverent adoring faith, and of robust inspiring patriotism, the utter absence of anything like vanity or pretence, the intense reality of the Gospel story which, too often, in the case of ordinary Englishmen, has, under the soothing influence of an inimitable authorised version of the Holy Scriptures, become an idyllic, poetical and idealistic presentment of Scriptural truth, when proclaimed by the living voice and the impassioned fervour of believing hearts amid circumstances not very dissimilar to those which gave it birth: all this is irresistibly pathetic and convincing.

No one who has been present at St. Anne d’Auray and who has followed, even by means of a French translation, the Boéh-er-goèd (the Call of the Blood), in which the parable of the Prodigal Son is unfolded strictly on the lines of the sacred narrative, can ever forget it. In the words of Abbé le Bayon, the writer of the libretto, it is “par delà ce pauvre père qui souffrit un jour, dans quelque coin ignoré, de l’abandon inqualifiable de son fils—que chacun des spectateurs veuille bien entrevoir; le cœur de Dieu éternellement blessé des abandons humains; mais aussi, la vieille Bretagne toute déchirée au délaissement des siens et confiante encore, toujours aimante, rappelant à sa vieille langue, à ses croyances anciennes, les fils oublieux en qui repose l’espoir de la race.” The appeal “à sa vieille langue” for Cornishmen comes too late, but that “à ses croyances anciennes” should meet with a response from those at least who are zealous for the traditions of their Cornish forefathers.

IV
THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY OF CORNWALL

By comparing the development of Christian institutions in the various portions of the Celtic world and observing those elements which were, for three centuries at least, characteristic, common and permanent, it ought to be possible to arrive at some very definite and useful results. It ought to be possible to supplement the evidence, supplied by writers like Gildas and the venerable Bede, and, from the common store of Celtic learning, acquired in Wales, Ireland and Brittany, to remedy our defective knowledge of Cornwall and of Cornish Christianity. Obviously the closer the relations between the four Celtic families the stronger the presumption in favour of an identity of ecclesiastical organisation.

Until the Saxon raids, which began in the year 428, Cornwall and Wales were integral portions of Great Britain; the inhabitants, though differentiated into kingdoms, were bound together by a common religion and by a more or less common language.

The Roman occupation which in Armorica had changed the vernacular from Gaulish to Latin (which in the fifth century was, in that country, already giving rise to a romance language) achieved no such marked result in Britain. Latin may have been spoken in the centres of population and in places where the Roman influence was exceptionally strong; it may have been spoken, as Professor Haverfield contends, in the eastern counties; but the absence of any trace of a romance language goes to prove that it was never the vernacular.

The Saxon invasion which, during the fifth and sixth centuries, reduced the Britons to a state of servitude, or drove them to the more inaccessible and remote regions of Wales and Cornwall, was the immediate cause of a great exodus to Armorica. No event in British history proved more fruitful in results: no event is more suggestive for the purpose of elucidating Cornish Church history. How large was the share taken in that emigration by the people of Dumnonia (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset) may be gathered from the fact that the language which the emigrants introduced into Armorica—a language which speedily superseded Latin just as Latin had superseded Gaulish—was Cornish rather than Welsh, the language, in short, which survived in some parts of Cornwall until the eighteenth century and which is, with some slight modification, still spoken in Finistère and to some extent in Morbihan and Côtes du Nord. Professor Loth, whose eminence as a Celtic scholar no one will dispute, has written, “it is certain that linguistically the Britons of Cornwall were nearer of kin to the emigrants than the Welsh: they doubtless occupied the nearer neighbourhood of ancient Dumnonia.” “The Breton language forms with Cornish a closely compacted unity as opposed to Welsh, although the three languages were assuredly very near neighbours at this period” (the fifth century).[[43]]

Armorica itself became known as Brittany in the sixth century. Cornwall (Cornouaille) was adopted as the name of that portion of it between the Elorn and the Ellé soon afterwards. Dumnonia was the name given to the northern portion between the Elorn and the Cuesnon in the ninth century. The settlers in Armorica introduced their own form of Christianity, and the object of the British and Irish missionary saints who flocked thither soon afterwards was not, as ancient writers have supposed, in order to convert the pagan Gauls, but rather to administer to the spiritual needs of their compatriots. To these missions our Dumnonia contributed little in comparison with Wales. Cornwall after the foundation of the kingdom of Wessex in 519 became isolated: its relations with Brittany were doubtless closer than with Saxonised Britain. But it never became, like Wales and Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries, a great missionary centre. The founders of the Breton monastery-bishoprics—Pol Aurelian, Lunaire, Magloire, Mewan and Malo were all Welsh: Tutwal only, the founder of Tréguier, was of British Dumnonia. Of the British saints whose names are found in the parishes, fractions of parishes and holy places of Brittany, from 80 to 90 are Welsh; about 60 appear in Cornwall; from 30 to 40 appear only in Brittany and in Cornwall and Devon, and a few in Somerset.[[44]]