urrection and Ascension, the
legend of St Veronica and Tiberius, and the death of Pilate. Here again
the pseudo-Gospel of Nicodemus is drawn upon, and interwoven with the
Scriptural narrative we find the Legend of the Cross. As the title
_Ordinalia_ indicates, these plays are of learned origin and are
imitated from English sources. The popular name for these dramas,
_quari-mirkle_, is a literal translation of the English term miracle
play, and Norris shows that whole passages were translated word for
word. Many of the events are represented as having taken place in
well-known Cornish localities, but apart from this scarcely any traces
of originality can be discovered. The same remark holds good in the case
of another play, _Beunans Meriasek_ or the _Life of St Meriasek._ This
deals in an incoherent manner with the life and death of Meriasek (in
Breton _Meriadek_), the son of a duke of Brittany, and interwoven with
this theme is the legend of St Silvester and the emperor Constantine,
quite regardless of the circumstance that St Silvester lived in the 4th
and St Meriasek in the 7th century. The MS. of this play was written by
"Dominus Hadton" in the year 1504, and is preserved in the Peniarth
library. The language is more recent than that of the _Ordinalia_, and
there is a certain admixture of English. The _Life of St Meriasek_ falls
into two parts, and at the end of each the spectators are invited to
carouse. St Meriasek was in earlier times the patron saint of Camborne,
where his fountain is still to be seen and pilgrims to it were known by
the name of _Merra-sickers._ In this play, consequently, we might expect
to find something really Cornish. But le Braz has shown that the author
of this motley drama was content to draw his materials from Latin and
English lives of saints. The story of Meriasek himself was taken from a
Breton source and closely resembles the narrative of the 17th-century
Breton hagiographer, Albert le Grand. The last play we have to mention
is _Gwreans an Bys_ (The Creation of the World), of which five complete
copies are known. Two of these are in the Bodleian and one in the
British Museum, which also possesses a further fragment. The oldest text
was revised by William Jordan of Helston in 1611, but there are
indications that parts of it at any rate are older than the Reformation.
This play bears a great resemblance to the first part of the _Origo
Mundi_, and may have been imitated from it. It was pri