"which we may by courtesy call epic, entitled
'Mount Calvary.' " It contains 259 stanzas of eight lines each, in
heptasyllabic metre, with alternate rhyme. It is ascribed to the fifteenth
century, and was published for the first time by Mr. Davies Gilbert in
1826.(49) There is, besides, a series of dramas, or mystery-plays, first
published by Mr. Norris for the University Press of Oxford, in 1858. The
first is called "The Beginning of the World," the second "The Passion of
our Lord," the third "The Resurrection." The last is interrupted by
another play, "The Death of Pilate." The oldest MS. in the Bodleian
Library belongs to the fifteenth century, and Mr. Norris is not inclined
to refer the composition of these plays to a much earlier date. Another
MS., likewise in the Bodleian Library, contains both the text and a
translation by Keigwyn (1695). Lastly, there is another sacred drama,
called "The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood." It is in many
places copied from the dramas, and, according to the MS., it was written
by William Jordan in 1611. The oldest MS. belongs again to the Bodleian
Library, which likewise possesses a MS. of the translation by Keigwyn in
1691.(50)

These mystery-plays, as we may learn from a passage in Carew's "Survey of
Cornwall" (p. 71), were still performed in Cornish in his time, _i.e._ at
the beginning of the seventeenth century. He says:--

"Pastimes to delight the minde, the Cornish men have Guary
miracles and three mens songs; and, for the exercise of the body,
hunting, hawking, shooting, wrastling, hurling, and such other
games.

"The Guary miracle--in English, a miracle-play--is a kind of
enterlude, compiled in Cornish out of some Scripture history, with
that grossenes which accompanied the Romanes _vetus Comedia_. For
representing it, they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open
field, having the diameter of his enclosed playne some forty or
fifty foot. The country people flock from all sides, many miles
off, to heare and see it, for they have therein devils and
devices, to delight as well the eye as the eare; the players conne
not their parts without booke, but are prompted by one called the
Ordinary, who followeth at their back with the booke in his hand,
and telleth them softly what they must pronounce aloud. Which
manner once gave occasion to a pleasant conceyted gentleman, of
practising a mery pranke