Why the written record matters
Cornish ceased to be an everyday community language long before the modern revival, but it left a body of written material. Without those manuscripts, there would be far less to build on. Learners today read the same texts that scholars use to work out grammar, vocabulary and spelling. Written Cornish is therefore not only a literary treasure but also the foundation of the revived language.
The surviving corpus is small compared with Welsh or Irish, and dating older manuscripts is often a matter of scholarly estimate. The dates given below are approximate, and specialist sources may differ.
The earliest traces
The oldest Cornish material is fragmentary. A Latin-Cornish vocabulary often called the Vocabularium Cornicum, usually dated to around the twelfth century, lists Cornish equivalents for Latin words. Before and around that period, Cornish personal names and place names appear in charters and records, usually written by people who were not writing in Cornish. These scraps matter chiefly to language historians, though they show Cornish was in active use.
The medieval religious plays
The best-known medieval Cornish writing consists of religious drama. These plays were intended for performance, often in the open air, and dealt with stories from the Bible and the lives of saints.
- The Ordinalia is a cycle of three plays usually named Origo Mundi, Passio Christi and Resurrexio Domini. Together they tell a story from the Creation through the Passion and Resurrection. The manuscript is generally dated to the later fourteenth century, though the plays may reflect earlier material. Authorship is unknown.
- Beunans Meriasek, a play about a saint associated with Camborne, survives in a manuscript dated to the sixteenth century, with the composition often placed somewhat earlier. It is notable for being a saint’s life in Cornish rather than a Bible story.
- Bewnans Ke, a play about Saint Kea, was identified as a Cornish manuscript in the early 2000s, after being held in a library collection in Wales. Its discovery attracted attention because it contains material relating to Arthurian legend, a topic linked to the tradition of Arthurian Cornwall, though scholars treat the details with caution.
These plays were often staged in circular earthworks sometimes called “plen-an-gwarry,” meaning playing place.
Poetry and devotional texts
Another important work is Pascon agan Arluth, a poem about the Passion of Christ, usually dated to the fifteenth century. It is valued for its verse form and as a witness to the Cornish of its time.
Prose from the sixteenth century includes religious sermons, known as the Tregear Homilies, which were translated from English. They are valuable for linguists because they offer extended Cornish prose. Another text, Gwreans an Bys (The Creation of the World), is a play dated to 1611 and attributed to William Jordan.
As these examples show, much surviving Cornish writing is religious, partly because the church was the main producer of written material in the period. That tilts the record toward certain subjects and means that many aspects of everyday speech are less well documented.
Late Cornish and the last generations of speakers
By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Cornish was in retreat. Yet this period still produced valuable writing, mostly short pieces. Members of the Boson family and others wrote in the language, and the scholar Edward Lhuyd, who visited Cornwall around 1700, recorded vocabulary and grammar from speakers, publishing material in the early eighteenth century. Folk songs, rhymes, proverbs and letters survive in Late Cornish, often in spellings influenced by English because the writers had little formal training in written Cornish.
Late Cornish texts look quite different from medieval ones, which is one reason spelling systems vary today.
Modern writing
Interest in the language revived in the twentieth century, bringing a new wave of Cornish writing. Poetry, short stories, hymns, translations and children’s books have been produced, along with dictionaries and grammars. Translations of well-known works into Cornish have been an important activity, helping show that the language can serve contemporary purposes. Some writers publish bilingual books, with English and Cornish side by side.
The annual ceremonies of Gorsedh Kernow include competitions and awards for writing in Cornish, and these events help encourage new work. Many modern authors write in the Standard Written Form, while others use older systems, so published works may differ in spelling.
It is worth distinguishing this body of work from Cornwall literature in English, which is the subject of a different article. Many well-known writers connected with Cornwall, collectively Cornish writers, wrote in English, and their work is a separate subject from the Cornish-language tradition.
Reading with care
Anyone reading Cornish texts for the first time should keep a few points in mind:
- Editions modernize spelling in different ways. The same play may look different in different books.
- Translations vary, and some medieval phrases are uncertain.
- Dates and attributions are scholarly estimates, and new research can adjust them.
Parallel-text editions, with Cornish and English on facing pages, are a common way in.
An enduring heritage
Written Cornish gave the language a memory. The medieval plays preserve a form of speech and a way of telling sacred stories, the later fragments show a language adapting under pressure, and the modern work shows a community still choosing to write in Cornish. Those who want to hear the language in use can pair the reading with the Cornish folk music and song traditions, where some of the same words are sung.