This passage is the opening scene of the Middle Cornish drama called Beunans Meriasek ‘the Life of Meriasek’. St Meriasek was of Breton origin and the play presents his career from his early education in Brittany and his arrival in Cornwall, recounting the various miracles he performs, then moves on to his return to Brittany, where he becomes bishop of Vannes and eventually dies a Christian death. Included within the narrative are a number of individual tales including incidents from the life of St Sylvester and a miracle brought about by the intervention of the Virgin Mary.
The play, which is divided into two sections, each representing one day’s performance, is in rhymed verse, divided into stanzas. Stage directions are in Latin and Cornish, with further directions added in English, and diagrams giving stage plans for each day’s performance are also included. The play is preserved in a manuscript in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, Peniarth manuscript 105 (digital images), probably written in the second half of the fifteenth century. The section presented here opens the play and can be found on folios 2r-2v of the manuscript.
