Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/380

Rh countries. Religious plays on scriptural subjects, and on the lives of saints, and those allegorical and ethical dramas known as ‘moralities’ are common enough in Greek, Latin, English, French, and other languages, from, a rather unactable composition on strict Greek tragedy lines, once attributed to St. Gregory Nazianzen, but now considered to be five or six centuries later, and the tenth century Latin plays of Hroswitha of Gandersheim, down to the Passionspiel of Ober-Ammergau of the present day. When religion occupied so large a place in the lives and minds of the people, it was natural enough that these plays should be popular. They were almost religious functions, though at times they contained a comic element which modern times would refuse to consider suitable to anything connected with religion, and the line of demarcation between these theatrical performances and such liturgical ceremonies and tableaux as those of the Easter Sepulchre and Christmas ‘Crib’ was not as distinct as it would be now. The Cornish plays, excepting the Life of St. Meriasek, which is, in the nature of things, purely original in subject, bear a certain general resemblance to the English plays on the same subjects. This is likely enough, for there is not much scope for originality in a scriptural narrative, and both parties derived their information from the same sources, the Bible, the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, the Legenda Aurea, and legends, of Jewish and Christian origin, which were the common property of Christendom. Sometimes indeed the ipsissima verba of Scripture are merely done into verse, though this is not so common as might be expected. But I have not found any reason to suppose that the Cornish plays are translated or even adapted from the English, and every reason to suppose them to be original dramatisations of the same materials. In the Ordinalia the sources are fairly simple. In the Origo Mundi nearly everything is the Bible story, with fancy embellishments and amplifications; except the Legend of the Wood of the Cross, which was very commonly known in Latin, French, and English in the Middle Ages, and is found in so generally