CORNISH LITERATURE

the body of writing in Cornish, a Celtic language largely of southwestern England. The earliest extant literary text, written in Middle Cornish, is a fragment of a play on marriage and was found in a Latin charter of about 1400. It seems to testify to the existence in Cornwall of a tradition of composing and performing secular plays side by side with that of composing and performing religious plays. The earliest extant example of the religious plays, the Ordinalia, probably dates from the late 14th century. The last example, Gwreans an Bys (The Creation of the World ), the earliest extant manuscript of which was written by William Jordan of Helston in 1611, was reprinted with an English translation in 1864.