Bewnans Ke
The play was entirely unknown until 2000, when it was identified among the private collection of J. E. Caerwyn Williams, which had been donated to the National Library of Wales after his death the previous year.
Bewnans Ke is one of only two known Cornish plays based on a saint's life; this and other evidence suggests some relationship with the other such work, Beunans Meriasek.
The story has much correspondence with a French text, a translation of a lost medieval Latin hagiography of Kea, allowing gaps in the narrative to be tentatively filled.
The second is a long Arthurian episode, describing King Arthur's wars with the Romans and with his nephew Mordred; it does not mention Kea in its current form.
[1] The play has no title in the text; the National Library gave it its modern name after consulting scholars of Cornish.
[1] Several leaves are missing, including the entire beginning and ending and, in two places, the copyist complains about the poor quality of the original.
This work is lost, but a French translation published in Albert le Grand's Lives of the Saints of Brittany in 1633 survives.
[3] The play consists of two long parts, one concerning the deeds and miracles of Saint Kea, and the other concerning King Arthur's conflicts with the Romans and with his nephew Mordred.
The Arthurian section is longer, and is largely adapted from some version of the account in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.
The extant text begins with Kea's resurrection of a deceased shepherd and his departure for Cornwall by either boat or flying flagstone.
The next section is missing, but context suggests the narrative would have followed the French Life, which has Kea giving refuge to a stag being hunted by Teudar.
[6] The second section begins as King Arthur receives a long list of nobles at his court, including names familiar from Geoffrey of Monmouth such as Duke Cador, Augelus of Scotland, Bedivere, a different Ke (Sir Kay), Mordred, and Gawain.
[1] The substantial length and distinct nature of the two sections may imply that the play was intended for performance over the course of two days, as was the case with Beunans Meriasek.
Beunans Meriasek contains diagrams at the end of each section indicating the completion of a day's performance; these occur in places that would be missing in the Bewnans Ke manuscript.
[1] Prior to publication, study of the play was aided by a summary of the text by O. J. Padel, and a tentative translation by Michael Polkinhorn.
