Bewnans Ke

Bewnans Ke (English: The Life of Saint Ke) is a Middle Cornish play on the life of Saint Kea or Ke, who was venerated in Cornwall, Brittany and elsewhere. It was written around 1500 but survives only in an incomplete manuscript from the second half of the 16th century. 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. The discovery proved one of the most significant finds in the study of Cornish literature and language.

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 play is divided into two distinct sections, which may indicate that it was intended for a two-day performance. The first section deals with the deeds and miracles of Kea, including his conflicts with the tyrannical king Teudar. 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.

Bewnans Ke survives in one manuscript, NLW MS 23849D, now held at the National Library of Wales. The play has no title in the text; the National Library gave it its modern name after consulting scholars of Cornish. The manuscript had been in the personal collection of J. E. Caerwyn Williams, chair of Irish at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. After Williams' death in 1999, his widow Gwen Williams donated his papers to the National Library in 2000, and the previously unknown play was identified by Graham Thomas during the cataloging process. Thomas publicized his discovery in the National Library of Wales Journal in 2002, and the manuscript was subsequently repaired and studied.

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