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GRAHAM THOMAS and NICHOLAS WILLIAMS, ed. and trans., Bewnans Ke/The Life of St Kea: A critical edition with translation. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, in association with The National Library of Wales, 2007, Pp. lxxxviii, 488. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. ISBN: 978-0-85989-800-3. £60.
Bewnans Ke first came to the attention of the scholarly world when it was announced by Graham Thomas (formerly of the Department of Manuscripts and Records, National Library of Wales), that two previously unknown Cornish plays, about St Ke(/Kea) and about King Arthur, had been discovered in papers from the late Emeritus Professor J.E. Caerwyn Williams ('Two Middle Cornish Plays: A Note,' National Library of Wales Journal, 32.1 (2002 for Summer 2001), 121-22). Since then, it has been realized that there is in fact a single play, incompletely preserved. The manuscript (now National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, MS 23849D), has been the subject of a group of temporary websites (see Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society, LVII, 2005, 230). In 2006 Ken George published his edition (Bywnans Ke. Callington: Kesva an Taves Kernewek (Cornish Language Board), 252 p.), presenting the manuscript text, plus a rendering in Kernewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish), and an English translation, with annotations and appendices including a translation of Albert Le Grand's seventeenth-century French 'Life of St Ké,' a work which, like the newly discovered play, deals both with the confrontation of the saint with the Cornish tyrant Teudar, and with the Roman challenge to Arthur and the Arthur-Modred-Guinevere triangle.
Now at last we have the long-awaited critical edition by Graham Thomas and Nicholas Williams (Associate Professor of Celtic Languages at University College Dublin). The edited text is presented with a facing English translation, with uncorrected text at the foot of each page. There is substantial introductory and glossarial matter, which pays attention to the multilingual nature of the work: Middle English and French appears among the Cornish, and stage directions are in Latin.
The editors emphasize the many difficulties presented by a manuscript that has been under attack by everything from mice to a scribe whose 'inability to write Cornish correctly is paralleled by his barbarous spelling of Latin' (p. xlvii). Whole leaves are missing, some with particularly important scenes; in addition it is clear that...