After the Lord has greeted his Mother with the liturgical formula O Salve Sancta Parens, and has assured her that after her death, she will be assumed to heaven above the angels and saints, Mary expresses a desire to see him (has she hitherto been merely audible?); she genuflectit... presumably, now seeing him. He reassures her (using the same term, melder, 'honey' with which she has earlier addressed him). According to the Stage Directions, she embraces and kisses Him.
I feel that this text has merest dash, in what follows, of maternal, peasant tut-tuttery. As any mother would, Mary desires reassurance that, after all he has been through, her Son is really trouble free.
Us whet the'th corf galarow/ na torment orth the greffye?/ yw saw ol the wolyow/ a wylys vy the squerdye,/ a wruk an gu ha'n kentrow/ the kyc precius dafole?/ lavar thy'mmo, caradow,/ lemmyn gorthyp fatel fue./
[Are there still pains in your body and torment grieving you? Are all your wounds healed which I saw tear you, which the spear and the nails made to defile your precious flesh? Tell me, my beloved, answer now; how it was.]
Middle Cornish, like modern English was a remarkably resilient and greedy picker-up of words from other languages, from Latin onwards through every possible influencing source! In the above, I have marked in dark blue all the words which, according to the George dictionary, are loan words. How words and meaning do seem to wander ... slither ... around ... Kentrow, for example, apparently from the Latin centrum! Just as we, nowadays, never have a Problem; but 'Issues' are never far away!
The next rubric betrays that the Lord kneels. Are they both now kneeling? Or, more probably, does the text mean that each performs an act of genflecting?
However that may be, in the next stanza the Lord says reverons thy'so, vam ker; henor mur ha lowene; [reverence to you, dear Mother, much honour and joy ...] to which our Lady replies confortys yv ow colon [my heart is comforted].
They both then 'osculantur et separent'.
2 comments:
That passage in Cornish overwhelms me. It is just as overwhelming if the words are conceived as coming from a son to a deceased mother or even from a living soldier to a deceased platoon member.
Do you think that the actual colloquial languages used in medieval England and Cornwall were as rich in loan words as the written sources? Or is this a formalised literary version shaped by the literate and travelling classes?
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