30 April 2024

ONLY FOR CORNUBIPHONES: puns in Middle Cornish?

(1) In the Resurrexio Domini, the Concealed Jesus (line 1290) reassures Cleophas and the Socius on the Way that they will definitely (deffry) enter intothe clos of the one they seek. I had assumed that this word came, like the English (Cathedral) Close, from claustrum. But there is another, etymologically distinct but identical Cornish word, which means 'glory'.

I wonder if a coincidence is intentional.

(2) As little later, at 1330-1331, Cleophas and the Socius are drawing the episode of their walk to Emmaus to a close; the Socius observes that, when the Stranger showed them his wounds (wolyow), there was no need for ... guariow (the rhyme being required by the metrical scheme).

Gwarry is the term regularly used for a dramatic performance. The circular spaces created for these 'plays' are still called, and marked on maps, as Plain an Gwarry.

The medieval plays whose texts survive are often vigorous and even violent; certainly, unrestrained in their language. Indeed, by line 1399 S Thomas is threatening S Philip with physical violence.

So it is within a gwarri that one of the players, while in playing costume, assures the spectators that there is no need of guariow for those who have been shown the Five Wounds.

Is this a deliberate subversion of the genre? I think that it certainly calls for an explanation. But it is not always easy to catch the hints and implications of a language and culture which died half a millennium ago! Modern  'Language Revival' games (!), in my view, make the task (game?) more, not less, difficult.

Or does this statement simply explain why, earlier in this same scene, there had been no need for the actors to waste time and energy on slapstick? 


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