At St. Just-in-Penwith and Perranzabuloe the plain-an-gware, place of the play, is more or less carefully preserved. The populous district of Plainangwarry in the parish of Redruth also reminds the inhabitants of the days of old and the years that are past. In more than one manorial extent, as, for example, in that of the manor of St. Buryan, the writer has found a tenement, described as Plainangware, the site of which is now unknown. It is not improbable that every considerable Cornish parish had formerly a space reserved for the mystery and miracle play.
No attempts have hitherto been made to revive these plays in Cornwall.[42] A graduate of Missouri University, visiting the Plain-an-gware at St. Just, informed the writer that in New York, with the assistance of wealthy patrons, the Cornish plays had been successfully rendered by members of the University. In Brittany there has been of late years a notable revival of the mysteries on modern lines in the Breton language. Under the direction of an enlightened clergy, encouraged by eminent Celtic scholars, the plays are attracting the attention of many besides those for whom they have been written. The marked histrionic ability of the players, most, if not all, of them simple country folk, the atmosphere of reverent adoring faith, and of robust inspiring patriotism, the utter absence of anything like vanity or pretence, the intense reality of the Gospel story which, too often, in the case of ordinary Englishmen, has, under the soothing influence of an inimitable authorised version of the Holy Scriptures, become an idyllic, poetical and idealistic presentment of Scriptural truth, when proclaimed by the living voice and the impassioned fervour of believing hearts amid circumstances not very dissimilar to those which gave it birth: all this is irresistibly pathetic and convincing.
No one who has been present at St. Anne d’Auray and who has followed, even by means of a French translation, the Boéh-er-goèd (the Call of the Blood), in which the parable of the Prodigal Son is unfolded strictly on the lines of the sacred narrative, can ever forget it. In the words of Abbé le Bayon, the writer of the libretto, it is “par delà ce pauvre père qui souffrit un jour, dans quelque coin ignoré, de l’abandon inqualifiable de son fils—que chacun des spectateurs veuille bien entrevoir; le cœur de Dieu éternellement blessé des abandons humains; mais aussi, la vieille Bretagne toute déchirée au délaissement des siens et confiante encore, toujours aimante, rappelant à sa vieille langue, à ses croyances anciennes, les fils oublieux en qui repose l’espoir de la race.” The appeal “à sa vieille langue” for Cornishmen comes too late, but that “à ses croyances anciennes” should meet with a response from those at least who are zealous for the traditions of their Cornish forefathers.