William Jordan (writer)

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William Jordan was a scribe born in Helston in Cornwall. He is supposed to have been the author of the Cornish language mystery play Gwreans an bys, or, The Creacion of the World (1611) with Noye's Fludde (Noah's Flood).

Scholars are uncertain, however, whether he was actually the author of this work or merely the transcriber of an existing text. At the end of the earliest manuscript of the play it is stated that it was written by William Jordan on 12 August 1611.

Virtually nothing is known of William Jordan himself apart from the fact that he was said to come from Helston in Cornwall. The family seat was said by Joseph Polsue to have been at Higher Trelill, in Wendron parish. He may be the William Geordaine baptized at Redruth on 26 February 1576, son of John. John may be the John Jordyn mentioned in the 1569 muster roll in Penryn borough. There could be an intriguing link to Glasney College, which was in Penryn. The college, suppressed in 1549, is considered on internal evidence to be where the late medieval Cornish dramas were composed, and could have provided the intellectual milieu in which an earlier version of Gwreans an bys was written.

There are several later manuscript transcriptions of the Bodleian text, including John Keigwin's 1693 translation. A botched version of this was printed by Davies Gilbert in 1827, with many typographical errors. A new edition and translation by Stokes was published to remedy this in 1864. Neuss's critical edition and translation is the most recent. Henry Jenner suggested that the play was in fact published between 1642 and 1662, an opinion based on a list of books published ‘in Welsh’ in Bagford's collections for a history of printing. However, no printed copy from this period is known to exist. Whether Jordan was or was not the author of the work it is to him that its survival is certainly owed as one of the rare examples of Cornish language drama. Scholars of the language and literature of Cornwall are thus forever in his debt.

[edit] See also

• Kernowek Standard which owes much to his work.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900), a publication now in the public domain.