Cornish literature
Cornish literature refers to written works in the Cornish language. The earliest surviving texts are in verse and date from the 14th century. There are virtually none from the 18th and 19th centuries but writing in revived forms of Cornish began in the early 20th century. Medieval verse and drama The Prophecy of Ambrosius Merlin concerning the Seven Kings is a 12th-century poem written ca. 1144 by John of Cornwall in Latin, with some of the marginal notes in Cornish. John stated that the work was a translation based on an earlier document written in the Cornish language. The manuscript of the poem, on a codex currently held at the Vatican Library, is unique. It attracted little attention from the scholarly world until 1876, when Whitley Stokes undertook a brief analysis of the Cornish and Welsh vocabulary found in John's marginal commentary. These notes are among the earliest known writings in the Cornish language. In 2001 this important work was translated back into Cornish by Julyan Holmes. Pascon agan Arluth ('The Passion of our Lord'), a poem of 259 eight-line verses probably composed around 1375, is one of the earliest surviving works of Cornish literature. The most important work of