St Kea and King Arthur: An Unexpected Cornish Connection

I recently visited All Hallows Church in the village of Kea, just outside Truro, and amongst the stained glass there is a wonderful depiction of St Kea standing before King Arthur. I knew there was an Arthurian connection to Kea before visiting, but seeing the two of them together made me want to dig a little deeper into exactly why a relatively obscure Cornish saint had found his way into the story of Britain’s most famous legendary king.

The answer, or at least part of it, can be found in Bewnans Ke, or The Life of St Kea, a medieval Cornish-language play which has a pretty remarkable story of its own. The manuscript was rediscovered in 2000 amongst the papers of the Celtic scholar J. E. Caerwyn Williams, and unfortunately it isn’t complete, with missing pages at some fairly crucial moments. What survives is still extensive and, at times, wonderfully strange, ranging from the miracles and exploits of St Kea in Cornwall into a huge Arthurian story involving Mordred, Guinevere, Gawain, Bedevere, Kay and the Roman emperor Lucius Hiberius (although no historical records of him can be found).

Like so many of our early Cornish saints, trying to find the real Kea underneath centuries of legend is probably an impossible task. His story belongs to that interconnected world of Cornwall, Wales and Brittany, where saints travelled across the sea, established religious communities and subsequently acquired all sorts of miraculous stories. Kea's name obviously remains here in the parish, as well as at Old Kea beside the Truro River, but his story also takes him across the sea to Brittany, where his cult became established.

Before any of that, though, Bewnans Ke gives us a particularly entertaining story involving Kea and a ruler called Teudar. Kea is granted some land, but seems to take a rather generous interpretation of exactly how much he has been given, with a messenger reporting that the saint's enclosure extends from Kewnans an Velyn to Tremustel by Penpol and “from one sea to the other”. There is some wonderfully specific geography in this part of the play, which would presumably have been recognisable to its Cornish audience, and there is even a play on the Cornish word ke, meaning a hedge or enclosure, and Kea's own name.

Teudar is understandably not thrilled to discover quite how much of his best land Kea has enclosed, but there is another problem because he happens to be sitting in a medicinal bath prepared by a wise woman named Oubra and suddenly finds himself unable to get out. He accuses Oubra of bewitching him, while she points the finger at Kea, and Teudar eventually becomes so frustrated that he starts cursing the god he had previously been asking to save him. At this point two pages are missing from the manuscript, which is particularly annoying because other versions of Kea's life suggest that what followed was some form of reconciliation, with Kea healing Teudar before eventually establishing a monastery and travelling to Brittany.

This is where the story takes a rather unexpected turn towards King Arthur.

While Kea is in Brittany, Mordred has seized power in Britain, taken Guinevere and allied himself with Chelderic, Duke of the Saxons, promising him territory in return for military support. Kea and six other bishops are sent to Britain to try to mediate between Arthur and Mordred, which is not a role I had ever previously associated with a Cornish saint. They don't manage to prevent the conflict, but Kea is said to have persuaded Guinevere to leave Mordred and enter a nunnery before he eventually returns to Brittany.

I really like this aspect of Kea's story because his role within Arthurian legend is quite unlike most of the characters we tend to talk about. He isn't riding around with the Knights of the Round Table, fighting giants or looking for magical objects; he is effectively there as a diplomat, trying to intervene in a political and personal disaster before everyone starts killing one another.

There is also some evidence that Kea's Arthurian connection is older than Bewnans Ke. A figure associated with Kea appears amongst Arthur's enormous collection of companions in the Welsh tale Culhwch ac Olwen, so his presence within Arthur's world seems to have circulated more widely within Brittonic tradition. The Cornish play, however, goes much further with it.

After one of the gaps in the surviving manuscript, the story suddenly opens out into Arthur's conflict with Lucius Hiberius, Emperor of Rome. Arthur's court is enormous, populated by Cador, Duke of Cornwall, Augel, King of Scotland, bishops, knights including Bedevere, Kay and Howel, and kings associated with places as far apart as Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Gothland and Castile. Lucius, meanwhile, considers Britain to be within his sphere of authority and expects Arthur to pay tribute to Rome.

Arthur has other plans.

Lucius sends twelve messengers demanding payment, and Arthur essentially tells them that the only tribute Rome is going to receive from Britain is the emperor's head. It is gloriously excessive medieval theatre, and inevitably everyone starts preparing for war.

There is one small detail amongst all of this that really caught my attention. When Arthur is discussed at the court of Lucius, he is referred to as “Arthur the Cornishman.” 

I don't think we should get too carried away with that phrase and suddenly claim it as proof that there was a historical King Arthur from Cornwall, because it isn't. What I do find fascinating is what it tells us about the people telling the story. Arthur had already become an enormous international literary figure by this period, with his stories being written and rewritten across Europe, yet here he is in a Cornish-language play being quite casually described as a Cornishman. Whatever Arthur had become elsewhere, this particular storyteller was still willing to claim him for Cornwall.

The story then heads towards the familiar disaster. Before Arthur leaves Britain to fight Lucius, he places the kingdom and Guinevere in the care of Mordred, which turns out about as well as you would expect. Arthur defeats the Roman forces, Lucius is killed and his severed head is sent back to the Roman Senate as the promised final tribute, but while Arthur is winning abroad, Mordred is taking his kingdom at home.

Mordred pursues Guinevere, who initially resists him before eventually submitting, and then forces a reluctant bishop to crown him King of Britain. When Arthur discovers what has happened he begins his return, while Mordred gathers his own forces, including Saxon allies, to meet him. The resulting fighting kills Gawain, while Arthur also laments the deaths of Kay and Bedevere, before Mordred is eventually defeated. A messenger takes the news to Guinevere, who is left considering what is now going to happen to her, and then the manuscript does something incredibly frustrating.

It is missing the last five pages...

So we don't actually have the ending of this particular Cornish telling of Arthur's downfall.

There is another part of this story that I find equally intriguing because it brings everything back to within a few miles of where I was standing in All Hallows. Cornwall had its own tradition of large outdoor theatrical performances held in circular spaces known as plen-an-gwari, or playing places, and Kea parish has, of course, the wonderfully literal village of Playing Place.

The surviving rounds there have been discussed in relation to Bewnans Ke, although there isn't enough evidence to say that this particular play was definitely performed there. I think the uncertainty is actually part of what makes it so interesting because the possibility alone gives you an extraordinary picture of this landscape around five hundred years ago. Imagine a Cornish-speaking audience gathering in the round while performers moved amongst them telling this enormous story of saints, kings, Romans, Saxons, adultery, betrayal and war. Somewhere within all of that they would have heard Arthur described not simply as the great King of Britain, but as Arthur the Cornishman. The existing draft's connection between Bewnans Ke and Playing Place is deliberately cautious for exactly this reason.

All of which brought me back to that stained-glass window at All Hallows and made me look at it rather differently. Kea and Arthur haven't simply been put together because they are two convenient characters from Cornwall's legendary past; there is a much older literary tradition behind their meeting, in which Kea becomes involved in the final crisis of Arthur's kingdom and attempts to make peace between Arthur and Mordred.

What I perhaps enjoy most is how geographically close so much of this still feels. You can visit All Hallows and see Kea and Arthur together in the glass, travel down towards Old Kea beside the water, explore Penpol and then head towards Playing Place, while bringing with you this brilliant medieval story that connects all of them.

How much of St Kea's life is history, how much is medieval storytelling and how these stories changed as they migrated between Cornwall, Wales and Brittany are much bigger questions, and probably impossible to answer completely. For me, that doesn't matter at all. What we do know is that somebody writing or performing in Cornish centuries ago knew a version of Arthur in which a local saint could become involved in the downfall of his kingdom, and in which Britain's greatest legendary king could still be given a wonderfully simple description.

Arthur the Cornishman.