They were acted on both sides of the Channel in the open air. The subject matter—sacred history and religious biography—was the same for both. The trilogy called the Ordinalia, which, in three plays, covered roughly the same ground as the Old and New Testament, represents the Cornish treatment, by means of the Cornish language, of the mystery, which, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was common to western Europe. But the miracle play of _Beunans Meriasek_, the life of St. Meriasek, was Celtic in origin and treatment. The Cornish version, written by Dom Hadton, in 1504, had probably a Breton archetype. St. Meriasek or Meriadec, who shares with St. Martin the patronage of Camborne, was unquestionably a very important personage in Brittany. He gave his name to a trève of Plumergat, Pluvigner, Pluneret and Noyal-Pontivy:[39] he is the patron of Stival and of Plougasnou. He was also numbered among the early bishops of Vannes, though, according to M. Loth, mistakenly.[40] It is significant that in the Cornish _Beunans Meriasek_ his elevation to that see forms an important episode. This fact, of itself, would suggest a Breton origin for the play. Mr. Thurstan Peter has, on other grounds, arrived at the same conclusion.[41] The mystery and miracle plays were still in vogue when Richard Carew wrote his _Survey of Cornwall_. There is no need to quote the well-known passage in which he describes the degradation of what had once been a valuable means of instruction, but which, in his day (1590), had become a questionable form of popular entertainment. 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.