The Little Manx Nation

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1899 Excerpt: ... THE STORY OF THE MANX PEOPLE The Manx Language A Friend asked me the other day if there was any reason why I should not deliver these lectures in Manx. I answered that there were just forty good and sufficient reasons. The first was that I did not speak Manx. Like the wise queen in the story of the bells, he then spared me the recital of the remaining nine-and-thirty. But there is at least one of the number that will appeal strongly to most of my hearers. What that is you shall judge for yourselves after I have braved the pitfalls of pronunciation in a tongue I do not know, and given you some clauses of the Lord's Prayer in Manx. Ayr ain fayns niau. (Father our who art in heaven.) Caskerick dy row dty ennym. (Holy be Thy name.) Dy jig dty reeriaght. (Come Thy kingdom.) Dty aigney dy row jeant er y thalloo mry te ayns niau. (Thy will be done on the earth even as in heaven.) Son dy bragh, as dy bragh, Amen. (For ever and ever. Amen.) I asked a friend--it was Mr. Wilson Barrett--if in its fulness, its fine chest-notes, its force and music, this old language did not sound like Italian. Well, no, he answered, it sounds more like hard swearing. I think you must now understand why the greater part of these lectures should be delivered in English. Manx is a dialect mainly Celtic, and differing only slightly from the ancient Scottish Gaelic. I have heard my father say that when he was a boy in Ramsey, sixty years ago, a Scotch ship came ashore on the Carrick, and next morning after the wreck a long, lank, bony creature, with bare legs, and in short petticoats, came into the marketplace and played a tune on a little shrieking pair of smithy bellows, and then sang a song. It was a Highland piper, and he sang in his Gaelic, but the Manx boys and girls who gathered ...