MANX TRADITIONAL SONGS AND SONG-FRAGMENTS IN THE END-PHASE OF MANX GAELIC: FROM THE CLAGUE MUSIC COLLECTION (1890s)

Abstract

During the 1890s three collections of Manx traditional music and song were made at a time when similar collections were being made elsewhere, particularly in Britain and Ireland. In the Isle of Man the collections were made by 1) medical practitioner Dr. John Clague (1842-1908) of Castletown (also a colleague of Prof. John Rhŷs (1840-1915) during his visits to Man (1886-1893), by 2) the Gill Brothers (William Henry Gill (1839-1923) and the Deemster John Frederick Gill (1842-1899)) and Manx aristocrat Arthur William Moore (1853-1909). The first two (Clague and the Gill Brothers) mainly collected traditional tunes, Moore mainly song-texts. However, a number of song-texts (usually the first stanza only) find place in Clague's music collection. Although some of the texts were dealt with by Anne G. Gilchrist in her edition of the Clague Music Collection printed in the Journal of the Folk Song Society VII, 28-30 (1924-26), the main emphasis lay on a comparison of their texts with similar versions of a given song in other traditions (i.e. Ireland, Scotland, England, and a few in Wales, some even further afield). In this article all the known texts in Clague's music collection are dealt with particularly with regard to their linguistic contect and treatment, especially in the contet of the obsolescence taking place in spoken Manx at the time. In this latter respect, we do see some of the effects of obsolescence on the recorded pronunciation of the Manx texts in the songs. In the Appendix we look at the remnants of the May-time song (in its Manx form) Huggey my fainey sourey lhien, a Manx version of the traditional Irish Thugamar féin an samhradh linn 'we brought the summer with us', the Manx version showing some antiquity in its form.