Manx Gaelic: its many revivals

The language of the small Island of Man confronted great challenges. The place was disputed by Norse that finally were repealed by the native Celts, but left marks in the language and culture. Soon after, its local Gaelic hybridized with the Scottish Gaelic, when the Scots took over the island. Finally came the English hegemony.

The result of the numerous foreign raids was that currently only 2% of the population speak the Manx Gaelic (zero per cent as native speaker). Two percent of a population of only 50 thousand and less than half of  it was born in Man. (Information dysplayed until here comes from Maddrel, 2002).

The Isle of Man lies in a geo-political vulnerable position, inbetween the British Islands and Ireland

(Source: The Atlantic Celts, by Simon James)

Despite this dismal background, revival waves have happened in the island since the late 19th Century. According to the article Speaking from the Shadows (by Breesha Maddrell, op. cit.) the first wave did not have a strong literary tradition to support it and based itself in the gathering of Manx folklore, from proverbs to music and oral narrative. In this first revival the work of antiquarians  stand out, especially women antiquarians.

Even when the literature spread on the second revival (between the 1930’s and the 1960’s, more or less) it was through English written books, just with Manx themes. To be fair, the books of the first revival were also written in English and the difference between both literatures is in the tone, which is pessimistic towards its culture future in the previous and optimistic in the latter. This data comes from the paper Of Demolition and Reconstruction: a Comparative Reading of Manx Cultural Revivals, also by Breesha Maddrell. On it, she compares the two periods and their most representative authors: T. E. Brown e Mona Douglas, respectively.

We can consider the present as part of a third wave of revival, noteworthy by the relevance of formal education. The article Manx Language Revitalization and Immersion Education (by Marie Clague, 2009) points out the growth of the teaching of Manx Gaelic and also of the teaching in Manx Gaelic, i.e. immersion education, where the Celtic language is used as a means of teaching instead only being taught as a subject. Considering the low number of speakers, it is a very bold measure.

EXTRA MATERIAL

- T. E. Brown's poems at Poem Hunter

- Mona Douglas' poems at BDO site

- Traditional Manx music
- Manx Heritage Foundation website