e homespun clothes they are ours, and as soon as they put it off
they cease to belong to us. A Manx proverb is no longer a Manx proverb
when it is in English. The same is true of a Manx ballad translated, and
of a Manx carval turned into an English carol. What belongs to us,
our way of saying things, in a word, our style, is gone. The spirit is
departed, and that which remains is only an English ghost flitting about
in Manx grave-clothes.

Now this is a sad fact, for it implies that little as we have got of
Manx literature, whether written or oral, we shall soon have none at
all. Our Manx language is fast dying out. If we had any great work in
the Manx tongue, that work alone would serve to give our language a
literary life at least. But we have no such great work, no fine Manx
poem, no good novel in Manx, not even a Manx sermon of high mark. Thus
far our Manx language has kept alive our pigmies of Manx literature; but
both are going down together. The Manx is not much spoken now. In
the remoter villages, like Cregnesh, Ballaugh, Kirk Michael, and Kirk
Andreas, it may still be heard. Moreover, the Manxman may hear Manx a
hundred times for every time an Englishman hears it. But the younger
generation of Manx folk do not speak Manx, and very often do not
understand it. This is a rapid change on the condition of things in my
own boyhood. Manx is to me, for all practical uses, an unknown tongue.
I cannot speak it, I cannot follow it when spoken, I have only a sort
of nodding acquaintance with it out of door, and yet among my earliest
recollections is that of a household where nothing but Manx was ever
spoken except to me. A very old woman, almost bent double over a
spinning wheel, and calling me Hommy-Veg, and _baugh-millish_, and so
forth. This will suggest that the Manx people are themselves responsible
for the death of the Manx language. That is partly true. The Manx tongue
was felt to be an impediment to intercourse with the English people.
Then the great English immigration set in, and the Isle of Man became a
holiday resort. That was the doomster of the Manx language. In another
five-and-twenty years the Manx language will be as dead as a Manx
herring.

One cannot but regret this certain fate. I dare not say that the
language itself is so good that it ought to live. Those who know it
better say that "it's a fine old tongue, rich and musical, full of
meaning and expression." {*} I know that it is at least forcible, an