84 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. V. 



Churches. The carols which were successful in meriting the approval of 

 competent critics were subsequently sung or chanted throughout the 

 island. Many of those Carols were doubtless committed to writing, and 

 were preserved in the more remote portions of the island, until Mr. Moore, 

 and other Manx scholars of literary tastes akin to his, determined to 

 search for them, and to bring them out of obscurity to the daylight of 

 the world's knowledge. 



It does credit to Prince Lucien Bonaparte, that he was acute enough to 

 perceive the value of the Manx Carols and the consequent necessity of 

 recovering them from the oblivion which would otherwise inevitably 

 overtake them. Prince Lucien Bonaparte has made many valuable con- 

 tributions to Celtic learning, choosing as he did to exchange the military 

 traditions of his family for the quieter pursuit of learning. To him very 

 great praise is due for the monument which indicates the resting-place of 

 Dolly Pentreath, who was the last person that spoke the Cornish lan- 

 guage. Mr. Moore tells in the preface how Mr. Fargher, the proprietor 

 of the Mona Herald, and himself, came to unite their energies for the 

 purpose of collecting the Carols of their native island and of putting them 

 in a permanent and intelligent form, for the benefit not of Manksmen 

 merely, but of all who may take an interest in a species of literature so 

 rare and so unique. The Carols are 86 in number. The Manx and 

 English versions of each Carol are given in parallel columns, insomuch 

 that the greatest facility is thereby afforded to every iritelligent reader 

 for understanding the matter and the texture of those peculiar poems. 

 As they were, as a rule, incorrectly if not illegibly written, great pains 

 were necessary to decipher them, and to present them in a modern dress. 

 It is obvious that after an expenditure doubtless of great trouble and 

 diligence, Mr. Moore and his skilful co-adjutors, whose important services 

 are very fittingly acknowledged by him, have had remarkable success 

 in their patriotic desire to present those Carols in attractive attire to 

 students of Celtic literature. It is well known that Luther's translation 

 of the Bible into German gave an immediate and a permanent impulse 

 to the cultivation of German literature. Invaluable aid must have been 

 imparted to Manx literature by the publication in 1772 of the translation 

 into Manx of the Holy Scriptures. It is contended that several of the 

 Carols were composed and written before that date, and that as there was 

 no accurate guide or criterion for writing and spelling Manx, there could 

 be neither distinctness nor uniformity in the manner of committing those 

 sacred songs to writing. John Phillips, who was consecrated Bishop of 

 Man in 1635, was, it is said, so much a master of the Gaelic language as 

 to translate into Manx the Common Prayer Book, and, according to a 

 certain authority, the Bible also. There is, however, no valid ground for 



