Claare Ny Gael - Manx Radio

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. We return to some advertisements published on the front page of the Manks Advertiser and Weekly Intelligencer, published by Jefferson in February 1820. They contain some striking language and interesting glimpses of life at that time. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn', the pigs are filled with the spirit, whilst Box...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. We hear Stephen Miller RBV explaining to an audience at Culture Vannin in St John's about the inspiration for his own work and what he's been involved in. Having been cheated by Frederick, who has paid for a pile of timber with forged banknotes, Frederick and twenty men with cudgels and six shotguns have...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. We join the presentation of the Reih Bleeaney Vanannan 2020 award to Stephen Miller RBV. We hear from Director of Culture Vannin, Dr Breesha Maddrell, Chair of Culture Vannin, Chris Thomas MHK, and from Stephen Miller RBV himself. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn', Napoleon surprises the animals by suddenly becoming...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. Something new in English - as we dip into an edition of a newspaper published in Douglas on 3rd February 1820 and enjoy the rich diction of some advertisements. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn' there's the culmination of a huge effort on the animals' part as they finish rebuilding the windmill with walls twice as t...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. We come to the end of James Chalenor's Short Treatise on the Isle of Man, written by him in 1653 and published in book form in 1656. The edition we've been looking at was edited by Rev J G Cumming and published by the Manx Society in 1864. After the bloodshed in Gowaltys ny Beiyn, the animals console them...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. At the time that James Chalenor was writing in 1653, there was very little exported from the Island. There was also an involved system of importing goods, with four Island merchants appointed to negotiate with each 'merchant stranger' about prices and distribution of goods. The Stalinist purges were the c...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. We go back to the main text of James Chalenor as we conclude our look at the offices of state in 1653. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn' Boxer is inclined to believe the evidence of his own eyes and evidence, but the authority of Napoleon persuades him otherwise - and Napoleon then shows his ruthless hold on power....

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. When the Manx Society published an edition of James Chalenor's 1653 treatise in 1868, the editor was Rev J G Cumming. A lengthy note by him quotes an Act of 1610 about the garrison's regular duties in Peel Castle and Castle Rushen. It's to that we turn this time. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn', the animals are sh...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. This time James Chalenor is telling us particularly about some officials who no longer feature in the Island's administration of justice and other functions. However, in 1653 when Chalenor was writing, the office of Receiver (later Receiver-General and Collector, but no longer referred to after 1948) and...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. James Chalenor dated his report to Thomas, Lord Fairfax as December 1653, so there's a lot of interesting historic information about how justice was administered from the parish level, to the sheading and the Deemsters, through to the Governor as representative of the Lord of Man. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn' t...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. James Chalenor has us up in court again. It can be an expensive business, even with fees in shillings and pence - they just keep mounting up. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn' the animals are surprised by Napoleon's announcement of trade with neighbouring farms. Surely it means going against resolutions agreed right...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. Yet more courts of law that operated in the Island in 1653 when James Chalenor was writing about them. The editor for the Manx Society edition, Rev J G Cumming, also tells us about the oaths of office of the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor and of the Deemsters, plus some stern penalties for upsetting the...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. Once again James Chalenor gives us our day in court - or, in fact, several days in several courts, as he reviews the administration of justice as it was in 1653. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn' the conflict between Snowball and Napoleon comes to a head, and things take a definite change of direction for the other...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. We go to appeal this time, as James Chalenor explains how court verdicts could be challenged - but it cost £3 to appeal, which was an enormous sum of money in 1653. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn', the arguments continue about Snowball's plans for building a windmill. Napoleon, needless to say, has been dead again...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. What's changed, what's the same, in the open air sitting of Tynwald between 1653 and today? James Chalenor gives us an opportunity to compare, before giving us the same opportunity with regard to how the law was administered. The animals start by celebrating their victory over Jones and his cronies and aw...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. Rev J G Cumming, as editor of the 1868 edition for the Manx Society of James Chalenor's 1653 report, points out that Chalenor's chronology is a bit suspect. We pause to trace something of the history of Godred Crovan, then jump ahead to Chalenor's own time, and he starts to tell us about how the Island is...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. This time, James Chalenor turns to the Island's history, revealing that he took part in some early archaeological exploration of a round mound during his time here in the 1650s. In 'Gowaltys ny Beiyn' the pigs are reserving the milk and apples for themselves - but it's all for the noblest of reasons. Mean...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. We're visiting the Island's 17 ancient parishes with James Chalenor, and his sometimes slightly off-beam explanations of their dedication. He's also telling us who were the clergy there in 1653. As usual, it's an opportunity to explore history, people and places as Chalenor conducts us round the Island. A...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. James Chalenor continues with his tour of the seventeen ancient parishes, trying to identify the dedication (sometimes rather more imaginatively than accurately), and tells us of the incumbents in 1653, when he was writing. Our story in Manx continues as the animals begin the work of farming Gowaltys ny B...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. James Chalenor is telling Thomas, Lord Fairfax about the Island's ecclesiastical history - at least, as far as he understood it in 1653, and whilst his ideas were sometimes ingenious, they weren't always accurate. We hear various notes by the editor of the Manx Society's edition published in 1868, Rev J G...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. James Chalenor tells us of Bishop John Phillips, about whom Rev J G Cumming contributes a biographical note in the Manx Society edition of Chalenor's report to Thomas, Lord Fairfax in 1653. Chalenor then moves on to Bishop Richard Parr. In our instalment of our story in Manx, Gowaltys ny Beiyn, the Revolu...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. After James Chalenor's comments about the Manx people being full of wind because of their diet heavy in fish, he turns to higher thoughts with the history of the Manx church this time. In our Manx story, the pigs develop a whole political theory from old Major's ideas, and set about educating the others....

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. James Chalenor tells us more about the translation into the Manx language carried out by Bishop John Phillips, apparently taking his knowledge of written Welsh as a starting point for what seems to have been a writing system of his own invention. Chalenor also reveals that the Manx people of 1653 suffered...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. This week we hear from academic Zoe Russell of the University of Stirling, who's been spending a week in the Island finding out about how the Island's culture and the natural world come together in the UNESCO Biosphere status, which she'll be comparing with the situation in the Wester Ross Biosphere in Sc...

Bob Carswell delivers a weekly programme of great Manx Gaelic broadcasting and entertainment. In telling Thomas, Lord Fairfax about the rocks and minerals of the Island in his account written in 1653, James Chalenor refers to a mine at Bradda exploited by Captain Edward Christian. The editor of the Manx Society Vol X (1864) reprint of Chalenor's work is the Rev. J G Cumming, and his note on this i...