John Quine

John Quine (5 May 1857 – 29 February 1940) was a Manx clergyman, scholar, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered for his 1897 novel, The Captain of the Parish.

Early life Third son of a Foxdale miller, William Quine and Christian (née Callister), John Quine was introduced to Latin and the classics from an early age. He attended King William's College, near to which the family moved when Quine was twelve years old, when they settled in Ballasalla. After winning numerous prizes at the school, Quine won an open scholarship to study Mathematics at Merton College, Oxford, in 1877. His enjoyment of Oxford was hampered only by the occasional consequences of his quick tongue and a lack of funds that he attributed to his father's miserliness. including the Chaplaincy of All Saints Church, Laxey, a position that he would hold until his death in 1940. He proved to be popular and successful in this role, despite his "sharp and occasional sarcastic tongue."

Quine’s novel was greatly praised by the Manx national poet, T.E. Brown, whose poetry is quoted ahead of each and every section of the novel. Brown expressed his admiration in a personal letter written to Quine on 26 April 1897:

My blessings on you! you speak of inspiration, encouragement, what not, coming from me. With The Captain of the Parish I am supremely contented, I can die happy. To have had anything to do with the endeavour of such a work makes me very proud. Perhaps I have leavened you and my barm may stir in your young and vigorous veins. All right but, however that may be, I have got what I longed for, and, ever since I came to the island, conjectured a new Manx writer honestly suckled at a Manx breast. You will be faithful to us, and continue, and expand, and heighten the tradition, the sacred deposit. . . . You see I am excited, but how can I help it?

Quine was also the author of a comic play entitled Kitty's Affair. It was written in the Anglo-Manx dialect and it features a number of Manx types, including smugglers, farmers and maids. It was published in 1909 and received performances by several companies on the island. Reports of one of his presentations to the IOMNHAS in 1917 states:

[Quine] claimed that the Cronks, hitherto believed to have been burial places or fortifications; were really artificial mounds used by the Roman engineers to assist in the triangulation and plotting out of lands; they were found at regular distances of Roman miles in proper alignment, and the connecting lines formed regular parallelograms and triangles when tested on the Ordnance Map. He regarded certain Manx place-names as corruptions of old Latin designations derived from Roman emperors, goddesses and heroes.

His other notable theories included the idea that Phoenician mariner merchants visited the island, and that Saint Patrick was born on the Isle of Man. Cross's Folly (edited by Julie Quine), 2014 (from previously unpublished papers)