Ned Maddrell

Edward Maddrell (20 August 187727 December 1974) was a Manx fisherman who, at the time of his death, was the last surviving native speaker of the Manx language.

Life Maddrell was born on 20 August 1877 at Corvalley, near Cregneash, on the Isle of Man, the son of Thomas Maddrell and Margaret Watterson. Maddrell recalled having to act as an interpreter for the older inhabitants of the village who could not speak English.

Irish Folklore Commission recordings Irish Taoiseach Éamon de Valera visited the Isle of Man in the summer of 1947. The Taoiseach had been instrumental in setting up the Irish Folklore Commission in 1935, which recorded living and dying Irish dialects, but also folklore and customs. During his trip to the Isle of Man, de Valera met Ned Maddrell at Harry Kelly's cottage in the village of Cregneash. Danaher travelled to the Isle of Man on 22 April 1948 with a crate of fragile acetate discs to record the Manx language. Maddrell, as well as several other elderly speakers, can be heard speaking or reciting songs in the recordings.

Legacy

Following the death of Sage Kinvig (–1962), Maddrell was the only remaining person who could claim to have spoken Manx Gaelic from childhood, although at the time some other people spoke it as a second language, having learned it later in life. (According to one source, Maddrell had some knowledge of English before he learned Manx, and learned Manx from his great-aunt.)

Maddrell recorded some of his speech for the sake of linguistic preservation; for example, in 1948 he recorded the following about fishing (in Manx, with the English translation):

"Ballooilley" said to him:

"Are the crabs crawling, Joe?"

"Not much, not much," said Joe. "They're very scarce."

A newspaper article about the decline of Manx from about 1960 (Maddrell's age was given as 82) mentions and quotes him, since at the time he was, along with Kinvig, one of only two native speakers:

Maddrell appears to have enjoyed his minor celebrity status, and was very willing to teach younger language revivalists such as Leslie Quirk and Brian Stowell.

The Manx language has undergone a revival since his death, partly thanks to the support that Ned Maddrell gave to younger learners of the language toward the end of his life. Today he is remembered by an annual lecture on Celtic language survival hosted by Culture Vannin and Yn Çheshaght Ghailckagh.