Carl Marstrander in the Isle of Man 1929, 1930, 1933 Carl Marstrander in the Isle of Man 1929, 1930, 1933 GEORGE BRODERICK Universität Mannheim 1. INTRODUCTION Carl Johan Sverdrup Marstrander (1883-1965), 1 Professor of Celtic languages in the University of Oslo (1913-1954), collected a number of items in Manx Gaelic, both on phonograph (cylinder) recordings and in phonetic script, from some twenty-nine (out of forty-seven) informants in the Isle of Man during the years 1929. 1930, 1933. 2 The cylinder sound-recordings were made in January- February 1933. All told Marstrander made forty-seven cylinder recordings 3 from native Manx speakers of which twenty-three have so far survived (Oftedal 1982: 18). In a letter to me dated in April 1978 Magne Oftedal (1921-1985), Professor of Celtic Languages in the University of Oslo and himself one of Marstrander's students, provided the following information regarding the cylinder recordings: According to a contemporary letter there were originally 48 4 wax cylinders, recorded with an Ediphone recording machine. We have recovered only 23, numbered from 1 to 24 with number 7 missing. No 14 is broken and only part of it can be played back. 5 The amount of material found in these recordings is not very impressive, as it takes only a little over three minutes to play back one cylinder. Moreover the technical quality is very poor. The cylinders were retrieved, after Marstrander's death, in a cardboard box in his attic directly under the roof where they had apparently been stored for several years and exposed to very great variations in temperature. The cylinders are now [1978] in my custody and I have had them copied. The copy was made mechanically, with a microphone, and contains much noise from the scraping of the needle. We hope in time to be able to copy the cylinders electronically, whereby the noise of scraping may perhaps be reduced (Magne Oftedal p.c. in April 1978; cf. also Oftedal 1982: 18-19). Copy-tapes from this copy were then made and sent to various interested parties, including myself, in May 1978. See also §2.3. below. But by far the greater part of Marstrander's Manx material exists as field-notes in his phonetic script contained in four manuscript volumes spanning in all some 2635 pages in continuous pagination (MNHL MSS 05354-57 B); a fifth volume in box form contains a number of sundry items (MNHL MS 05358 B) (cf, Broderick 2018b). Bound in red leather with gilt tooling and embellished with the motif in gold of the prow of a Viking ship, the volumes, entitled Defunctae 6 linguae Manniae specimina quae collegit Carolus Marstrander, were presented by Professor Marstrander himself to the Manx Museum on behalf of the Norwegian Government on 2 July 1951 to coincide with the "Festival of Britain" celebrations then taking place. The language of Marstrander's field notes is 1 For details of Marstrander's background and of his life and times, see Binchy (1966: 237-238), Oftedal (1982: 11-15), 2 Profiles of Marstrander's informants are provided in Broderick (2018a: 100-181). 3 For details see DLMS I: 597-98. An additional 3 were made of Harry Kelly, 1 of Manx Heimatforscher J. J. Kneen and 3 of William Cubbon, Librarian then Director of the Manx Museum, the latter two not being native speakers. 4 47 from native Manx speakers and 1 from J. J. Kneen. But see DLMS/I: 597-598 for the details. 5 Except for the first cylinder (which is of the non-native speaker J. J. Kneen), the rest are of Harry Kelly. The contents of these can be found in HLSM/I: 324-341 in IPA script as well as Standard Manx Orthography (as with all other texts recorded from native Manx speech). 6 Acording to Oftedal (1982: 17-18), the choice of the adjective defunctus 'extinct' apparently gave some offence to some Manx students of the language. I, too, had heard this, but was told that it was more a case of raised eyebrows than of any actual offence. sustained (GB). 1