Edward Faragher

Edward Faragher
Edward Faragher outside his home in Cregneash
Born	1831 Cregneash, Isle of Man
Died	5 June 1908 Blackwell Colliery, near Alfreton, Derbyshire, England
Occupation	Fisherman
Nationality	Manx
Period	Victorian, Edwardian
Genre	Poetry, folklore, memoir
Subject	Manx legends

Edward Faragher (1831–1908) was a Manx language poet, folklorist and cultural guardian. He is considered to be the last important native writer of Manx and perhaps the most important guardian of Manx culture during a time when it was most under threat. The folklorist, Charles Roeder, wrote that Faragher had "done great services to Manx folklore, and it is due to him that at this late period an immense amount of valuable Manx legends have been preserved, for which indeed the Isle of Man must ever be under gratitude to him." Faragher is also familiarly known in Manx as Ned Beg Hom Ruy.

Faragher was born into a large family of twelve children in Cregneash, a fishing village at the south of the Isle of Man. At this time Manx was the only language spoken in Cregneash, and so his mother stood out as "the only person who could converse with strangers" due to her grasp of English. His father was one of the few people in the village who could write, and so he was called upon to write letters on behalf of other villagers. It was from his father, known as Ned Hom Ruy in Manx, that Faragher's familiar Manx name derives – with the Manx word for "little" being added, making it Ned Beg Hom Ruy ('Little Ned with the Red Beard').

Faragher attended infants' school in Port St Mary followed by the parish school of Kirk Christ Rushen, but his family could not afford for him to attend any longer than two years. The rest of his education came from his parents, or else was self-taught.

At a young age he began earning his living as a fisherman in his father's boat. He was a fisherman for the next seven years; then he moved to Liverpool to work in a safe-making factory.

Faragher enjoyed himself in England, finding that his natural talent at composing verse proved to be popular with young women. In 1899 he would write of this time that:

"[...] when I was living in England, I was putting the young women in a frenzy with my songs. I was often forced to stay at the house on Sunday afternoon because there were so many of them coming after me. And I was serving them all on the same plate. When I would be writing a song to one, she would be reading it to her comrades and they would be all striving to get acquaintance with me, and to get me to do a song for themselves until they were bothering my head."

It was whilst in Liverpool, aged around 26, that Faragher began to write down his verse for the first time, having previously retained it only in his head. Although he enjoyed himself at first in Liverpool, after some years in the city he eventually came to want to return to the Isle of Man. He expressed his feelings in a poem he composed at that time, A poem about things I have seen in Liverpool: