The Sophia Morrison Collection of Manx Folk Charms

Abstract

Sophia Morrison (1859–1917) was the leading light of the Manx Language Revival in the Isle of Man in the 1900s and Secretary of the Manx Language Society (founded 1899). Folklorist, folk song collector, and pioneer of recording with the phonograph, she also had a deep interest in folk medicine and amongst her surviving personal papers as part of that research are some seventy charms recorded by her both in Manx (24) and English (46). This corpus adds to an earlier collection of thirteen charms gathered by Dr John Clague (1842–1908) and published in Incantatio 2 (2002). This by no means exhausts the Manx material and we still await publication of a charm catalogue in full for the Isle of Man.