Fun Facts About the Isle of Man

Sometimes when people ask me about my ethnic background, just to mess with them I’ll say, “I’m one-sixteenth Manx.” My great-great-grandfather Robert Garrett left the Isle sometime in the 19th century and immigrated to Florida. The main reason I say this is to be willfully obscure. Most people have never heard of the Isle of Man and have no idea that people or things from there are called Manx.

In case you didn’t know, the Isle of Man is a small island located in the Irish Sea. It is nearly equidistant from Ireland, Scotland and Great Britain. It is approximately 35 miles long and between 8 and 15 miles wide. Here are some more fun facts about the Isle:

• The Isle of Man has the oldest parliament in continuous existence in the world. It is called the Tynwald and it has been meeting regularly since 979. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom or the European Union, nor is it part of the Commonwealth. Legally, the island is a crown dependency, as are the Channel Islands. The head of state of the Isle of Man is HM Queen Elizabeth II, represented by a lieutenant-governor. The UK takes care of defense and represents the Isle in international forums, but the Tynwald has almost total control over domestic matters. Nonetheless, the Manx are British citizens.
• The eldest three of the Brothers Gibb (Barry and twins Robin and Maurice) were born on the Isle of Man. Andy Gibb was born in Manchester shortly before the family immigrated to Australia. (I might as well take this opportunity to point out once again that the BeeGees totally don’t get the respect they deserve. They had top ten hits in the UK and the US in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. Who does that? Pop music is so fickle that anyone who can pull that off deserves some cred. They also basically introduced disco to a mass audience more or less by themselves. Some people might not necessarily think that’s a good thing, but those people are wrong.)
• There are two varieties of the famous Manx cat: the “rumpy,” which has no tail at all, and the “stumpy,” which has a small vestigial tail.
• The Manx Gaelic language is a Goidelic Celtic language, grouped with Irish and Scottish Gaelic, as opposed to the Brythonic Celtic languages, such as Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Together the Brythonic & Goidelic language families comprise the Insular Celtic Languages. Ned Maddrell, the last native Manx speaker, died in 1974. Since then, however, there has been an upsurge in interest and many bilingual primary schools exist on the island. Manx Gaelic is recognized as an autochthonous regional language by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
• The symbol of the Isle is the triskelion, which consists of three bent human legs. In the case of the Isle of Man, the legs are armored, and the triskelion can be found on the Manx flag as well as the coat of arms depicted above. The Manx flag used to fly in front of “The Crackhouse” on 13th Street North in Arlington. The Isle’s Latin motto references the triskelion: Quocunque Jeceris Stabit, which translates as “whichever way you throw it, it will stand.”