Arthur William Moore

Arthur William Moore CVO SHK JP MA (1853-1909) was a Manx antiquarian, historian, linguist, folklorist, and former Speaker of the House of Keys in the Isle of Man. He published under the sobriquet A. W. Moore.

Arthur William Moore was born in Cronkborne, Braddan. He was the son of William Fine Moore MHK and a descendant of Illiam Dhone. He was educated at Rugby School and at Trinity College, Cambridge. Thereafter he assisted his father in the management of the sailcloth manufactory, and on his father's death in the eighties, he succeeded to the business. He was also a great sportsman, being a blue whilst at Cambridge, an active rower, and a founding member of Cronkbourne Cricket Club. He also bore the entire cost of the forming and furnishing of this club and of laying the ground.

In 1881 there was a General Election of the House of Keys and Arthur Moore stood for election. He was successful along with Richard Penketh and William Dalrymple in being elected as MHKs for Middle. He was subsequently returned in this position for every further General Election he stood at. Arthur Moore was a man of common sense who researched thoroughly his duties and parliamentary responsibility and thus when Sir John Goldie-Taubman SHK died he was elected Speaker of the House of Keys narrowly beating John Allen Mylrea MHK to the post. Politically speaking he was a moderate liberal. In 1905 he was appointed Deputy Receiver General and was took a particular interest in constitutional reform and was thus one of the deputation who petitioned the Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone to urge the reform.

Having learned as a young man the Manx language, he devoted much study to the then-neglected language, despised by British authorities. He collected a vast vocabulary and traced its linguistic history. In 1899 he founded the Manx Language Society and became its first president, thus becoming the spiritual forefather of the neo-Manx language movement. He in 1893 edited for the Manx Society for the Publication of National Documents "The Book of Common Prayer in Manx Gaelic", the earliest and longest manuscript in the language.

Arthur Moore was also particularly interested in literature dealing with the Isle of Man and sought to conserve not only the language but the music, lore, and tradition of the island. He founded and edited the [http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/manxnb/index.htm Manx Notebook] as well as writing a History of the Isle of Man and many other historical works on the Island. As such he was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Meteorological Society. He was also greatly involved in the revival of the Manx language and was the official translator of Acts of Tynwald into Manx. Shortly after a Royal visit to the Island, Mr Moore was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. He was also a Director of both the Isle of Man Bank and the Isle of Man Steam Packet. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1877 and was for many years the Captain of the Parish of Onchan before resigning in 1895. Mr Moore was also a Mason and became the Junior Grand Deacon of the Province of the Isle of Man.

Moore managed to settle the kerfuffle between P. M. C. Kermode and Dr. Guðbrandur Vigfússon of Oxford over the reading of runic inscriptions on Manx crosses, the correspondence of which appeared in Moore's own periodical "The Manx Note Book".

At his death, he left unfinished a dictionary of the Anglo-Manx dialect, which was completed in 1924 by Manx scholars Sophia Morrison and Edmund Goodwin, as "A Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx Dialect".

Works

*"The Surnames and Place Names of the Isle of Man" (1890)
*"Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man" (1891)
*"Manx Carols" (1891)
*"Further Notes on Manx Folk-Lore" in "The Antiquary" (1895)
*"Manx Ballads and Music" (1896)
*"History of the Isle of Man" (1900)
*"The Diocese of Sodor and Man" (1893)
*"Manx Worthies" (1901)
*"Bishop Hildesley's Letters" (1904)
*"Douglas 100 Years Ago" (1904)
*"Extracts from the Records of the Isle of Man" (1905).
*"A Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx Dialect" (1924, posthumous)

External links

*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1885
date=1885
contribution=
title=The Manx Note Book
volume=I
publisher=
publication-date=1885
publication-place=Douglas
pages=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=O4YNAAAAYAAJ&printsec=titlepage
*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1891
date=1891
contribution=
title=The Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man
publisher=Brown & Son
publication-date=1891
publication-place=Douglas
pages=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=aer0z4ZSBtYC&printsec=frontcover
*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1895
date=1895
contribution=Further Notes on Manx Folklore
contribution-url=http://books.google.com/books?id=5VBUUlsTmQAC&pg=PA5
journal=The Antiquary
volume=XXXI
series=January – December, 1895
publisher=Elliot Stock
publication-date=1895
publication-place=London
pages=5-9, 72-76, 106-109
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=5VBUUlsTmQAC&printsec=frontcover
*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1900
date=1900
contribution=
title=History of the Isle of Man
volume=I
publisher=T. Fisher Unwin
publication-date=1900
publication-place=London
pages=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=KIgNAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover
*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1900
date=1900
contribution=
title=History of the Isle of Man
volume=II
publisher=T. Fisher Unwin
publication-date=1900
publication-place=London
pages=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=lYgNAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover
*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1901
date=1901
contribution=
title=Manx Worthies
publisher=
publication-date=
publication-place=
pages=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=sgQPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA5
*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1901
date=1901
contribution=
title=The Story of the Isle of Man
publisher=T. Fisher Unwin
publication-date=1902
publication-place=London
pages=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=sqhLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=titlepage - illustrated
*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1903
date=1903
contribution=
title=Manx Names, or The Surnames and Place-Names of the Isle of Man
edition=Revised Cheap
publisher=Elliot Stock
publication-date=1906
publication-place=London
pages=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=FvsEAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover
*Citation
last=Moore
first=Arthur William
author-link=Arthur William Moore
year=1906
date=July, 1906
contribution=The Connexion between Scotland and Man
contribution-url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Gn0uAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA393
journal=The Scottish Historical Review
volume=III
number=12
publisher=James Maclehose and Sons
publication-date=1906
publication-place=Glasgow
pages=393-409
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Gn0uAAAAMAAJ&printsec=titlepage