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Page:Skeealyn Aesop a Selection of Aesops Fables Translated Into Manx-Gaelic Together with a Few Poems.djvu/17

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would be glad to give it up, if other employment could be found.

He has been a total abstainer for the last twenty years, and during that period he has composed about a thousand sacred songs and innumerable others, but seldom reads them to any. A few of his poetical contributions have appeared at various times in the Mona's Herald and the Cork Eagle and were always welcomed and appreciated. He is passionately fond of nature, and, as he tells me—I have enjoyed the pleasure of his intimate friendship for many years now—in autumn, when the heather is in bloom on the hills around Cregneish, he could sit there and admire it all the day long, and covet no other spot in the world for its beauties. He has achieved the great feat in his old age of translating the whole set of Æsop's Fables (313 in number) from English into Manx within four months, while not in the best health, and harassed by domestic afflictions. Should there be a public desire to have another sheaf of them, the publishers may not be unwilling to continue the series at a later period.

Mr Farquhar has done great services to Manx Folklore, and it is due to him that at this late period an immense amount of valuable Manx legends and Insular lore have been preserved, for which indeed the Isle of Man must ever be under gratitude to him. His poetry is of the homely, descriptive kind, and appeals to the simple emotions of the heart. It expresses