Free Republic

In times past, the sight of cavorting knights fighting to the death would have been a familiar sight in the streets around the island over Christmas. Once a firm fixture of the island’s festive and folkloric calendar, this year a group of Manx cultural enthusiasts are planning to bring the traditional Whiteboys plays back, and will perform the play on a number of occasions throughout this coming Saturday (December 14). The plays themselves would always feature a central figure, who would be identified as a doctor, and he would narrate and oversee the performance, which would be based around a...

A silver medieval ring thought to be up to 600 years old has been unearthed by a man who took up metal detecting after watching a TV sitcom. The gold-gilded ring was found by Gordon Graham in a field in the north of the Isle of Man. Archaeologists believe the piece, which is engraved with geometric shapes, dates from between 1400 and 1500 AD. An inquest hearing at Douglas Courthouse declared the ring can be officially classed as treasure. Allison Fox, a curator of archaeology at Manx National Heritage, said it may date back to the time when the first...

The flower of the free, the heather, the heather, The Bretons and Scots and Irish together, The Manx and the Welsh and Cornish forever, Six nations are we, Proud Celtic and free. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=w3VLoe6YEBU#t=4

Out on a sunny Berlin balcony, Tim Keeley and Daniel Krasa are firing words like bullets at each other. First German, then Hindi, Nepali, Polish, Croatian, Mandarin and Thai – they’ve barely spoken one language before the conversation seamlessly melds into another. Together, they pass through about 20 different languages or so in total. It can be difficult enough to learn one foreign tongue. Yet I’m here in Berlin for the Polyglot Gathering, a meeting of 350 or so people who speak multiple languages – some as diverse as Manx, Klingon and Saami, the language of reindeer herders in Scandinavia....