William Henry Gill

Epithet: Author and musician, collector of Manx folk tunes (1839-1922)

Record type: Biographies

Biography: From ‘New Manx Worthies’ (2006):

W.H. Gill was born in Sicily and sent, with his younger brother J.F. (Fred), to King William's College to be educated. They lived with their uncle, the energetic Revd William Gill, vicar of Malew, who besides being a keen Manx scholar had raised money to buy a new vicarage, rebuilt the parish school, and was Diocesan Secretary and official translator of the Acts of Tynwald into Manx. He sent four of his own sons to university, while a fifth was called to the Manx Bar, and he also educated his four daughters. While I.E. Gill was called to the Manx Bar and later became Deemster, W.H. Gill worked for most of his life in the Old Seals Department of the London Post Office.

From his home in Sussex, William was an energetic promoter of the Isle of Man, with an extraordinary gift for judging public taste. Although he did compose songs, and made arrangements for organ of many of the oratorios popular in nineteenth century England, his great gift was to popularise the old Manx songs, and to market them to a public on and off the Island.

The two Gill brothers, with their love of all things Manx, came together with Dr John Clague in the summer of 1894 to compare the results of their field collections of Manx songs, and to try and compile a definitive list of all the tunes that had been noted. The result of that summer was the 1896 volume, Manx National Songs, which contained 51 melodies from the collection, with piano accompaniments. The texts, in English, were greatly modified from the original, and in some cases completely replaced with verses specially written for the volume or taken from existing poems.

The preface, which appeared over the signatures of all three men, set out the intentions of Manx National Songs. There was no pretence that the volume was intended as a scholarly project, although a great deal of effort had gone into making the collection as large as possible. The preface states:

"Tunes were obtained from every town, and every parish except one, in which a thorough search has not yet been made."

The aim of the book was to popularise the songs. Although the original songs were sung to Manx words (and indeed Gill was a founder member of the Manx Language Society in 1898), the 1896 preface explains that it was decided to substitute English for the following reasons:

1. The primary object of this section of the work is popular rather than antiquarian - to make some of the best songs generally known, and once more heard.
2. The language being practically dead, songs with Manx words would not be generally sung.
3. In many cases the original words possess little merit, or historic interest,and in many others they are unfit for publication.

In spite of the clear statement of intent, the publication was heavily criticised. In an extensive article in the Manx Sun an unidentified author launched his attack with these words:

"With long experience, we can safely add we have never previously met with a more painful instance of the art of the 'improver' ... the very title is utterly misleading ... the Messrs Gill have utterly and ignominiously failed to attend to the elementary rules which should be observed by collectors and this failure compels us, with pain, to condemn their book as a thoroughly unsatisfactory, meretricious publication and an unnecessary interference with a subject we wish the authors had not touched, or touched not with sacrilegious hands (Manx Sun, 16th January 1897).

W.H. Gill was also a competent composer, and published many arrangements and adaptations of the traditional airs he and others had collected. Two in particular that became popular were the 'Manx National Anthem' (based on a major key version of 'Mylecharaine', long identified as a national song) and 'The Manx Fishermen's Evening Hymn', which was included in Manx National Songs, but which gained much wider fame when it was included in the Methodist Hymn Book as 'Peel Castle' (No. 947 in the 1904 edition). It was based on a traditional air Eaisht oo as chlashtyn as mee singal [sic] oo arrane ('Listen and hear and I am singing you a song') which appears in the Clague/Gill collection, and was probably a legal, or valentine song, sung at social occasions.

Gill's own rolling sentences not only tell us about the events leading to his adaptation, but also give an insight into the sentimental late-Victorian attitudes towards traditional music. An Isle of Man Examiner article in 1926 quotes Gill as stating:

"Among the many beautiful and more or less characteristic melodies we unearthed, will be found one, which strangely enough, although it came to us, as it were, in the rough, and associated with Manx words of anything but a sacred or devout character, nevertheless contained the potential germ of metrical and harmonic beauty which with a little ingenuity and much love on my part, had the addition of more worthy words,
resulted in the hymn and tune now under notice. It is true that the Manx fishermen in times gone by were wont, before shooting their nets, to pray for divine blessing on their 'Harvest of the Sea', and it is more than probable that a hymn would be sung on such occasion; for these hardy fishermen are by nature a devout race and keen lovers of music. Although it is now unknown what particular hymn if any they sang, or what thoughts actually filled their minds, still the idea was to my mind so beautiful that I could not resist the impulse to combine all these diverse elements and associations of the past into one artistic and harmonious whole."

Gill also wrote the words, which reflected his romanticised view of the lives of the men who wrested a hard living from the sea. However, the hymn became so popular that it was sung by the first contingent of Manx reserves when they departed for World War I, to the disgust of 'a bellicose English bystander who in vain endeavoured to persuade the crowd to leave off this melancholy dirge and join him in some full-blooded ditty about the British Navy and the girls on shore' (Isle of Man Examiner, 22nd October 1926). Its popularity today is still as strong as ever, particularly at harvest festivals and thanksgivings.

Gill published profusely. Most of his compositions were based on Manx traditional tunes, which he adapted freely and set to words of his own composition. In the same year as Manx National Songs, he published Manx National Music, 141 arrangements for piano of Manx dances, songs and ballads, carols and hymns. In 1908 he published Songs of my Fatherland (Angmering Press), arrangements of songs suitable for competition work; Volume 1 was dedicated to the Isle of Man Fine Arts and Industrial Guild and Volume 2 to the Manx Language Society. Two years later, the same press produced 31 of Gill's hymns and carols, dedicated this time to the Bishop of Sodor and Man. Several deserve to be more widely known, including the lovely setting of 'Father of all, thy never-dying love', 'Three kings from out the Orient' with words by the Revd Thomas Edward Brown, and 'The Baby-Boy Carol' and 'Manx Vesper Hymn' both with words by Josephine Kermode (`Cushag').

It has been fashionable to regard Gill's work with some contempt. It is true that it is very typical of a somewhat arrogant attitude which was prevalent among some collectors of folk music at the end of the nineteenth century. He never hesitated to 'correct' elements of the songs that he and others had collected which did not conform to his concept of a folk song. But he did a great deal to breathe new life into old songs, which is, after all, part of the folk tradition. If it had not been for his arrangements, several generations and thousands of singers would have remained unaware of the delights of songs such as 'The Manx Wedding' and 'The Sheep under the Snow'. He worked tirelessly to enable choirs to perform Manx songs in competition and took part himself in some of the Guild classes for newly-composed songs in the Manx tradition, alongside Sophia Morrison.

Biography written by Fenella Bazin.

(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.201-3.)

Culture Vannin

#NMW

Gender: Male

Date of birth: 1839

Date of death: 1922

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