Edmund Evans Greaves Goodwin

Epithet: Music teacher, linguist, folklorist (1845-1925)

Record type: Biographies

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

The second of six children, Edmund, lame and judged early on to be 'delicate', actually lived to see his 80th birthday. His paternal grandmother was a sister of Florence Nightingale. His father ran a small private school in the family home, 27 Castle Street, Peel, one of the houses erected around 1600 as accommodation for officials of Peel Castle. The census of 1861 records Edmund as a teacher there, aged sixteen. His main source of income was to be from fees as a music teacher.

Showing an early facility for music and languages, he had taught himself German and French by the age of twelve. He was to learn some 25 languages in later life, including Manx Gaelic which was still quite widely in use at that time. He held Manx lessons in Peel, and published his textbook First Lessons in Manx in 1901. After several reprints and revisions, this book is still in use. Today's Manx classes in Peel are the continuation of Edmund's. He had an interest in Manx lore in general, collecting local folk tunes and compiling details of Manx families. His latter hand-written notes, known as the Goodwin Papers, are an important genealogical source, available to the public on microfilm in the Manx National Heritage Library.

Edmund also co-operated with Arthur William Moore and Sophia Morrison in the production of 'A Vocabulary of Manx Dialect', which eventually appeared in 1923 and was reprinted in 1991. Sophia was Edmund's star music pupil, and she gained honours in the first music college examinations ever held on the Island.

In 1890 the Goodwin family moved into a newly-built redbrick house on the corner of Albany Road, Peel. Something of a recluse, Edmund ventured out of this house only once - to move in 1916 (with his 1500 books) back to his original family home in Mount Morrison, where he died suddenly of a stroke in 1925.

Sadly, his memorial on the family gravestone in Peel Cemetery does not record that this is the last resting place of a most remarkable man, a pillar of Manx culture.

Biography written by Leslie Quilliam.

(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.207-8.)

Culture Vannin

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Nationality: Manx

Gender: Male

Date of birth: 4 January 1845

Date of death: 4 January 1925

Name Variant: Goodwin, Edmund

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