Ned Beg's Cottage
Period: Modern
NGR Easting: 218864
NGR Northing: 467340
Description: Delete - see PRN 2902
needs new prn
This cottage was the home of Edward Faragher, known in Manx as Ned Beg Hom Ruy, who was born in 1831. One of ten children born to parents of unusual abilities in the otherwise wholly Gaelic-speaking, and largely illiterate community (his mother could speak English, and his father was the village letter-writer), he had rudimentary schooling in Port St Mary before working for his fisherman father around the south coast of the Island. He later passed a spell labouring in England before returning to the fishing, this time off southern Ireland.
He returned to the Island, married, lived for a while in Surby, and then returned to Cregneash where he lived another thirty years, for all but the last year his life.
From his mid twenties, including during the time he spent away from the Island, Faragher recorded stories, poems and reminiscences in Manx, and even translated traditional children’s stories – famously Aesop’s Fables. An extensive collection of his folklore material, in its original manuscript form, is preserved in the MNH Library and Archive.
In the latter years of the 19th century he came to the attention of Charles Roeder, an energetic folklorist who later wrote upon his death in 1908, ‘It was entirely due to him that so much traditional folklore has been preserved. He had a fine memory and his knowledge of things Manx seemed to be inexhaustible which he communicated to those who enjoyed his friendship.’
The cottage is typical of late 18th and early 19th century single storey rural dwellings on the Isle of Man, and is one of several in the village of Cregneash which have retained their traditional thatched roof.
The building was acquired by the Manx Museum and National Trust in 1967 and serves as a museum focussed on the legacy of Edward Faragher.
View map location on Archaeology Data Service
Site & Monument Type: dwelling, cottage
Category: National Monuments Record: Statutory Ancient Monuments
Site ID number: 0046.13