Londoners got to hear about Manx folk songs at a lecture delivered by an Onchan man.

Stephen Miller, originally from the island, gave a presentation at the English Folk Dance and Song Society in Camden Town about the Gill brothers and their collection of folk songs from the island.

Their songs were collected between 1894 and 1898.

Members of the London Manx Society attended the lecture where they learned about the two brothers who were born in Sicily, but were Manx by blood as both parents had island ancestry stretching back two centuries.

The men were said to have had a lifelong interest in the Isle of Man with the youngest, J.F. Gill (1842-99), moving to the island becoming a deemster while the other, W.H. Gill (1839-1923), became a London civil servant.

It was explained that the men faced a variety of challenges in their work, but they had managed to produce the ’Manx National Song Book’. Together they collected 101 songs from every parish except Onchan and Santon.