THE LITTLE MANX NATION

By Hall Caine

Published by William Heinemann - 1891

To the REVEREND T. S. BROWN, M. A. 

You see what I send you--my lectures at the Royal Institution in theSpring. In making a little book of them I have thought it best toleave them as they were delivered, with all the colloquialisms that arenatural to spoken words frankly exposed to cold print. This does nothelp them to any particular distinction as literature, but perhaps itlends them an ease and familiarity which may partly atone to you and toall good souls for their plentiful lack of dignity. I have said so oftenthat I am not an historian, that I ought to add that whatever historylies hidden here belongs to Train, our only accredited chronicler, and, even at the risk of bowing too low, I must needs protest, in ournorth-country homespun, that he shall have the pudding if he willalso take the pudding-bag. You know what I mean. At some points ourhistory--especially our early history--is still so vague, so dubious, so full of mystery. It is all the fault of little Mannanan, our ancientManx magician, who enshrouded our island in mist. Or should I say itis to his credit, for has he not left us through all time some shadowyfigures to fight about, like "rael, thrue, reg'lar" Manxmen. As for thestories, the "yarns" that lie like flies--like blue-bottles, like bees, I trust not like wasps--in the amber of the history, you will see thatthey are mainly my own. On second thought it occurs to me that maybethey are mainly yours. Let us say that they are both yours and mine, or perhaps, if the world finds anything good in them, any humour, anypathos, any racy touches of our rugged people, you will permit me todetermine their ownership in the way of this paraphrase of Coleridge'sdoggerel version of the two Latin hexameters--

"They're mine and they are likewise yours, But an if that will not do, Let them be mine, good friend! for I Am the poorer of the two. "

Hawthorns, Keswick, June 1891. 

CONTENTS

THE STORY OF THE MANX KINGS

Islanders--Our Island--The Name of our Island--Our History--KingOrry--The Tynwald--The Lost Saga--The Manx Macbeth--The ManxGlo'ster--Scotch and English Dominion--The Stanley Dynasty--IliamDhoan--The Athol Dynasty--Smuggling and Wrecking--The Revestment--HomeRule--Orry's Sons

THE STORY OF THE MANX BISHOPS

The Druids--Conversion to Christianity--The Early Bishops ofMan--Bishops of the Welsh Dynasty--Bishops of the Norse Dynasty--Sodorand Man--The Early Bishops of the House of Stanley--Tithes inKind--The Gambling Bishop--The Deemsters--The Bishopric Vacant--BishopWilson--Bishop Wilson's Censures--The Great Corn Famine--The Bishop atCourt--Stories of Bishop Wilson--Quarrels of Church and State--SomeOld Ordeals--The Herring Fishery--The Fishermen's Service--Some OldLaws--Katherine Kinrade--Bishop Wilson's last Days--The Athol Bishops. 

THE STORY OF THE MANX PEOPLE

The Manx Language--Manx Names--Manx imagination--Manx Proverbs--ManxBallads--Manx Carols--Decay of the Manx Language--ManxSuperstitions--Manx Stories--Manx "Characters"--ManxCharacteristics--Manx Types--Literary Associations--ManxProgress--Conclusion

THE LITTLE MANX NATION

THE STORY OF THE MANX KINGS

There are just two ideas which are associated in the popular imaginationwith the first thought of the Isle of Man. The one is that Manxmen havethree legs, and the other that Manx cats have no tails. But whateverthe popular conception, or misconception, of Man and its people, I shallassume that what you ask from me is that simple knowledge of simplethings which has come to me by the accident of my parentage. I mustconfess to you at the outset that I am not much of a hand at gravehistory. Facts and figures I cannot expound with authority. But I knowthe history of the Isle of Man, can see it clear, can see it whole, andperhaps it will content you if I can show you the soul of it and makeit to live before you. In attempting to traverse the history I feel likeone who carries a dark lantern through ten dark centuries. I turn thebull's eye on this incident and that, take a peep here and there, awhite light now, and then a blank darkness. Those ten centuries arefull of lusty fights, victories, vanquishments, quarrels, peacemaking, shindies big and little, rumpus solemn and ridiculous, clouds of dust, regal dust, political dust, and religious dust--you know the way of it. But beneath it all and behind it all lies the real, true, living humanheart of Manxland. I want to show it to you, if you will allow me tospare the needful time from facts and figures. It will get you close toMan and its people, and it is not to be found in the history books. 

ISLANDERS

And now, first, we Manxmen are islanders. It is not everybody who liveson an island that is an islander. You know what I mean. I mean by anislander one whose daily life is affected by the constant presence ofthe sea. This is possible in a big island if it is far enough away fromthe rest of the world, Iceland, for example, but it is inevitable in alittle one. The sea is always present with Manxmen. Everything they do, everything they say, gets the colour and shimmer of the sea. The seagoes into their bones, it comes out at their skin. Their talk is full ofit. They buy by it, they sell by it, they quarrel by it, they fight byit, they swear by it, they pray by it. Of course they are not consciousof this. Only their degenerate son, myself to wit, a chiel among themtakin' notes, knows how the sea exudes from the Manxmen. Say you ask ifthe Governor is at home. If he is not, what is the answer? "He's not onthe island, sir. " You inquire for the best hotel. "So-and-so is thebest hotel on the island, sir. " You go to a Manx fair and hear a farmerselling a cow. "Aw, " says he, "she's a ter'ble gran' craythuer formilkin', sir, and for butter maybe there isn' the lek of her on theisland, sir. " Coming out of church you listen to the talk of two oldManxwomen discussing the preacher. "Well, well, ma'am, well, well! Aw, the voice at him! and the prayers! and the beautiful texes! There isn'the lek of him on the island at all, at all!" Always the island, theisland, the island, or else the boats, and going out to the herrings. The sea is always present. You feel it, you hear it, you see it, you cannever forget it. It dominates you. Manxmen are all sea-folk. 

You will think this implies that Manxmen stick close to their island. They do more than that. I will tell you a story. Five years ago I wentup into the mountains to seek an old Manx bard, last of a race of whom Ishall have something to tell you in their turn. All his life he had beena poet. I did not gather that he had read any poetry except his own. Upto seventy he had been a bachelor. Then this good Boaz had lit on hisRuth and married, and had many children. I found him in a lonely glen, peopled only in story, and then by fairies. A bare hill side, not a bushin sight, a dead stretch of sea in front, rarely brightened by a sail. Ihad come through a blinding hail-storm. The old man was sitting in thechimney nook, a little red shawl round his head and knotted under hischin. Within this aureole his face was as strong as Savonarola's, longand gaunt, and with skin stretched over it like parchment. He was nohermit, but a farmer, and had lived on that land, man and boy, nearlyninety years. He had never been off the island, and had strange notionsof the rest of the world. Talked of England, London, theatres, palaces, king's entertainments, evening parties. He saw them all through themists of rumour, and by the light of his Bible. He had strange notions, some of them bad shots for the truth, some of them startlingly true. Idare not tell you what they were. A Royal Institution audience wouldbe aghast. They had, as a whole, a strong smell of sulphur. But the oldbard was not merely an islander, he belonged to his land more than hisland belonged to him. The fishing town nearest to his farm was Peel, thegreat fishing centre on the west coast. It was only five miles away. I asked how long it was since he had been there? "Fifteen years, " heanswered. The next nearest town was the old capital, on the east coast, Castletown, the home of the Governor, of the last of the Manx lords, theplace of the Castle, the Court, the prison, the garrison, the College. It was just six miles away. How long was it since he had been there?"Twenty years. " The new capital, Douglas, the heart of the island, itspoint of touch with the world, was nine miles away. How long since hehad been in Douglas? "Sixty years, " said the old bard. God bless him, the sweet, dear old soul! Untaught, narrow, self-centred, bred on hisbyre like his bullocks, but keeping his soul alive for all that, caringnot a ha'porth for the things of the world, he was a true Manxman, andI'm proud of him. One thing I have to thank him for. But for him, andthe like of him, we should not be here to-day. It is not the culturedManxman, the Manxman that goes to the ends of the earth, that makes theManx nation valuable to study. Our race is what it is by virtue ofthe Manxman who has had no life outside Man, and so has kept alive ourlanguage, our customs, our laws and our patriarchal Constitution. 

OUR ISLAND

It lies in the middle of the Irish Sea, at about equal distances fromEngland, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Seen from the sea it is a lovelything to look upon. It never fails to bring me a thrill of the heart asit comes out of the distance. It lies like a bird on the waters. Yousee it from end to end, and from water's edge to topmost peak, oftenenshrouded in mists, a dim ghost on a grey sea; sometimes purple againstthe setting sun. Then as you sail up to it, a rugged rocky coast, grandin its beetling heights on the south and west, and broken into thesweetest bays everywhere. The water clear as crystal and blue as the skyin summer. You can see the shingle and the moss through many fathoms. Then mountains within, not in peaks, but round foreheads. The colour ofthe island is green and gold; its flavour is that of a nut. Both colourand flavour come of the gorse. This covers the mountains and moorlands, for, except on the north, the island has next to no trees. But O, thebeauty and delight of it in the Spring! Long, broad stretches glitteringunder the sun with the gold of the gorse, and all the air full of thenutty perfume. There is nothing like it in the world. Then the glens, such fairy spots, deep, solemn, musical with the slumberous waters, cladin dark mosses, brightened by the red fuchsia. The fuchsia is everywherewhere the gorse is not. At the cottage doors, by the waysides, in thegardens. If the gorse should fail the fuchsia might even take its placeon the mountains. Such is Man, but I am partly conscious that it is Manas seen by a Manxman. You want a drop of Manx blood in you to see itaright. Then you may go the earth over and see grander things a thousandtimes, things more sublime and beautiful, but you will come back toManxland and tramp the Mull Hills in May, long hour in, and long hourout, and look at the flowering gorse and sniff its flavour, or lie bythe chasms and listen to the screams of the sea-birds, as they whirl anddip and dart and skim over the Sugar-loaf Rock, and you'll say afterall that God has smiled on our little island, and that it is the fairestspot in His beautiful world, and, above all, that it is _ours_. 

THE NAME OF OUR ISLAND

This is a matter in dispute among philologists, and I am no authority. Some say that Caesar meant the Isle of Man when he spoke of Mona; otherssay he meant Anglesea. The present name is modern. So is Elian Vannin, its Manx equivalent. In the Icelandic Sagas the island is called Mon. Elsewhere it is called Eubonia. One historian thinks the island derivesits name from Mannin--in being an old Celtic word for island, thereforeMeadhon-in (pronounced Mannin) would signify: The middle island. Thatdefinition requires that the Manxman had no hand in naming Man. He wouldnever think of describing its geographical situation on the sea. Manxmen say the island got its name from a mythical personage calledMannanan-Beg-Mac-y-Learr, Little Mannanan, son of Learr. This man wasa sort of Prospero, a magician, and the island's first ruler. The storygoes that if he dreaded an enemy he would enshroud the island in mist, "and that by art magic. " Happy island, where such faith could everexist! Modern science knows that mist, and where it comes from. 

OUR HISTORY

It falls into three periods, first, a period of Celtic rule, second ofNorse rule, third of English dominion. Manx history is the history ofsurrounding nations. We have no Sagas of our own heroes. The Sagas areall of our conquerors. Save for our first three hundred recorded yearswe have never been masters in our own house. The first chapter of ourhistory has yet to be written. We know we were Celts to begin with, buthow we came we have never learnt, whether we walked dry-shod from Walesor sailed in boats from Ireland. To find out the facts of our earlyhistory would be like digging up the island of Prospero. Perhaps we hadbetter leave it alone. Ten to one we were a gang of political exiles. Perhaps we left our country for our country's good. Be it so. It was thefirst and last time that it could be said of us. 

KING ORRY

Early in the sixth century Man became subject to the kings and princesof Wales, who ruled from Anglesea. There were twelve of them insuccession, and the last of them fell in the tenth century. We know nextto nothing about them but their names. Then came the Vikings. The youngbloods of Scandinavia had newly established their Norse kingdom inIceland, and were huckstering and sea roving about the Baltic and amongthe British Isles. They had been to the Orkneys and Shetlands, andFaroes, perhaps to Ireland, certainly to the coast of Cumberland, makingScandinavian settlements everywhere. So they came to Mön early in thetenth century, led by one Orry, or Gorree. Some say this man wasnothing but a common sea-rover. Others say he was a son of the Danish orNorwegian monarch. It does not matter much. Orry had a better claim toregard than that of the son of a great king. He was himself a greatman. The story of his first landing is a stirring thing. It was night, a clear, brilliant, starry night, all the dark heavens lit up. Orry'sships were at anchor behind him; and with his men he had touched thebeach, when down came the Celts to face him, and to challenge him. Theydemanded to know where he came from. Then the red-haired sea-warriorpointed to the milky way going off towards the North. "That is the wayof my country, " he answered. The Celts went down like one man in awebefore him. He was their born king. It is what the actors call a finemoment. Still, nobody has ever told us how Orry and the Celts understoodone another, speaking different tongues. Let us not ask. 

King Orry had come to stay, and sea-warriors do not usually bring theirwomen over tempestuous seas. So the Norsemen married the Celtic women, and from that union came the Manx people. Thus the Manxman to begin withwas half Norse, half Celt. He is much the same still. Manxmen usuallymarry Manx women, and when they do not, they often marry Cumberlandwomen. As the Norseman settled in Cumberland as well as in Man the raceis not seriously affected either way. So the Manxman, such as he is, taken all the centuries through, is thoroughbred. 

Now what King Orry did in the Isle of Man was the greatest work thatever was done there. He established our Constitution. It was on themodel of the Constitution just established in Iceland. The governmentwas representative and patriarchal. The Manx people being sea-folk, living by the sea, a race of fishermen and sea-rovers, he divided theisland into six ship-shires, now called Sheadings. Each ship-shireelected four men to an assemblage of law-makers. This assemblage, equivalent to the Icelandic Logretta, was called the House of Keys. There is no saying what the word means. Prof. Rhys thinks it is derivedfrom the Manx name _Kiare-as-Feed_, meaning the four-and-twenty. Trainsays the representatives were called Taxiaxi, signifying pledges orhostages, and consequently were styled Keys. Vigfusson's theory wasthat Keys is from the Norse word _Keise_, or chosen men. The common Manxnotion, the idea familiar to my own boyhood, is, that the twenty-fourmembers of the House of Keys are the twenty-four material keys wherebythe closed doors of the law are unlocked. But besides the sea-folk ofthe ship-shires King Orry remembered the Church. He found it on theisland at his coming, left it where he found it, and gave it a voicein the government. He established a Tynwald Court, equivalent tothe Icelandic All Moot, where Church and State sat together. Then heappointed two law-men, called Deemsters, one for the north and the otherfor the south. These were equivalent to his Icelandic Lögsögumadur, speaker of the law and judge of all offences. Finally, he caused tobe built an artificial Mount of Laws, similar in its features to theIcelandic Logberg at Thingvellir. Such was the machinery of the NorseConstitution which King Orry established in Man. The working of it wasvery simple. The House of Keys, the people's delegates, discussed allquestions of interest to the people, and sent up its desires to theTynwald Court. This assembly of people and Church in joint sessionassented, and the desires of the people became Acts of Tynwald. TheseActs were submitted to the King. Having obtained the King's sanctionthey were promulgated on the Tynwald Hill on the national day in thepresence of the nation. The scene of that promulgation of the laws wasstirring and impressive. Let me describe it. 

THE TYNWALD

Perhaps there were two Tynwald Hills in King Orry's time, but I shallassume that there was one only. It stood somewhere about midway inthe island. In the heart of a wide range of hill and dale, with a longvalley to the south, a hill to the north, a table-land to the east, andto the west the broad Irish Sea. Not, of course, a place to be comparedwith the grand and gloomy valley of the Logberg, where in a vastamphitheatre of dark hills and great jökulls tipped with snow, with deepchasms and yawning black pits, one's heart stands still. But the placeof the Manx Tynwald was an impressive spot. The Hill itself was acircular mount cut into broad steps, the apex being only a few feet indiameter. About it was a flat grass plot. Near it, just a hundred andforty yards away, connected with the mount by a beaten path, was achapel. All around was bare and solitary, perhaps as bleak and stark asthe lonely plains of Thingvellir. 

Such was the scene. Hither came the King and his people on TynwaldDay. It fell on the 24th of June, the first of the seven days of theIcelandic gathering of the Althing. What occurred in Iceland occurredalso in Man. The King with his Keys and his clergy gathered in thechapel. Thence they passed in procession to the law-rock. On the topround of the Tynwald the King sat on a chair and faced to the east. Hissword was held before him, point upwards. His barons and beneficed men, his deemsters, knights, esquires, coroners, and yeomen, stood on thelower steps of the mount. On the grass plot beyond the people weregathered in crowds. Then the work of the day began. The coronersproclaimed a warning. No man should make disturbance at Tynwald on painof death. Then the Acts of Tynwald were read or recited aloud by thedeemsters; first in the language of the laws, and next in the languageof the people. After other formalities the procession of the Kingreturned to the chapel, where the laws were signed and attested, and sothe annual Tynwald ended. 

Now this primitive ceremonial, begun by King Orry early in the tenthcentury, is observed to this day. On Midsummer-day of this year of gracea ceremony similar in all its essentials will be observed by the presentGovernor, his Keys, clergy, deemsters, coroners, and people, on or nearthe same spot. It is the old Icelandic ordinance, but it has gonefrom Iceland. The year 1800 saw the last of it on the lava law-rock ofThingvellir. It is gone from every other Norse kingdom founded by theold sea-rovers among the Western Isles. Manxmen alone have held on toit. Shall we also let it go? Shall we laugh at it as a bit of mummerythat is useless in an age of books and newspapers, and foolish andpompous in days of frock-coats and chimney-pot hats? I think not. Wecannot afford to lose it. Remember, it is the last visible sign of ourindependence as a nation. It is our hand-grasp with the past. Our littlenation is the only Norse nation now on earth that can shake hands withthe days of the Sagas, and the Sea-Kings. Then let him who will laugh atour primitive ceremonial. It is the badge of our ancient liberty, and weneed not envy the man who can look on it unmoved. 

THE LOST SAGA

Of King Orry himself we learn very little. He was not only the first ofour kings, but also the greatest. We may be sure of that; first, by whatwe know; and next, by what we do not know. He was a conqueror, and yetwe do not learn that he ever attempted to curtail the liberties of hissubjects. He found us free men, and did not try to make us slaves. Onthe contrary, he gave us a representative Constitution, which haslasted a thousand years. We might call him our Manx King Alfred, if theindirections of history did not rather tempt us to christen him our ManxKing Lear. His Saga has never been written, or else it is lost. Wouldthat we could recover it! Oh, that imagination had the authority ofhistory to vitalise the old man and his times! I seem to see him as helived. There are hints of his character in his laws, that are as stagedirections, telling of the entrances and exits of his people, though thedrama of their day is gone. For example, in that preliminary warningof the coroner at Tynwald, there is a clause which says that none shall"bawl or quarrel or lye or lounge or sit. " Do you not see what thatimplies? Again, there is another clause which forbids any man, "on paineof life and lyme, " to make disturbance or stir in the time of Tynwald, or any murmur or rising in the king's presence. Can you not read betweenthe lines of that edict? Once more, no inquest of a deemster, no judgeor jury, was necessary to the death-sentence of a man who rose againstthe king or his governor on his seat on Tynwald. Nobody can miss themeaning of that. Once again, it was a common right of the people topresent petitions at Tynwald, a common privilege of persons unjustlypunished to appeal against judgment, and a common prerogative of outlawsto ask at the foot of the Tynwald Mount on Tynwald Day for the removalof their outlawry. All these old rights and regulations came fromIceland, and by the help of the Sagas it needs no special imaginationto make the scenes of their action live again. I seem to see King Orrysitting on his chair on the Tynwald with his face towards the east. Hehas long given up sea-roving. 

His long red hair is become grey or white. But the old lion has themuscles and fiery eye of the warrior still. His deemsters and baronsare about him, and his people are on the sward below. They are freemen; they mean to have their rights, both from him and from each other. Disputes run high, there are loud voices, mighty oaths, sometimes blows, fights, and terrific hurly-burlies. Then old Orry comes down with agreat voice and a sword, and ploughs a way through the fighters andscatters them. No man dare lift his hand on the king. Peace is restored, and the king goes back to his seat. 

Then up from the valley comes a woe-begone man in tatters, grim andgaunt and dirty, a famished and hunted wolf. He is an outlaw, has killeda man, is pursued in a blood-feud, and asks for relief of his outlawry. And so on and so on, a scene of rugged, lusty passions, hate andrevenge, but also love and brotherhood; drinking, laughing, swearing, fighting, savage vices but also savage virtues, noble contempt of death, and magnificent self-sacrifice. 

The chapter is lost, but we know what it must have been. King Orry wasits hero. Our Manx Alfred, our Manx Arthur, our Manx Lear. Then room forhim among our heroes! he must stand high. 

THE MANX MACBETH

The line of Orry came to an end at the beginning of the eleventhcentury. Scotland was then under the sway of the tyrant Macbeth, and, oddly enough, a parallel tragedy to that of Duncan and his kinsman wasbeing enacted in Man. A son of Harold the Black, of Iceland, GoddardCrovan, a mighty soldier, conquered the island and took the crown bytreachery, coming first as a guest of the Manx king. Treachery breedstreachery, duplicity is a bad seed to sow for loyalty, and the Manxpeople were divided in their allegiance. About twenty years afterCrovan's conquest the people of the south of the island took up armsagainst the people of the north, and the story goes that, when victorywavered, the women of the north rushed out to the help of theirhusbands, and so won the fight. For that day's work, the northern wiveswere given the right to half of all their husband's goods immovable, while the wives of the south had only a third. The last of the line ofGoddard Crovan died in 1265, and so ended the dynasty of the Norsemen inMan. They had been three hundred years there. They found us a peopleof the race and language of the people of Ireland, and they left usManxmen. They were our only true Manx kings, and when they fell, ourindependence as a nation ceased. 

THE MANX GLO'STER

Then the first pretender to the throne was one Ivar, a murderer, a sortof Richard III. , not all bad, but nearly all; said to possess virtuesenough to save the island and vices enough to ruin it. The islandwas surrendered to Scotland by treaty with Norway. The Manx hated theScotch. They knew them as a race of pirates. Some three centuries laterthere was one Cutlar MacCullock, whose name was a terror, so mercilesswere his ravages. Over the cradles of their infants the Manx motherssang this song:--

 God keep the good corn, the sheep and the bullocks, From Satan, from sin and from Cutlar MacCullock. 

Bad as Ivar was, the Scotch threatened to be worse. 

So the Manx, fearing that their kingdom might become a part of thekingdom of Scotland, supported Ivar. They were beaten. Ivar was a bravetiger, and died fighting. 

SCOTCH AND ENGLISH DOMINION

Man was conquered, and the King of Scotland appointed a lieutenant torule the island. But the Manx loved the Scotch no better as masters thanas pirates, and they petitioned the English king, Edward I. , to takethem under his protection. He came, and the Scotch were driven out. ButKing Robert Bruce reconquered the island for the Scotch. Yet again theisland fell to English dominion. This was in the time of Henry IV. It isa sorry story. Henry gave the island to the Earl of Salisbury. Salisburysold it to one Sir William le Scroop. A copy of the deed of sale exists. It puts a Manxman's teeth on edge. "With all the right of being crownedwith a golden crown. " Scroop was beheaded by Henry, who confiscated hisestate, and gave the island to the Earl of Northumberland. It is a sillyinventory, but let us get through with it. Northumberland was banished, and finally Henry made a grant of the island to Sir John de Stanley. This was in 1407. Thus there had been four Kings of Man--not one of whomhad, so far as I know, set foot on its soil--three grants of the island, and one miserable sale. Where the carcase is, there will the eagles begathered together. 

THE STANLEY DYNASTY

When the crown came to Sir John Stanley he was in no hurry to put it on. He paid no heed to his Manx subjects, and never saw his Manx kingdom. Idare say he thought the gift horse was something of a white elephant. Nowonder if he did, for words could not exaggerate the wretched conditionof the island and its people. The houses of the poor were hovels builtof sod, with floors of clay, and sooty rafters of briar and straw anddried gorse. The people were hardly better fed than their beasts. So Stanley left the island alone. It will be interesting to mark howdifferent was the mood of his children, and his children's children. Thesecond Stanley went over to Man and did good work there. He promulgatedour laws, and had them written down for the first time--they hadhitherto been locked in the breasts of the deemsters in imitation of thepractice of the Druids. The line of the Stanleys lasted more than threehundred years. Their rule was good for the island. They gave the tenantssecurity of tenure, and the landowners an act of settlement. They liftedthe material condition of our people, gave us the enjoyment of ourvenerable laws, and ratified our patriarchal Constitution. Honour to theStanleys of the Manx dynasty! They have left a good mark on Man. 

ILIAM DHOAN

And now I come to the one incident in modern Manx history which shares, with the three legs of Man and the Manx cat, the consciousness ofeverybody who knows anything about our island and its people. This isthe incident of the betrayal of Man and the Stanleys to the Parliamentin the time of Cromwell. It was a stirring drama, and though the curtainhas long fallen on it, the dark stage is still haunted by the ghostsof its characters. Chief among these was William Christian, the Manxmancalled Iliam Dhoan, Brown William, a familiar name that seems to hintof a fine type of man. You will find him in "Peveril of the Peak. " He isthere mixed up with Edward Christian, a very different person, just asPeel Castle is mixed up with Castle Rushen, consciously no doubt, andwith an eye to imaginative effects, for Scott had a brother in the Isleof Man who could have kept him from error if fact had been of any greatconsequence in the novelist's reckoning. 

Christian was Receiver-General, a sort of Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the great Earl of Derby. The Earl had faith in him, and put nearlyeverything under his command that fell within the province of hislordship. Then came the struggle with Rigby at Latham House, and theimprisonment of the Earl's six children by Fairfax. The Manx wereagainst the Parliament, and subscribed £500, probably the best part ofthe money in the island, in support of the king. Then the Earl of Derbyleft the island with a body of volunteers, and in going away committedhis wife to the care of Christian. You know what happened to him. Hewas taken prisoner in Lancashire, charged with bearing arms for CharlesStuart and holding the Isle of Man against the Commons, condemned, andexecuted at Bolton. 

With the forfeiture of the Earl the lordship of the island was grantedby Parliament to Lord Fairfax. He sent an army to take possession, butthe Countess-Dowager still held the island. Christian commanded the Manxmilitia. At this moment the Manx people showed signs of disaffection. They suddenly remembered two grievances, one was a grievance ofland tenure, the other was that a troop of soldiers was kept at freequarterage. I cannot but wish they had bethought them of both a littleearlier. They formed an association, and broke into rebellion againstthe Countess-Dowager within eight days of the Earl's execution. Perhapsthey did not know of the Earl's death, for news travelled slowly oversea in those days. But at least they knew of his absence. As a Manxman Iam not proud of them. 

During these eight days Mr. Receiver-General had begun to trim hissails. He had a lively wit, and saw which way things were going. Rumoursays he was at the root of the secret association. Be that as it may, hecarried the demands of the people to the Countess. She had no choice butto yield. The troops were disbanded. It was a bad victory. 

A fortnight before, when her husband lay under his death sentence, theCountess had offered the island in exchange for his life. So now Mr. Receiver-General used this act of love against her. He seized some ofthe forts, saying the Countess was selling the island to the Parliament. Then the army of the Parliament landed, and Christian straightwaydelivered the island up to it, protesting that he had taken the fortson its behalf. Some say the Countess was imprisoned in the vaults of theCastle. Others say she had a free pass to England. So ended act one. 

When the act-drop rose on act two, Mr. Receiver-General was in officeunder the Parliament. From the place of Receiver-General he was promotedto the place of Governor. He had then the money of the island under hiscontrol, and he used it badly. Deficits were found in his accounts. He fled to London, was arrested for a large debt, and clapped into theFleet. Then the Commonwealth fell, the Dowager Countess went upstairsagain, and Charles II. Restored the son of the great Earl to thelordship of Man. After that came the Act of Indemnity, a general pardonfor all who had taken part against the royal cause. Thereupon Christianwent back to the Isle of Man, was arrested on a charge of treason tothe Countess-Dowager of Derby, pleaded the royal act of general pardonagainst all proceedings libelled against him, was tried by the House ofKeys, and condemned to death. So ended act two. 

Christian had a nephew, Edward Christian, who was one of the twodeemsters. This man dissented from the voice of the court, and hastenedto London to petition the king. Charles is said to have heard his plea, and to have sent an order to suspend sentence. Some say the order cametoo late; some say the Governor had it early enough and ignored it. At all events Christian was shot. He protested that he had never beenanything but a faithful servant to the Derbys, and made a brave end. The place of his execution was Hango Hill, a bleak, bare stretch ofland with the broad sea Under it. The soldiers wished to bind Christian. "Trouble not yourselves for me, " he said, "for I that dare face deathin whatever shape he comes, will not start at your fire and bullets. "He pinned a piece of white paper on his breast, and said: "Hit this, andyou do your own work and mine. " Then he stretched forth his arms as asignal, was shot through the heart, and fell. Such was the end of BrownWilliam. He may have been a traitor, but he was no coward. 

When the chief actor in the tragedy had fallen, King Charles appeared, as Fortinbras appears in "Hamlet, " to make a review and a reckoning, andto take the spoils. He ordered the Governor, the remaining Deemsters, and three of the Keys to be brought before him, pronounced the executionof Christian to be a violation of his general pardon, and imposed severepenalties of fine and imprisonment. "The rest" in this drama has notbeen "silence. " One long clamour has followed. Christian's guilt hasbeen questioned, the legality of his trial has been disputed, thevalidity of Charles's censure of the judges has been denied. The caseis a mass of tangle, as every case must be that stands between the twostools of the Royal cause and the Commonwealth. But I shall make bold tosummarise the truth in a very few words:

First, that Christian was untrue to the house of Derby is as clear asnoonday. If he had been their loyal servant he could never have takenoffice under the Parliament. 

Second, though untrue to the Countess-Dowager, Christian could not beguilty of treason to her, because she had ceased to be the sovereignwhen her husband was executed. Fairfax was then the Lord of Man, andChristian was guilty of no treason to him. 

Third, whether true or untrue to the Countess-Dowager, the act of pardonhad nothing on earth to do with Christian, who was not charged withtreason to King Charles, but to the Manx reigning family. The Isle ofMan was not a dominion of England, and if Charles's order had arrivedbefore Christian's execution, the Governor, Keys, and Deemster wouldhave been fully justified in shooting the man in defiance of the king. 

I feel some diffidence in offering this opinion, but I can have nonewhatever in saying what I think of Christian. My fellow Manxmen arefor the most part his ardent supporters. They affirm his innocence, andprotest that he was a martyr-hero, declaring that at least he met hisfate by asserting the rights of his countrymen. I shall not hesitate tosay that I read the facts another way. This is how I see the man:

First, he was a servant of the Derbys, honoured, empowered, entrustedwith the care of his mistress, the Countess, when his master, the Earl, left the island to fight for the king. Second, eight days after hismaster's fate, he rose in rebellion against his mistress and seized someof the forts of defence. Third, he delivered the island to the army ofthe Parliament, and continued to hold his office under it. Fourth, herobbed the treasury of the island and fled from his new masters, theParliament. Fifth, when the new master fell he chopped round, became aking's man once more, and returned to the island on the strength of thegeneral pardon. Sixth, when he was condemned to death he, who had heldoffice under the Parliament, protested that he had never been anythingbut a faithful servant to the Derbys. 

Such is Christian. _He_ a hero! No, but a poor, sorry, knock-kneedtime-server. A thing of rags and patches. A Manx Vicar of Bray. Let ustalk of him as little as we may, and boast of him not at all. Man andManxmen have no need ol him. No, thank God, we can tell of better men. Let us turn his picture to the wall. 

THE ATHOL DYNASTY

The last of the Stanleys of the Manx dynasty died childless in 1735, andthen the lordship of Man devolved by the female line on the second Dukeof Athol by right of his grandmother, who was a daughter of the greatEarl of Derby. There is little that is good to say of the Lords of theHouse of Athol except that they sold the island. Almost the first, andquite the best, thing they did on coming to Man, was to try to get outof it. Let us make no disguise of the clear truth. The Manx Athols werebad, and nearly everything about them was bad. Never was the conditionof the island so abject as during their day. Never were the poor sopoor. Never was the name of Manxman so deservedly a badge of disgrace. The chief dishonour was that of the Athols. They kept a swashbucklercourt in their little Manx kingdom. Gentlemen of the type of BarryLyndon overran it. Captain Macheaths, Jonathan Wilds, and worse, weremasters of the island, which was now a refuge for debtors and felons. Roystering, philandering, gambling, fighting, such was the order ofthings. 

What days they had! What nights! His Grace of Athol was himself in thethick of it all. He kept a deal of company, chiefly rogues and rascals. For example, among his "lord captains" was one Captain Fletcher. ThisBlue Beard had a magnificent horse, to which, when he was merry, he madehis wife, who was a religious woman, kneel down and say her prayers. Themother of my friend, the Reverend T. E. Brown, came upon the dead bodyof one of these Barry Lyndons, who had fallen in a duel, and the bluemark was on the white forehead, where the pistol shot had been. Iremember to have heard of another Sir Lucius O'Trigger, whose body layexposed in the hold of a fishing-smack, while a parson read the burialservice from the quay. This was some artifice to prevent seizure fordebt. Oh, these good old times, with their soiled and dirty splendours!There was no lively chronicler, no Pepys, no Walpole then, to give us apicture of the Court of these Kings of Man. What a picture it musthave been! Can you not see it? The troops of gentlemen debtors fromthe Coffee Houses of London, with their periwigs, their canes, andfine linen; down on their luck, but still beruffled, besnuffed, andred-heeled. I can see them strutting with noses up, through old Douglasmarket-place on market morning, past the Manx folk in their homespun, their curranes and undyed stockings. Then out at Mount Murray, the homeof the Athols, their imitations of Vauxhall, torches, dancings, bows andcongés, bankrupt shows, perhaps, but the bankrupt Barrys making thebest of them--one seems to see it all. And then again, their genteelquarrels--quarrels were easily bred in that atmosphere. "Sir, I have thehonour to tell you that you are a pimp, lately escaped from the Fleet. ""My lord, permit me to say that you lie, that you are the son of a lady, and were born in a sponging-house. " Then out leapt the weapons, andpresently two men were crossing swords under the trees, and by-and-byone of them was left under the moonlight, with the shadow of the leavesplaying on his white face. 

Poor gay dogs, they are dead! The page of their history is lost. Perhapsthat is just as well. It must have been a dark page, maybe a little redtoo, even as blood runs red. You can see the scene of their revelries. It is an inn now. The walls seem to echo to their voices. But the tablesthey ate at are like themselves--worm-eaten. 

Good-bye to them! They have gone over the Styx. 

SMUGGLING AND WRECKING

Meanwhile, what of the Manx people? Their condition was pitiful. Anauthor who wrote fifty years after the advent of the Athols gives adescription of such misery that one's flesh creeps as one reads it. Badly housed, badly clad, badly fed, and hardly taught at all, the verypoor were in a state of abjectness unfit for dogs. Treat men as dogs andthey speedily acquire the habits of dogs, the vices of dogs, and none oftheir virtues. That was what happened to a part of the Manx people; theydeveloped the instincts of dogs, while their masters, the other dogs, the gay dogs, were playing their bad game together. Smuggling becamecommon on the coasts of Man. Spirits and tobacco were the goods chieflysmuggled, and the illicit trade rose to a great height. There was noway to check it. The island was an independent kingdom. My lord of Atholswept in the ill-gotten gains, and his people got what they could. Itwas a game of grab. Meantime the trade of the surrounding countries, England, Wales, and Ireland, was suffering grievously. The name of theisland must have smelt strong in those days. 

But there was a fouler odour than that of smuggling. Wrecking was notunknown. The island lent itself naturally to that evil work. The mistsof Little Mannanan, son of Lear, did not forsake our island when SaintPatrick swept him out of it. They continued to come up from the south, and to conspire with the rapid currents from the north to drive ships onto our rocks. Our coasts were badly lighted, or lighted not at all. Anopen flare stuck out from a pole at the end of a pier was often allthat a dangerous headland had to keep vessels away from it. Nothing waseasier than for a fishing smack to run down pole and flare together, asif by accident, on returning to harbour. But there was a worse dangerthan bad lights, and that was false lights. It was so easy to set them. Sometimes they were there of themselves, without evil intention of anyhuman soul, luring sailors to their destruction. Then when ships cameashore it was so easy to juggle with one's conscience and say it was thewill of God, and no bad doings of any man's. The poor sea-going men wereat the bottom of the sea by this time, and their cargo was drifting upwith the tide, so there was nothing to do but to take it. Such was theway of things. The Manxman could find his excuses. He was miserablypoor, he had bad masters, smuggling was his best occupation, his coastswere indifferently lighted, ships came ashore of themselves--what was heto do? That the name of Manxman did not become a curse, an execration, and a reproach in these evil days of the Athols seems to say thatbehind all this wicked work there were splendid virtues doing noble dutysomewhere. The real sap, the true human heart of Manxland, was somehowkept alive. Besides cut-throats in ruffles, and wreckers in homespun, there were true, sweet, simple-hearted people who would not sell theirsouls to fill their mouths. 

Does it surprise you that some of all this comes within the memory ofmen still living? I am myself well within the period of middle life, and, though too young to touch these evil days, I can remember menand women who must have been in the thick of them. On the north of theisland is Kirk Maughold Head, a bold, rugged headland going far out intothe sea. Within this rocky foreland lie two bays, sweet coverlets ofblue waters, washing a shingly shore under shelter of dark cliffs. Oneof these bays is called Port-y-Vullin, and just outside of it, between the mainland and the head, is a rock, known as the Carrick, atreacherous grey reef, visible at low water, and hidden at flood-tide. On the low _brews_ of Port-y-Vullin stood two houses, the one a mill, worked by the waters coming down from the near mountain of Barrule, the other a weaver's cottage. Three weavers lived together there, allbachelors, and all old, and never a woman or child among them--Jemmy ofeighty years, Danny of seventy, and Billy of sixty something. Year in, year out, they worked at their looms, and early or late, whenever youpassed on the road behind, you heard the click of them. Fishermen comingback to harbour late at night always looked for the light of theirwindows. "Yander's Jemmy-Danny-Billy's, " they would say, and steer homeby that landmark. But the light which guided the native seamen misledthe stranger, and many a ship in the old days was torn to pieces on thejagged teeth of that sea-lion, the Carrick. Then, hearing loud humancries above the shrieks of wind and wave, the three helpless old menwould come tottering down to the beach, like three innocent witches, trembling and wailing, holding each other's hands like little children, and never once dreaming of what bad work the candles over their loomshad done. 

But there were those who were not so guileless. Among them was a sad oldsalt, whom I shall call Hommy-Billy-mooar, Tommy, son of big Billy. DidI know him, or do I only imagine him as I have heard of him? I cannotsay, but nevertheless I see him plainly. One of his eyes was gone, andthe other was badly damaged. His face was of stained mahogany, one sideof his mouth turned up, the other side turned down, he could laugh andcry together. He was half landsman, tilling his own croft, half seaman, going out with the boats to the herrings. In his youth he had sailedon a smuggler, running in from Whitehaven with spirits. The joy of "thetrade, " as they called smuggling, was that a man could buy spirits attwo shillings a gallon for sale on the island, and drink as much as he"plazed abooard for nothin'. " When Hommy married, he lived in a housenear the church, the venerable St. Maughold away on the headland, withits lonely churchyard within sound of the sea. 

There on tempestuous nights the old eagle looked out from his eyrie onthe doings of the sea, over the back of the cottage of the old weaversto the Carrick. If anything came ashore he awakened his boys, scurriedover to the bay, seized all they could carry, stole back home, hid histreasures in the thatch of the roof, or among the straw of the loft, went off to bed, and rose in the morning with an innocent look, andlistened to the story of last night's doings with a face full ofsurprise. They say that Hommy carried on this work for years, and thoughmany suspected, none detected him, not even his wife, who was a goodMethodist. The poor woman found him out at last, and, being troubledwith a conscience, she died, and Hommy buried her in Kirk Maugholdchurchyard, and put a stone over her with a good inscription. Then hewent on as before. But one morning there was a mighty hue and cry. Aship had been wrecked on the Carrick, and the crew who were saved hadseen some rascals carrying off in the darkness certain rolls of Irishcloth which they had thrown overboard. Suspicion lit on Hommy and hisboys. Hommy was quite hurt. "Wrecking was it? Lord a-massy! To think, to think!" Revenue officers were to come to-morrow to search his house. Those rolls of Irish cloth were under the thatch, above the dry gorsestored up on the "lath" in his cowhouse. That night he carried them offto the churchyard, took up the stone from over his wife's grave, dug thegrave open and put in the cloth. Next day his one eye wept a good dealwhile the officers of revenue made their fruitless search. "Aw well, well, did they think because a man was poor he had no feelings?"Afterwards he pretended to become a Methodist, and then he removed thecloth from his wife's grave because he had doubts about how she couldrise in the resurrection with such a weight on her coffin. Poor oldHommy, he came to a bad end. He spent his last days in jail in CastleRushen. A one-eyed mate of his told me he saw him there. Hommy wasunhappy. He said "Castle Rushen wasn't no place for a poor man when hewas gettin' anyways ould. "

THE REVESTMENT

It is hardly a matter for much surprise that the British Government didwhat it could to curb the smuggling that was rife in Man in the days ofthe Athols. The bad work had begun in the days of the Derbys, when anAct was passed which authorised the Earl of Derby to dispose of hisroyalty and revenue in the island, and empowered the Lords of theTreasury to treat with him for the sale of it. The Earl would not sell, and when the Duke of Athol was asked to do so, he tried to put mattersoff. But the evil had by this time grown so grievously that the BritishGovernment threatened to strip the Duke without remuneration. Then heagreed to accept £70, 000 as compensation for the absolute surrender ofthe island. He was also to have £2000 out of the Irish revenue, which, as well as the English revenue, was to benefit by the suppression of theclandestine trade. This was in exchange for some £6000 a year whichwas the Duke's Manx revenue, much of it from duties and customs paidin goods which were afterwards smuggled into England, Ireland, andScotland. So much for his Grace of Athol. Of course the Manx people gotnothing. The thief was punished, the receiver was enriched; it is theway of the world. 

In our history of Man, we call this sweet transaction, which occurred in1765, "The Revestment, " meaning the revesting of the island in thecrown of England. Our Manx people did not like it at all. I have heard arugged old song on the subject sung at Manx inns:

 For the babes unborn shall rue the day When the Isle of Man was sold away; And there's ne'er an old wife that loves a dram But she will lament for the Isle of Man. 

Clearly drams became scarce when "the trade" was put down. But, indeed, the Manx had the most strange fears and ludicrous sorrows. The one cameof their anxiety about the fate of their ancient Constitution, the othercame of their foolish generosity. They dreaded that the government ofthe island would be merged into that of England, and they imagined thatbecause the Duke of Athol had been compelled to surrender, he had beenbadly treated. Their patriotism was satisfied when the Duke of Athol wasmade Governor-in-Chief under the English crown, for then it was clearthat they were to be left alone; but their sympathy was moved to see himcome back as servant who had once been lord. They had disliked the Dukeof Athol down to that hour, but they forgot their hatred in sight of hishumiliation, and when he landed in his new character, they receivedhim with acclamations. I am touched by the thought of my countrymen'sunselfish conduct in that hour; but I thank God I was not alive towitness it. 

I should have shrieked with laughter. The absurdity of the situationpasses the limits even of a farce. A certain Duke, who had received£6000 a year, whereof a large part came of an immoral trade, had beento London and sold his interest in it for £70, 000, because if he hadnot taken that, he would probably have got nothing. With thirteenyears' purchase of his insecure revenue in his pocket, and £2000 a yearpromised, and his salary as Governor-in-Chief besides, he returns to theisland where half the people are impoverished by his sale of the island, and nobody else has received a copper coin, and everybody is doomed topay back interest on what the Duke has received! What is the picture?The Duke lands at the old jetty, and there his carriage is waiting totake him to the house, where he and his have kept swashbuckler courts, with troops of fine gentlemen debtors from London. The Manxmen forgeteverything except that his dignity is reduced. They unyoke his horses, get into his shafts, drag him through the streets, toss up their capsand cry hurrah! hurrah! One seems to see the Duke sitting there withhis arms folded, and his head on his breast. He can't help laughing. Thething is too ridiculous. Oh, if Swift had been there to see it, what ascorching satire we should have had!

But the Athols soon spirited away their popularity. First they clamouredfor a further sum on account of the lost revenues, and they got it. Thenthey tried to appropriate part of the income of the clergy. Again, theyput members of their family into the bishopric, and one of them sold histithes to a factor who tried to extort them by strong measures, whichled to green crop riots. In the end, their gross selfishness, whichthought of their own losses but forgot the losses of the people, raisedsuch open marks of aversion in the island that they finally signified tothe king their desire to sell all their remaining rights, their landand manorial rights. This they did in 1829, receiving altogether, forcustom, revenue, tithes, patronage of the bishopric, and quit rents, the sum of £416, 000. Such was the value to the last of the Athols of theManx dynasty, of that little hungry island of the Irish Sea, which HenryIV. Gave to the Stanleys, and Sir John de Stanley did not think worthwhile to look at. So there was an end of the House of Athol. Exit theHouse of Athol! The play goes on without them. 

HOME RULE

It might be said that with the final sale of 1829 the history of theIsle of Man came to a close. Since then we have been in the happycondition of the nation without a history. Man is now a dependency ofthe English crown. The crown is represented by a Lieutenant-Governor. Our old Norse Constitution remains. We have Home Rule, and it workswell. The Manx people are attached to the throne of England, and herMajesty has not more loyal subjects in her dominions. We are deeplyinterested in Imperial affairs, but we have no voice in them. I do notthink we have ever dreamt of a day when we should send representativesto Westminster. Our sympathies as a nation are not altogether, I think, with the party of progress. We are devoted to old institutions, andhold fast to such of them as are our own. All this is, perhaps, what youwould expect of a race of islanders with our antecedents. 

Our social history has not been brilliant. I do not gather that the Isleof Man was ever Merry Man. Not even in its gayest days do we catch anynote of merriment amid the rumpus of its revelries. It is an odd thingthat woman plays next to no part whatever in the history of the island. Surely ours is the only national pie in which woman has not had afinger. In this respect the island justifies the ungallant reading ofits name--it is distinctly the Isle of Man. Not even amid the glitterand gewgaws of our Captain Macheaths do you catch the glint of the gownof a Polly. No bevy of ladies, no merry parties, no pageants worthy ofthe name. No, our social history gives no idea of Merry Man. 

Our civil history is not glorious. We are compelled to allow that ithas no heroism in it. There has been no fight for principle, no braveendurance of wrong. Since the days of Orry, we have had nothing to tellin Saga, if the Sagaman were here. We have played no part in the work ofthe world. The great world has been going on for ten centuries withouttaking much note of us. We are a little nation, but even little nationshave held their own. We have not. 

One great king we have had, King Orry. He gave us our patriarchalConstitution, and it is a fine thing. It combines most of the bestqualities of representative government. Its freedom is more free thanthat of some republics. The people seem to be more seen, and their voicemore heard, than in any other form of government whose operation I havewitnessed. Yet there is nothing noisy about our Home Rule. And thisConstitution we have kept alive for a thousand years, while it has diedout of every other Norse kingdom. That is, perhaps, our highest nationalhonour. We may have played a timid part; we may have accepted rulersfrom anywhere; we may never have made a struggle for independence; andno Manxman may ever have been strong enough to stand up alone for hispeople. It is like our character that we have taken things easily, andinstead of resisting our enemies, or throwing them from our rockyisland into the sea, we have been law abiding under lawless mastersand peaceful under oppression. But this one thing we have done: wehave clung to our patriarchal Constitution, not caring a ha'p'orthwho administered our laws so long as the laws were our own. That issomething; I think it is a good deal. It means that through many changesundergone by the greater peoples of the world, we are King Orry's menstill. Let me in a last word tell you a story which shows what thatdescription implies. 

ORRY'S SONS

On the west coast of the Isle of Man stands the town of Peel. It is alittle fishing port, looking out on the Irish Sea. To the north ofit there is a broad shore, to the south lies the harbour with a rockyheadland called Contrary Head; in front--until lately divided from themainland by a narrow strait--is a rugged island rock. On this rock standthe broken ruins of a castle, Peel Castle, and never did castle standon a grander spot. The sea flows round it, beating on the jagged cliffsbeneath, and behind it are the wilder cliffs of Contrary. In the waterbetween and around Contrary contrary currents flow, and when the windis high they race and prance there like an unbroken horse. It is a grandscene, but a perilous place for ships. 

One afternoon in October of 1889 a Norwegian ship (strange chance!), the_St George_ (name surely chosen by the Fates!), in a fearful tempest wasdrifting on to Contrary Head. She was labouring hard in the heavysea, rearing, plunging, creaking, groaning, and driving fast throughclamouring winds and threshing breakers on to the cruel, black, steephorns of rock. All Peel was down at the beach watching her. Flakes ofsea-foam were flying around, and the waves breaking on the beach werescooping up the shingle and flinging it through the air like sleet. 

Peel has a lifeboat, and it was got out. There were so many volunteersthat the harbour-master had difficulties of selection. The boat got off;the coxswain was called Charlie Cain; one of his crew was named Gorry, otherwise Orry. It was a perilous adventure. The Norwegian had lost hermasts, and her spars were floating around her in the snow-like surf. Shewas dangerous to approach, but the lifeboat reached her. Charlie criedout to the Norwegian captain: "How many of you?" The answer came back, "Twenty-two!" Charlie counted them as they hung on at the ship's side, and said: "I only see twenty-one; not a man shall leave the ship untilyou bring the odd one on deck. " The odd one, a disabled man, had beenleft below to his fate. Now he was brought up, and all were taken aboardthe lifeboat. 

On landing at Peel there was great excitement, men cheering and womencrying. The Manx women spotted a baby among the Norwegians, fought forit, one woman got it, and carried it off to a fire and dry clothing. Itwas the captain's wife's baby, and an hour afterwards the poor captain'swife, like a creature distracted, was searching for it all over thetown. And to heighten the scene, report says that at that tremendousmoment a splendid rainbow spanned the bay from side to side. That oughtto be true if it is not. 

It was a brilliant rescue, but the moving part of the story is yet totell. The Norwegian Government, touched by the splendid heroism of theManxmen, struck medals for the lifeboat men and sent them across to theGovernor. These medals were distributed last summer on the island rockwithin the ruins of old Peel Castle. Think of it! One thousand yearsbefore, not far from that same place, Orry the Viking came ashore fromDenmark or Norway. And now his Manx sons, still bearing his very name, Orry, save from the sea the sons of the brethren he left behind, anddown the milky way, whence Orry himself once came, come now to theManxmen the thanks and the blessings of their kinsmen, Orry's father'schildren. 

Such a story as this thrills one to the heart. It links Manxmen to thegreat past. What are a thousand years before it? Time sinks away, andthe old sea-warrior seems to speak to us still through the surf of thatstorm at Peel. 

THE STORY OF THE MANX BISHOPS

Some years ago, in going down the valley of Foxdale, towards the mouthof Glen Rushen, I lost my way on a rough and unbeaten path under themountain called Slieu Whallin. There I was met by a typical old Manxfarmer, who climbed the hillside some distance to serve as my guide. "Aw, man, " said he, "many a Sunday I've crossed these mountains insnow and hail together. " I asked why on Sunday. "You see, " said the oldfellow, "I'm one of those men that have been guilty of what St. Paulcalls the foolishness of preaching. " It turned out that he was a localpreacher to the Wesleyans, and that for two score years or more, in allseasons, in all weathers, every Sunday, year in, year out, he had madethe journey from his farm in Foxdale to the western villages of KirkPatrick, where his voluntary duty lay. He left me with a laugh anda cheery word. "Ask again at the cottage at the top of the brew, " heshouted. "An ould widda lives there with her gel. " At the summit of thehill, just under South Barrule, with Cronk-ny-arrey-Lhaa to the west, Icame upon a disused lead mine, called the old Cross Vein, its shaft opensave for a plank or two thrown across it, and filled with water almostto the surface of the ground. And there, under the lee of the rooflesswalls of the ruined engine-house, stood the tiny one-story cottage whereI had been directed to inquire my way again. I knocked, and then saw theouter conditions of an existence about as miserable as the mind of mancan conceive. The door was opened by a youngish woman, having a thin, white face, and within the little house an elderly woman was breakingscraps of vegetables into a pot that swung from a hook above a handfulof turf fire, which burned on the ground. They were the widow anddaughter. Their house consisted of two rooms, a living room and asleeping closet, both open to the thatch, which was sooty with smoke. The floor was of bare earth, trodden hard and shiny. There was onelittle window in each apartment, but after the breakages of years, the panes were obscured by rags stuffed into the gaps to keep out theweather. The roof bore traces of damp, and I asked if the rain came intothe house. "Och, yes, and bad, bad, bad!" said the elder woman. "He leftus, sir, years ago. " That was her way of saying that her husband wasdead, and that since his death there had been no man to do an oddjob about the place. The two women lived by working in the fields, atweeding, at planting potatoes, at thinning cabbages, and at the hay inits season. Their little bankrupt barn belonged to them, and it was allthey had. In that they lived, or lingered, on the mountain top, along stretch of bare hillside, away from any neighbour, alone in theirpoverty, with mountains before and behind, the broad grey sea, withoutship or sail, down a gully to the west, nothing visible to the eastsave the smoke from the valley where lay the habitations of men, nothingaudible anywhere but the deep rumble of the waves' bellow, or the chirpof the birds overhead, or, perhaps, when the wind was southerly, thechurch bells on Sunday morning. Never have I looked upon such lonelypenury, and yet there, even there, these forlorn women kept their soulsalive. "Yes, " they said, "we're working when we can get the work, andtrusting, trusting, trusting still. "

I have lingered too long over this poor adventure of losing my way toGlen Rushen, but my little sketch may perhaps get you close to that sideof Manx life whereon I wish to speak to-day. I want to tell the historyof religion in Man, so far as we know it; and better, to my thinking, than a grave or solid disquisition on the ways and doings of Bishops orSpiritual Barons, are any peeps into the hearts and home lives of theManx, which will show what is called the "innate religiosity" of thehumblest of the people. To this end also, when I have discharged myscant duty to church history, or perhaps in the course of my hastyexposition of it, I shall dwell on some of those homely manners andcustoms, which, more than prayer-books and printed services, tell uswhat our fathers believed, what we still believe, and how we standtowards that other life, that inner life, that is not concerned withwhat we eat and what we drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed. 

THE DRUIDS

And now, just as the first chapter of our Manx civil history is lost, so the first chapter of our church history is lost. That the Druidsoccupied the island seems to some people to be clear from many Celticnames and some remains, such as we are accustomed to call Druidical, and certain customs still observed. Perhaps worthy of a word is thecircumstance that in the parish where the Bishop now lives, and hasalways lived, Kirk Michael, there is a place called by a name which inthe Manx signifies Chief Druid. Strangely are the faiths of the ageslinked together. 

CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY

We do not know, with any certainty, at what time the island wasconverted to Christianity. The accepted opinion is that Christianity wasestablished in Man by St. Patrick about the middle of the fifth century. The story goes that the Saint of Ireland was on a voyage thither fromEngland, when a storm cast him ashore on a little islet on the westerncoast of Man. This islet was afterwards called St. Patrick's Isle. St. Patrick built his church on it. The church was rebuilt eight centurieslater within the walls of a castle which rose on the same rocky site. Itbecame the cathedral church of the island. When the Norwegians came theyrenamed the islet Holm Isle. Tradition says that St. Patrick's comingwas in the time of Mannanan, the magician, our little Manx Prospero. Italso says that St. Patrick drove Mannanan away, and that St. Patrick'ssuccessor, St. Germain, followed up the good work of exterminating evilspirits by driving out of the island all venomous creatures whatever. Wesometimes bless the memory of St. Germain, and wish he would come again. 

THE EARLY BISHOPS OF MAN

After St. Germain came St. Maughold. This Bishop was a sort oftransfigured Manx Caliban. I trust the name does him no wrong. He hadbeen an Irish prince, had lived a bad, gross life as a robber at thehead of a band of robbers, had been converted by St. Patrick, and, resolving to abandon the temptations of the world, had embarked on thesea in a wicker boat without oar or helm. Almost he had his will atonce, but the north wind, which threatened to remove him from thetemptations of this world, cast him ashore on the north of the Isle ofMan. There he built his church, and the rocky headland whereon it standsis still known by his name. High on the craggy cliff-side, lookingtowards the sea, is a seat hewn out of the rock. This is called St. Maughold's Chair. Not far away there is a well supposed to possessmiraculous properties. It is called St. Maughold's Well. Thus traditionhas perpetuated the odour of his great sanctity, which is the moreextraordinary in a variation of his legend, which says that it was notafter his conversion, and in submission to the will of God, that he putforth from Ireland in his wicker boat, but that he was thrust out thus, with hands and feet bound, by way of punishment for his crimes as acaptain of banditti. 

But if Maughold was Caliban in Ireland, he was more than Prospero inMan. Rumour of his piety went back to Ireland, and St. Bridget, who hadfounded a nunnery at Kildare, resolved on a pilgrimage to the goodman's island. She crossed the water, attended by her virgins, calledher daughters of fire, founded a nunnery near Douglas, worked miraclesthere, touched the altar in testimony of her virginity, whereupon itgrew green and flourished. This, if I may be pardoned the continuedparallel, is our Manx Miranda. And indeed it is difficult to shake offthe idea that Shakespeare must have known something of the earlystory of Man, its magicians and its saints. We know the perfidy ofcircumstance, the lying tricks that fact is always playing with us, toowell and painfully to say anything of the kind with certainty. But theangles of resemblance are many between the groundwork of the "Tempest"and the earliest of Manx records. Mannanan-beg-Mac-y-Lear, the magicianwho surrounded the island with mists when enemies came near in ships;Maughold, the robber and libertine, bound hand and foot, and drivenashore in a wicker boat; and then Bridget, the virgin saint. Moreover, the stories of Little Man-nanan, of St. Patrick, and of St. Maugholdwere printed in Manx in the sixteenth century. Truly that is notenough, for, after all, we have no evidence that Shakespeare, who kneweverything, knew Manx. But then Man has long been famous for its seamen. We had one of them at Trafalgar, holding Nelson in his arms when hedied. The best days, or the worst days--which?--of the trade of the WestCoast of Africa saw Manx captains in the thick of it. Shall I confess toyou that in the bad days of the English slave trade the four merchantmenthat brought the largest black cargo to the big human auction mart atthe Goree Piazza at Liverpool were commanded by four Manxmen! They werea sad quartet. One of them had only one arm and an iron hook; anotherhad only one arm and one eye; a third had only one leg and a stump; thefourth was covered with scars from the iron of the chains of a slavewhich he had worn twelve months at Barbadoes. Just about enough humanityin the four to make one complete man. But with vigour enough, fireenough, heart enough--I daren't say soul enough--in their dismemberedold trunks to make ten men apiece; born sea-rovers, true sons of Orry, their blood half brine. Well, is it not conceivable that in thoseearlier days of treasure seeking, when Elizabeth's English captains werespoiling the Spaniard in the Indies, Manx sailors were also there?If so, why might not Shakespeare, who must have ferreted out many astranger creature, have found in some London tavern an old Manx sea-dog, who could tell him of the Manx Prospero, the Manx Caliban, and the ManxMiranda?

But I have rambled on about my sailors; I must return to my Bishops. They seem to have been a line of pious, humble, charitable, godly menat the beginning. Irishmen, chiefly, living the lives of hermitsand saints. Apparently they were at first appointed by the peoplethemselves. Would it be interesting to know the grounds of selection?One was selected for his sanctity, a natural qualification, but anotherwas chosen because he had a pleasant face, and a fine portly figure;not bad qualifications, either. Thus things went on for about a hundredyears, and, for all we know, Celtic Bishops and Celtic people livedtogether in their little island in peace, hearing nothing of the loudreligious hubbub that was disturbing Europe. 

BISHOPS OF THE WELSH DYNASTY

Then came the rule of the Welsh kings, and, though we know but littlewith certainty, we seem to realise that it brought great changes to thereligious' life of Man. The Church began to possess itself of lands: thebaronial territories of the island fell into the hands of the clergy;the early Bishops became Barons. This gave the Church certain powersof government. The Bishops became judges, and as judges they possessedgreat power over the person of the subject. Sometimes they stood in thehighest place of all, being also Governor to the Welsh Kings. Then theywere called Sword-Bishops. Their power at such times, when the crosierand sword were in the two hands of one man, must have been portentous, and even terrible. We have no records that picture what came of that. But it is not difficult to imagine the condition. The old order ofthings had passed away. The hermit-saints, the saintly hermits, hadgone, and in their place were monkish barons, living in abbeys andmonasteries, whipping the poor bodies of their people, as well ascomforting their torn hearts, fattening on broad lands, praying eachwith his lips: "Give us this day our daily bread, " but saying each tohis soul: "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thineease; eat, drink, and be merry. "

BISHOPS OF THE NORSE DYNASTY

Little as we know of these times, we see that things must have come toa pretty pass, for when the Scandinavian dynasty came in theecclesiastical authorities were forbidden to exercise civil control overany subjects of the king that were not also the tenants of their ownbaronies. So the Bishops were required to confine themselves to keepingtheir own house in order. The Norse Constitution established in Man byKing Orry made no effort to overthrow the Celtic Church founded by St. Patrick, and corrupted by his Welsh successors, but it curtailed itsliberties, and reduced its dignity. It demanded as an act of fealty thatthe Bishop or chief Baron should hold the stirrup of the King's saddle, as he mounted his horse at Tynwald. But it still suffered the Bishop andcertain of his clergy to sit in the highest court of the legislature. The Church ceased to be purely Celtic; it became Celto-Scandinavian, otherwise Manx. It was under the Archbishop of Drontheim for itsMetropolitan, and its young clergy were sent over to Drontheim to beeducated. Its revenues were apportioned after the most apostolic manner;one-third of the tithes to the Bishop for his maintenance, the supportof his courts, his churches, and (miserable conclusion! ) his prisons;one-third to the priests, and the remaining third to the relief of thepoor and the education of youth. It is a curious and significant factthat when the Reformation came the last third was seized by the lord. Good old lordly trick, we know it well!

SODOR AND MAN

The Bishopric of the island was now no longer called the Bishopric ofMan, but Sodor and Man. The title has given rise to much speculation. One authority derives it from _Soterenssis_, a name given by Danishwriters to the western islands, and afterwards corrupted to _Soderensk_. Another authority derives it from _Sudreyjas_, signifying in theNorwegian the Southern Isles. A third derives it from the Greek _Soter_, Saviour, to whose name the cathedral of Iona was dedicated. And yet afourth authority derives it from the supposed third name of the littleislet rock called variously Holm Isle, Sodor, Peel, and St. Patrick'sIsle, whereon St. Patrick or St. Germain built his church, I can claimno right to an opinion where these good doctors differ, and shallcontent myself with saying that the balance of belief is in favour ofthe Norwegian derivation, which offers this explanation of the title ofBishop of Sodor and Man, that the Isle of Man was not included by theNorsemen in the southern cluster of islands called the Sudereys, andthat the Bishop was sometimes called the Bishop of Man and the Isles, and sometimes Bishop of the Sudereys and the Isle of Man. Only onewarning note shall I dare, as an ignorant layman, to strike on thatdefinition, and it is this: that the title of Bishop of Sodor dates backto the seventh century certainly, and that the Norseman did not comesouth until three centuries later. 

THE EARLY BISHOPS OF THE HOUSE OF STANLEY

But now I come to matters whereon I have more authority to speak. Whenthe Isle of Man passed to the Stanley family, the Bishopric fell totheir patronage, and they lost no time in putting their own people intoit. It was then under the English metropolitan of Canterbury, but earlyin the sixteenth century it became part of the province of York. Aboutthat time the baronies, the abbeys, and the nunneries were suppressed. It does not appear that the change of metropolitan had made muchchange of religious life. Apparently the clergy kept the Manx people inmiserable ignorance. It was not until the seventeenth century that theBook of Common Prayer was translated into the Manx language. The Gospelsand the Acts were unknown to the Manx until nearly a century later. Norwas this due to ignorance of the clergy of the Manx tongue, for mostof them must have been Manxmen, and several of the Bishops were Manxmenalso. But grievous abuses had by this time attached themselves to theManx Church, and some of them were flagrant and wicked, and some wereimpudent and amusing. 

TITHES IN KIND

Naturally the more outrageous of the latter sort gathered about theprocess of collecting tithes. 

Tithes were paid in kind in those days. It was not until well within ourown century that they were commuted to a money payment. The Manxman paidtithe on everything. He began to pay tithe before coming into the world, and he went on paying tithe even after he had gone out of it. This isa hard saying, but nevertheless a simple truth. Throughout hisjourney from the cradle to the grave, the Manxman paid tithe on all heinherited, on all he had, on all he did, on all his wife did, and onall he left behind him. We have the equivalent of this in England atthe present hour, but it was yet more tyrannical, and infinitely moreludicrous, in the Isle of Man down to the year 1839. It is only vanityand folly and vexation of spirit to quarrel with the modern Englishtaxgatherer; you are sure to go the wall, with humiliation and withdisgrace. It was not always so when taxes were paid in kind. There was, at least, the satisfaction of cheating. The Manx people could not alwaysdeny themselves that satisfaction. For instance, they were required topay tithe of herring as soon as the herring boats were brought abovefull sea mark, and there were ways of counting known to the fishermenwith which the black-coated arithmeticians of the Church were not ableto cope. A man paid tithe on such goods and even such clothes as hiswife possessed on their wedding day, and young brides became wondrouswise in the selection for the vicarage of the garments that were out offashion. A corpse-present was demanded over the grave of a dead man outof the horses and cattle whereof he died possessed, and dying men leftverbal wills which consigned their broken-winded horses and dry cows tothe mercy and care of the clergyman. You will not marvel much that suchdealings led to disputes, sometimes to quarrels, occasionally to riots. In my boyhood I heard old people over the farm-house fire chuckleand tell of various wise doings, to outwit the parson. One of theseconcerned the oats harvest. When the oats were in sheaf, the parson'scart came up, driven by the sumner, the parson's official servant. Thegate of the field was thrown open, and honestly and religiously onesheaf out of every ten was thrown into the cart. But the husbandman hadbeen thrifty in advance. The parson's sheaves had all been grouped thickabout the gate, and they were the shortest, and the thinnest, and theblackest, and the dirtiest, and the poorest that the field had yielded. Similar were the doings at the digging of the potatoes, but the scenesof recrimination which often ensued were usually confined to the farmerand the sumner. More outrageous contentions with the priest himselfsometimes occurred within the very walls of the church. It was thepractice to bring tithe of butter and cheese and eggs, and lay it on thealtar on Sunday. This had to be done under pain of exclusion from thecommunion, and that was a penalty most grievous to material welfare. Sothe Manxmen and Manxwomen were compelled to go to church much as theywent to market, with their butter- and egg-baskets over their arms. Itis a ludicrous picture, as one sees it in one's mind's eye, but whatcomes after reaches the extremity of farce. Say the scene is Maugholdold church, once the temple of the saintly hermit. It is Sunday morning, the bells are ringing, and Juan-beg-Marry-a-thruss, a rascally oldskinflint, is coming along with a basket. It contains some butter thathe could not sell at Ramsey market yesterday because it was rank, and afew eggs which he knows to be stale and addled--the old hen has sat onthem, and they have brought forth nothing. These he places reverently onthe altar. But the parson knows Juan, and proceeds to examine his tithe. May I take so much liberty with history, and with the desecrated oldchurch, as to imagine the scene which follows?

Priest, pointing contemptuously towards the altar:"Juan-beg-Marry-a-thruss, what is this?" "Butter and eggs, so plaze yourreverence. " "Pig-swill and chalk you mean, man!" "Aw 'deed if I'd knownyour reverence was so morthal partic'lar the ould hen herself shouldhave been layin' some fresh eggs for your reverence. "

"Take them away, you thief of the Church! Do you think what isn't fitfor your pig is good enough for your priest? Bring better, or never letme look on your wizened old wicked face again. "

Exit Juan-beg-Marry-a-thruss, perhaps with butter and eggs flying afterhis retreating figure. 

THE GAMBLING BISHOP

This is an imaginary picture, but no less outrageous things happenedwhereof the records remain. A demoralised laity usually co-exists witha demoralised clergy, and there are some bad stories of the Bishops whopreceded the Reformation. There is one story of a Bishop of that period, who was a gross drunkard and notorious gambler. He played with hisclergy as long as they had anything to lose, and then he played with adeemster and lost five hundred pounds himself. Poor little island, thathad two such men for its masters, the one its master in the things ofthis world, the other its master in the things of the world to come! Ifanything is needful to complete the picture of wretchedness in whichthe poor Manx people must have existed then, it is the knowledge of whatmanner of man a deemster was in those days, what his powers were, andhow he exercised them. 

THE DEEMSTERS

The two deemsters--a name of obvious significance, deem-sters, such asdeem the laws--were then the only judges of the island, all other legalfunctionaries being of more recent date. On entering into office, thedeemster took an oath, which is sworn by all deemsters to this day, declaring by the wonderful works which God hath miraculously wrought insix days and seven nights, that he would execute the laws of the islandjustly "betwixt party and party, as indifferently as the herring'sbackbone doth lie in the midst of the fish. " But these laws down to thetime of the second Stanley existed only in the breasts of the deemstersthemselves, being therefore called Breast Laws, and thus they weresupposed to be handed down orally from deemster to deemster. Thesuperstition fostered corruption as well as incapacity, and it will notbe wronging the truth to say that some of the deemsters of old time wereboth ignorant and unprincipled. Their jurisdiction was absolute in allthat were then thought to be temporal affairs, beginning with a debtof a shilling, and going up to murder. They kept their courts in thecentres of their districts, one of them being in the north of theisland, the other in the south, but they were free to hold a courtanywhere, and at any time. A deemster riding from Ramsey to Peel mightfind his way stopped by a noisy claimant, who held his defendant by thelug, having dragged him bodily from the field to the highway, to receiveinstant judgment from the judge riding past. Or at midnight, in hisown home, a deemster might be broken in upon by a clamorous gang ofdisputants and their witnesses, who came from the pot-house for thesettlement of their differences. On such occasions, the deemsterinvariably acted on the sound old legal maxim, once recognised by an Actof Parliament, that suits not likely to bear good costs should always besettled out of court. First, the deemster demanded his fee. If neitherclaimant nor defendant could give it, he probably troubled himself nofurther than to take up his horse-whip and drive both out into the road. I dare say there were many good men among deemsters of the old order, who loved justice for its own sake, and liked to see the poor and theweak righted, but the memory of deemsters of this kind is not green. Thebulk of men are not better than their opportunities, and the temptationsof the deemsters of old were neither few nor slight. 

THE BISHOPRIC VACANT

With such masters in the State, and such masters in the Church, theisland fell low in material welfare, and its poverty reacted on both. Within fifty years the Bishopric was nineteen years vacant, though itmay be that at the beginning of the seventeenth century this was partlydue to religious disturbances. Then in 1697, with the monasteries andnunneries dispersed, the abbeys in ruins, the cathedral church a wreck, the clergy sunk in sloth and ignorance, there came to the Bishopric, four years vacant, a true man whose name on the page of Manx Churchhistory is like a star on a dark night, when only one is shining--BishopThomas Wilson. He was a strange and complex creature, half angel, only half man, the serenest of saints, and yet almost the bitterest oftyrants. Let me tell you about him. 

BISHOP WILSON

Thomas Wilson was from Trinity College, Dublin, and became domesticchaplain to William, Earl of Derby, and preceptor to the Earl's son, whodied young. While he held this position, the Bishopric of Sodor andMan became vacant, and it was offered to him. He declined it, thinkinghimself unworthy of so high a trust. The Bishopric continued vacant. Perhaps the candidates for it were few; certainly the emolumentswere small; perhaps the patron was slothful--certainly he gave littleattention to the Church. At length complaint was made to the King thatthe spiritual needs of the island were being neglected. The Earl wascommanded to fill the Bishopric, and once again he offered it to hischaplain. Then Wilson yielded. He took possession in 1698, and wasenthroned at Peel Castle. The picture of his enthronement must have beensomething to remember. Peel Castle was already tumbling to its fall, andthe cathedral church was a woful wreck. It is even said that from ahole in the roof the soil and rain could enter, and blades of grass wereshooting up on the altar. The Bishop's house at Kirk Michael, whichhad been long shut up, was in a similar plight; damp, mouldy, broken-windowed, green with moss within and without. What would one giveto turn back the centuries and look on at that primitive ceremony inSt. Germain's Chapel in April 1698! There would be the clergy, asorry troop, with wise and good men among them, no doubt, but a poor, battered, bedraggled, neglected lot, chiefly learned in dubious artsof collecting tithes. And the Bishop himself, the good chaplain of EarlDerby, the preceptor of his son, what a face he must have had to watchand to study, as he stood there that April morning, and saw for thefirst time what work he had come to tackle!

BISHOP WILSON'S CENSURES

But Bishop Wilson set about his task with a strong heart, and a resolutehand. He found himself in a twofold trust. Since the Reformation, themonasteries and nunneries had been dispersed, and all the baronies hadbeen broken up, save one, the barony of the Bishop. Thus Bishop Wilsonwas the head of the court of his barony. This was a civil court withpower, of jurisdiction over felonies. Its separate criminal control cameto an end in 1777, Such was Bishop Wilson's position as last and soleBaron of Man. Then as head of the Church he had powers over offenceswhich were once called offences against common law. Irregular behaviour, cursing, quarrelling, and drinking, as well as transgressions of themoral code, adultery, seduction, prostitution, and the like, werepunishable by the Church and the Church courts. The censures of BishopWilson on such offences did not err on the side of clemency. He wasthe enemy of sin, and no "gentle foe of sinners. " He was a believerin witchcraft, and for suspicion of commerce with evil spirits andpossession of the evil eye he punished many a blameless old body. Foropen and convicted adultery he caused the offenders to stand for an hourat high fair at each of the market-places of Douglas, Peel, Ramsey, andCastletown, bearing labels on their breasts calling on all peopleto take warning lest they came under the same Church censure. Commonunchastity he punished by exposure in church at full congregation, whenthe guilty man or the poor victimised girl stepped up from the westporch to the altar, covered from neck to heels in a white sheet. Slanderers and evil speakers he clapped into the Peel, or perhaps thewhipping-stocks, with tongue in a noose of leather, and when after alapse of time the gag was removed the liberated tongue was obliged todenounce itself by saying thrice, clearly, boldly, probably with goodaccent and discretion, "False tongue, thou hast lied. "

It is perhaps as well that some of us did not live in Bishop Wilson'stime. We might not have lived long. If the Church still held andexercised the same powers over evil speakers we should never hear ourown ears in the streets for the din of the voices of the penitents; andif it still punished unchastity in a white sheet the trade of the linenweaver would be brisk. 

You will say that I have justified my statement that Bishop Wilson wasthe bitterest of tyrants. Let me now establish my opinion that he wasalso the serenest of saints. I have told you how low was the conditionof the Church, how lax its rule, how deep its clergy lay in sloth andignorance, and perhaps also in vice, when Bishop Wilson came to Man in1698. Well, in 1703, only five years later, the Lord Chancellor Kingsaid this: "If the ancient discipline of the Church were lost elsewhereit might be found in all its force in the Isle of Man. " This pointsfirst to force and vigour on the Bishop's part, but surely it alsopoints to purity of character and nobility of aim. Bishop Wilson beganby putting his own house in order. His clergy ceased to gamble and todrink, and they were obliged to collect their tithes with mercy. He oncesuspended a clergyman for an opinion on a minor point, but many times hepunished his clergy for offences against the moral law and the materialwelfare of the poor. In a stiff fight for integrity of life and purityof thought, he spared none. I truly believe that if he had caughthimself in an act of gross injustice he would have clambered up intothe pillory. He was a brave, strong-hearted creature, of the build ofa great man. Yes! In spite of all his contradictions, he _was_ a greatman. We Manxmen shall never look upon his like again!

THE GREAT CORN FAMINE

Towards 1740 a long and terrible corn famine fell upon our island. Thefisheries had failed that season, and the crops had been blightedtwo years running. Miserably poor at all times, ill-clad, ill-housed, ill-fed at the best, the people were in danger of sheer destitution. Inthat day of their bitter trouble the poorest of the poor trooped off toBishop's court. The Bishop threw open his house to them all, good andbad, improvident and thrifty, lazy and industrious, drunken and sober;he made no distinctions in that bad hour. He asked no man for his namewho couldn't give it, no woman for her marriage lines who hadn't gotthem, no child whether it was born in wedlock. That they were allhungry was all he knew, and he saved their lives in thousands. He boughtship-loads of English corn and served it out in bushels; also tons ofIrish potatoes, and served them out in _kischens_. He gave orders thatthe measure was to be piled as high as it would hold, and never smoothedflat again. Yet he was himself a poor man. While he had money he spentit. When every penny was gone he pledged his revenue in advance. After his credit was done he begged in England for his poor people inMan--_he_ begged for _us_ who would not have held out his hat to save hisown life! God bless him! But we repaid him. Oh yes, we repaid him. His money he never got back, but gold is not the currency of the otherworld. Prayers and blessings are the wealth that is there, and thesewent up after him to the great White Throne from the swelling throats ofhis people. 

THE BISHOP AT COURT

Not of Bishop Wilson could it be said, as it was said of another, thathe "flattered princes in the temple of God. " One day, when he was comingto Court, Queen Caroline saw him and said to a company of Bishops andArchbishops that surrounded her, "See, my lords, here is a Bishop whodoes not come for a translation. " "No, indeed, and please your Majesty, "said Bishop Wilson, "I will not leave my wife in her old age because sheis poor. " When Bishop Wilson was an old man, Cardinal Fleury sent overto ask after his age and health, saying that they were the two oldestand poorest Bishops in the world. At the same time he got an order thatno French privateer should ever ravage the Isle of Man. The order haslong lapsed, but I am told that to this day French seamen respect aManxman. It touches me to think of it that thus does the glory of thisgood man's life shine on our faces still. 

STORIES OF BISHOP WILSON

How his people must have loved him! Many of the stories told of him areof rather general application, but some of them ought to be true if theyare not. 

One day in the old three-cornered market-place at Ramsey a littlemaiden of seven crossed his path. She was like sunshine, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, bare-footed and bare-headed, and for love of her sweetnessthe grey old Bishop patted her head and blest her. "God bless you, mychild; God bless you, " he said. The child curtseyed and answered, "Godbless you, too, sir. " "Thank you, child, thank you, " the Bishop saidagain; "I dare say your blessing will be as good as mine. "

It was customary in those days, and indeed down to my own time, whena suit of clothes was wanted, to have the journeyman tailor at home tomake it. One, Danny of that ilk, was once at Bishop's Court makinga long walking coat for the Bishop. In trying it on in its nebulouscondition, that leprosy of open white seams and stitches, Danny madenumerous chalk marks to indicate the places of the buttons. "No, no, Danny, " said the Bishop, "no more buttons than enough to fasten it--onlyone, that will do. It would ill become a poor priest like me to goa-glitter with things like those. " Now, Danny had already bought hisbuttons, and had them at that moment in his pocket. So, pulling awoful face, he said, "Mercy me, my lord, what would happen to the poorbutton-makers, if everybody was of your opinion?" "Button it all over, Danny, " said the Bishop. A coat of Bishop Wilson's still exists. Wouldthat we had that one of the numerous buttons, and could get a few moremade of the same pattern! It would be out of fashion--Danny's progenyhave taken care of that. There are not many of us that it would fit--wehave few men of Bishop Wilson's build nowadays. But human kindliness isnever old-fashioned, and there are none of us that the garment of sweetgrace would not suit. 

QUARRELS OF CHURCH AND STATE

So far from "flattering princes in the temple of God, " Bishop Wilson waseven morbidly jealous of the authority of the Church, and he resistedthat of the State when the civil powers seemed to encroach upon it. Morethan once he came into collision with the State's highest functionary, the Lieutenant-Governor, representative of the Lord of Man himself. Oneday the Governor's wife falsely defamed a lady, and the lady appealedto the Bishop. Thereupon the Bishop interdicted the Governor's wifefrom receiving the communion. But the Governor's chaplain admittedher. Straightway the Bishop suspended the Governor's chaplain. Then theGovernor fined the Bishop in the sum of fifty pounds. The Bishop refusedto pay, and was committed to Castle Rushen, and lay there two months. They show us his cell, a poor, dingy little box, so damp in his day thathe lost the use of some of his fingers. After that the Bishop appealedto the Lord, who declared the imprisonment illegal. The Bishop wasliberated, and half the island went to the prison gate to fetch himforth in triumph. The only result was that the Bishop lost £500, whereof£300 were subscribed by the people. One hardly knows whether to laughor cry at it all. It is a sorry and silly farce. Of course it madea tremendous hurly-burly in its day, but it is gone now, and doesn'tmatter a ha'porth to anybody. Nevertheless because Gessler's cap goes upso often nowadays, and so many of us are kneeling to it, it is good andwholesome to hear of a poor Bishop who was brave enough to take a shotat it instead. 

SOME OLD ORDEALS

Notwithstanding Bishop Wilson's severity, his tyranny, his undue pridein the authority of the Church, and his morbid jealousy of the powersof the State, his rule was a wise and just one, and he was a spiritualstatesman, who needed not to be ashamed. He raised the tone of life inthe Isle of Man, made it possible to accept a man's _yea_ and _nay_, even in those perilous issues of life where the weakness and meannessof poor humanity reveals itself in lies and subterfuges. This he did bymaking false swearing a terror. One ancient ordeal of swearing he sethis face against, but another he encouraged, and often practised, let medescribe both. 

In the old days, when a man died intestate, leaving no record of hisdebts, a creditor might establish a claim by going with the Bishop tothe grave of the dead man at midnight, stretching himself on it withface towards heaven and a Bible on his breast, and then saying solemnly, "I swear that So-and-so, who lies buried here, died in my debt by somuch. " After that the debt was allowed. What warning the Bishop firstpronounced I do not know, but the scene is a vivid one, even if we thinkof the creditor as swearing truly, and a startling and terrible one ifwe think of him as about to swear to what is false. The dark night, thedark figures moving in it, the churchyard, the debtor's grave, the shamcreditor, who had been loud in his protests under the light of the innof the village, now quaking and trembling as the Bishop's warning comesout of the gloom, then stammering, and breaking down, and finally, withghostly visions of a dead hand clutching at him from the grave, startingup, shrieking, and flying away. It is a nightmare. Let us not rememberit when the candles are put out. 

This ordeal was in force until the seventeenth century, but BishopWilson judged it un-Christian, and never practised it. The old Romancanon law of Purgation, a similar ordeal, he used not rarely. It wasdesigned to meet cases of slander in which there was no direct andpositive evidence. If a good woman had been accused of unchastity inthat vague way of rumour which is always more damaging and devilish thanopen accusation, she might of her own free choice, or by compulsion ofthe Bishop, put to silence her false accusers by appearing in church, with witnesses ready to take oath that they believed her, and thereswearing at the altar that common fame and suspicion had wronged her. Ifa man doubted her word he had to challenge it, or keep silence for everafter. The severest censures of the Church were passed upon those whodared to repeat an unproved accusation after the oaths of Purgation andCompurgation had been taken unchallenged. It is a fine, honest ordeal, very old, good for the right, only bad for the wrong, giving strength tothe weak and humbling the mighty. But it would be folly and mummery inour day. The Church has lost its powers over life and limb, and no onecapable of defaming a pure woman would care a brass penny about theChurch's excommunication. Yet a woman's good name is the silver threadthat runs through the pearl chain of her virtues. Pity that nowadays itcan be so easily snapped. Conversation at five o'clock tea is enough todo that. The ordeal of compulsory Purgation was abolished in Man as lateas 1737. 

THE HERRING FISHERY

Bishop Wilson began, or revived, a form of service which was sobeautiful, so picturesque, and withal so Manx that I regret the loss ofscarce any custom so much as the discontinuance of this one. It was thefishermen's service on the shore at the beginning of the herring-season. But in order to appreciate it you must first know something of theherring fishing itself. It is the chief industry of the island. Half thepopulation is connected with it in some way. A great proportion of themen of the humbler classes are half seamen, half landsmen, tilling theirlittle crofts in the spring and autumn, and going out with the herringboats in summer. The herring is the national fish. The Manxman swearsby its flavour. The deemsters, as we have seen, literally swear by itsbackbone. Potatoes and herrings constitute a common dish of the countrypeople. They are ready for it at any hour of the day or night. I havehad it for dinner, I have taken it for supper, I have seen it for tea, and even known it for breakfast. It is served without ceremony. In themiddle of the table two great crocks, one of potatoes boiled in theirjackets, the other of herrings fresh or salted; a plate and a bowlof new milk at every seat, and lumps of salt here and there. To be aManxman you must eat Manx herrings; there is a story that to transformhimself into a Manxman one of the Dukes of Athol ate twenty-four of themat breakfast, a herring for every member of his House of Keys. 

The Manx herring fishery is interesting and very picturesque. You knowthat the herrings come from northern latitudes, Towards mid-winter avast colony of them set out from the arctic seas, closely pursued byinnumerable sea-fowl, which deal death among the little emigrants. Theymove in two divisions, one westward towards the coasts of America, theother eastward in the direction of Europe. They reach the Shetlands inApril and the Isle of Man about June. The herring is fished at night. Tobe out with the herring boats is a glorious experience on a calm night. You have set sail with the fleet of herring boats about sun-down, andyou are running before a light breeze through the dusk. The sea-gullsare skimming about the brown sails of your boat. They know what you aregoing to do, and have come to help you, Presently you come upon a flightof them wheeling and diving in the gathering darkness. Then you knowthat you have lit on the herring shoal. The boat is brought head to thewind and left to drift. By this time the stars are out, perhaps the moonalso--though too much moon is not good for the fishing--and you can justdescry the dim outline of the land against the dark blue of the sky. 

Luminous patches of phosphorescent light begin to move in the water, "The mar-fire's rising, " say the fishermen, the herring are stirring. "Let's make a shot; up with the gear, " cries the skipper, and nets arehauled from below, passed over the bank-board, and paid out into thesea--a solid wall of meshes, floating upright, nine feet deep and aquarter of a mile long. It is a calm, clear night, just light enoughto see the buoys on the back of the first net. The lamp is fixed on themitch-board. All is silence, only the steady plash, plash, plash of theslow waters on the boat's side; no singing among the men, no chaff, nolaughter, all quiet aboard, for the fishermen believe that the fish canhear; all quiet around, where the deep black of the watery pavementis brightened by the reflection of stars. Then out of the whitephosphorescent patches come minute points of silver and countless faintpopping sounds, The herrings are at play about the nets. You see them innumbers exceeding imagination, shoals on shoals. "Pull up now, there'sa heavy strike, " cries the skipper, and the nets are hauled up, and comein white and moving--a solid block of fish, cheep, cheep, cheeping likebirds in the early morning. At the grey of dawn the boats begin to runfor home, and the sun is shining as the fleet makes the harbour. Men andwomen are waiting there to buy the night's catch. The quay is full ofthem, bustling, shouting, laughing, quarrelling, counting the herrings, and so forth. 

THE FISHERMEN'S SERVICE

Such is the herring fishery of Man. Bishop Wilson knew how bitter athing it could be if this industry failed the island even for a singleseason. So, with absolute belief in the Divine government of the world, he wrote a Service to be held on the first day of the herring season, asking for God's blessing on the harvest of the sea. The scene of thatservice must have been wondrously beautiful and impressive. Why does notsome great painter paint it? Let me, by the less effectual vehicle ofwords, attempt to realise what it must have been. 

The place of it was Peel bay, a wide stretch of beach, with a gentleslope to the left, dotted over with grey houses; the little town fartheron, with its nooks and corners, its blind alleys and dark lanes, itsnarrow, crabbed, crooked streets. Behind this the old pier and theherring boats rocking in the harbour, with their brown sails half set, waiting for the top of the tide. In the distance the broad breast ofContrary Head, and, a musket-shot outside of it, the little rocky isletwhereon stand the stately ruins of the noble old Peel Castle. Thebeach is dotted over with people--old men, in their curranes and undyedstockings, leaning on their sticks; children playing on the shingle;young women in groups, dressed in sickle-shaped white sun-bonnets, andwith petticoats tucked up; old women in long blue homespun cloaks. Butthese are only the background of the human picture. In the centre ofit is a wide circle of fishermen, men and boys, of all sizes and sorts, from the old Admiral of the herring fleet to the lad that helps thecook--rude figures in blue and with great sea-boots. They are on theirknees on the sand, with their knitted caps at their rusty faces, andin the middle of them, standing in an old broken boat, is the Bishophimself, bareheaded, white-headed, with upturned face praying forthe fishing season that is about to begin. The June day is sweet andbeautiful, and the sun is going down behind the castle. Some sea-gullsare disporting on the rock outside, and, save for their jabbering cries, and the boom of the sea from the red horizon, and the gentle plash ofthe wavelets on the pebbles of the shore, nothing is heard but the slowtones of the Bishop and the fishermen's deep _Amen_. Such was BishopWilson's fishermen's service. It is gone; more's the pity. 

SOME OLD LAWS

The spiritual laws of Man were no dead letters when Bishop Wilsonpresided over its spiritual courts. He was good to illegitimatechildren, making them legitimate if their parents married within twoyears of their birth, and often putting them on the same level withtheir less injured brothers and sisters where inheritance was inquestion. But he was unmerciful to the parents themselves. There isone story of his treatment of a woman which passes all others in itstyranny. It is, perhaps, the only deep stain on his character. I thankGod that it can never have come to the ears of Victor Hugo. Told as Hugowould have told it, surely it must have blasted for ever the name of agood man. It is the dark story of Katherine Kinrade. 

KATHERINE KINRADE

She was a poor ruin of a woman, belonging to Kirk Christ, but wanderinglike a vagrant over the island. The fact of first consequence is, thatshe was only half sane. In the language of the clergy of the time, she"had a degree of unsettledness and defect of understanding. " Thus shewas the sort of human wreck that the world finds it easy to fling away. Katherine fell victim to the sin that was not her own. A child was born. The Church censured her. She did penance in a white sheet at the churchdoors. But her poor, dull brain had no power to restrain her. A secondchild was born. Then the Bishop committed her for twenty-one days tohis prison at the Peel. Let me tell you what the place is like. It isa crypt of the cathedral church. You enter it by a little door in thechoir, leading to a tortuous flight of steep steps going down. It isa chamber cut out of the rock of the little island, dark, damp, andnoisome. A small aperture lets in the light, as well as the sound ofthe sea beating on the rocks below. The roof, if you could see it in thegloom, is groined and ribbed, and above it is the mould of many graves, for in the old days bodies were buried in the choir. Can you imagine aprison more terrible for any prisoner, the strongest man or the bravestsoldier? Think of it on a tempestuous night in winter. The lonely isletrock, with the swift seas rushing around it; the castle half a ruin, itsguard-room empty, its banqueting hall roofless, its sally port silent;then the cathedral church falling to decay; and under the floor of itschoir, where lie the graves of dead men, this black, grim, cold cell, silent as the graves themselves, save for the roar of the sea as itbeats in the darkness on the rocks outside! But that is not enough. We have to think of this gloomy pile as inhabited on such a night ofterrors by only one human soul--this poor, bedraggled, sin-laden womanwith "the defect of understanding. " Can anything be more awful? Yetthere is worse to follow. The records tell us that Katherine Kinradesubmitted to her punishment "with as much discretion as could beexpected of the like of her. " But such punishments do not cleanse thesoul that is "drenched with unhallowed fire. " Perhaps Katherine did notknow that she was wronged; nevertheless God's image was being troddenout of her. She went from bad to worse, became a notorious strumpet, strolled about the island, and led "a scandalous life on otheraccounts. " A third child was born. Then the Bishop concluded that forthe honour of the Christian name, "to prevent her own utter destruction, and for the example of others, " a timely and thorough reformation mustbe made by a further and severer punishment. It was the 15th day ofMarch, and he ordered that on the 17th day, being the fair of St. Patrick, at the height of the market, the said Katherine Kinradeshould be taken to Peel Town in charge of the general sumner, and theconstables and soldiers of the garrison, and there dragged after a boatin the sea! Think of it! On a bitter day in March this wretched womanwith the "defect of understanding" was to be dragged through the sea bya rope tied to the tail of a boat! And if any owner, master, and crew ofany boat proved refractory by refusing to perform this service for therestraining of vice, they were to be subject to fine and imprisonment!When St. Patrick's Day came the weather was so stormy that no boatcould live in the bay, but on St. Germain's Day, about the height of themarket, the censure was performed. After undergoing the punishment themiserable soul was apparently penitent, "according to her capacity, "took the communion, and was "received into the peace of the Church. "Poor human ruin, defaced image of a woman, begrimed and buried soul, unchaste, misshapen, incorrigible, no "juice of God's distilling" ever"dropped into the core of her life, " to such punishment she was doomedby the tribunal of that saintly man, Bishop Thomas Wilson! She has methim at another tribunal since then; not where she has crouched beforehim, but where she has stood by his side. She has carried her greataccount against him, to Him before whom the proudest are as chaff. 

 None spake when Wilson stood before The Throne; And He that sat thereon Spake not; and all the presence-floor Burnt deep with blushes, and the angels cast Their faces downwards. --Then, at last, Awe-stricken, he was ware How on the emerald stair A woman sat divinely clothed in white, And at her knees four cherubs bright That laid Their heads within her lap. Then, trembling, he essayed To speak--"Christ's mother, pity me!" Then answered she, "Sir, I am Katherine Kinrade. " {*}

 * Unpublished poem by the author of ''Fo'c's'le Yarns. "

BISHOP WILSON'S LAST DAYS

Have I dashed your faith in my hero? Was he indeed the bitterest oftyrants as well as the serenest of saints? Yet bethink you of the othergood men who have done evil deeds? King David and the wife of Uriah, Mahomet and his adopted son; the gallery of memory is hung round withmany such portraits. Poor humanity, weak at the strongest, impure atthe purest; best take it as it is, and be content. Remember that a goodman's vices are generally the excess of his virtues. It was so withBishop Wilson. Remember, too, that it is not for what a man does, butfor what he means to do, that we love him or hate him in the end. Andin the end the Manx people loved Bishop Wilson, and still they bless hismemory. 

We have a glimpse of his last days, and it is full of tender beauty. True to his lights, simple and frugal of life, God-fearing and strongof heart, he lived to be old. Very feeble, his beautiful face grownmellower even as his heart was softer for his many years, tottering onhis staff, drooping like a white flower, he went in and out among hispeople, laying his trembling hands on the children's heads and blessingthem, remembering their fathers and their fathers' fathers. Beloved bythe young, reverenced by the old, honoured by the great, worshipped bythe poor, living in sweet patience, ready to die in hope. His day wasdone, his night was near, and the weary toiler was willing to go to hisrest. Thus passed some peaceful years. He died in 1755, and was followedto his grave by the whole Manx nation. His tomb is our most sacredshrine. We know his faults, but we do not speak of them there. Call atruce over the place of the old man's rest. There he lies, who was oncethe saviour of our people. God bless him! He was our fathers' bishop, and his saintly face still shines on our fathers' children. 

THE ATHOL BISHOPS

Let me in a last clause attempt a sketch of the history of the ManxChurch in the century or more that has followed Bishop Wilson's death. The last fifty years of it are featureless, save for an attempt toabolish the Bishopric. This foolish effort first succeeded and thenfailed, and was a poor bit of mummery altogether, ending in nothingbut waste of money and time, and breath and temper. The fifty yearsimmediately succeeding Bishop Wilson were full of activity. But so faras the Church was concerned, the activity was not always wholesome. Ifreligion was kept alive in Man in those evil days, and the soul hungerof the poor Manx people was satisfied, it was not by the masters of theManx Church, the Pharisees who gave alms in the streets to the soundof a trumpet going before them, or by the Levites who passed by onthe other side when a man had fallen among thieves. It was partly bydissent, which was begun by Wesley in 1775 (after Quakerism had beensuppressed), and partly by a small minority of the Manx clergy, who keptgoing the early evangelicalism of Newton and Cowper and Cecil--dear, sunny, simple-hearted old Manx vicars, who took sweet counsel togetherin their old-fashioned homes, where you found grace in all senses of theword, purity of soul, the life of the mind, and gentle courtliness ofmanners. 

Bishop Wilson's successor was Doctor Mark Hildlesley, in all respectsa worthy man. He completed the translation of the Scriptures into Manx, which had been begun by his predecessor, and established Sunday-schoolsin Man before they had been commenced in any other country. But afterhim came a line of worthless prelates, Dr. Richmond, remembered for hisunbending haughtiness; Dr. Mason, disgraced by his debts; and ClaudiusCregan, a bishop unfit to be a curate. Do you not read between thebroad lines of such facts? The Athol dynasty was now some thirty yearsestablished in Man, and the swashbuckler Court of fine gentlemen wasin full swing. In that costume drama of soiled lace and uproariouspleasures, what part did the Church play? Was it that of the man cladin camel's skin, living on locusts and wild honey, and calling on thegeneration of revellers to flee from the wrath to come? No; but thatof the lover of cakes and ale. The records of this period are few andscanty, but they are full enough to show that some of the clergy of theAthols knew more of backgammon than of theology. While they pandered tothe dissolute Court they lived under, going the errands of their mastersin the State, fetching and carrying for them, and licking their shoes, they tyrannised over the poor ignorant Manx people and fleeced themunmercifully. Perhaps this was in a way only natural. Corruption was inthe air throughout Europe. Dr. Youngs were grovelling for prefermentsat the feet of kings' mistresses, and Dr. Warners were kissing theshoebuckles of great ladies for sheer love of their faces, plastered redand white, The parasites of the Manx clergy were not far behind someof their English brethren. There is a story told of their life amongthemselves which casts lurid light on their character and ways of life. It is said that two of the Vicars-general summoned a large number of theManx people to Bishop's Court on some business of the spiritual court, Many of the people had come long distances, chiefly a-foot, withoutfood, and probably without money. After a short sitting the court wasadjourned for dinner. The people had no dinner, and they starved. TheVicars-general went into the palace to dine with the Bishop. Some hourspassed. The night was gathering. Then a message came out to say that nomore business could be done that day. Some of the poor people were old, and had to travel fifteen miles to their homes. The record tells us thatthe Bishop gave his guests "most excellent wine. " What of a scene likethat? Outside, a sharp day in Spring, two score famished folks trampingthe glen and the gravel-path, the gravel-path and the glen, to andfro, to and fro, minute after minute, hour after hour. Inside, mylord Bishop, drenched in debt, dining with his clergy, drinking"most excellent wine" with them, unbending his mighty mind with them, exchanging boisterous stories with them, jesting with them, laughingwith them, until his face grows as red as the glowing turf on hishearth. Presently a footfall on the gravel, and outside the window ahungry, pinched, anxious face looking nervously into the room. Then thiscolloquy:

"Ah, the court, plague on't, I'd forgotten it. "

"Adjourn it, gentlemen. "

"Wine like yours, my lord, would make a man forget Paradise. "

"Sit down again, gentlemen. Juan, go out and tell the people to comeback to-morrow. "

"Your right good health, my lord!"

"And yours, gentlemen both!"

Oh, if there is any truth in religion, if this world is God's, if a dayis coming when the weak shall be exalted and the mighty laid low, whata reckoning they have gone to whose people cried for bread and they gavethem a stone! And if there is not, if the hope is vain, if it is all asham and a mockery, still the justice of this world is sure. Where arethey now, these parasites? Their game is played out. They are bones andashes; they are in their forgotten graves. 

THE STORY OF THE MANX PEOPLE

THE MANX LANGUAGE

A friend asked me the other day if there was any reason why I should notdeliver these lectures in Manx. I answered that there were just fortygood and sufficient reasons. The first was that I did not speak Manx. Like the wise queen in the story of the bells, he then spared me therecital of the remaining nine-and-thirty. But there is at least one ofthe number that will appeal strongly to most of my hearers. What thatis you shall judge for yourselves after I have braved the pitfalls ofpronunciation in a tongue I do not know, and given you some clauses ofthe Lord's Prayer in Manx. 

 Ayr ain t'ayns niait, (Father our who art in heaven. )

 Caskerick dy row dty ennym. (Holy be Thy name. )

 Dy jig dty reeriaght. (Come Thy kingdom. )

 Dty aigney dy row jeant er y thalloo mry te ayns niau. (Thy will be done on the earth even as in heaven. )

*****

 Son dy bragh, as dy bragh, Amen. (For ever and ever. Amen. )

I asked a friend--it was Mr. Wilson Barrett--if in its fulness, its finechest-notes, its force and music, this old language did not sound likeItalian. 

"Well, no, " he answered, "it sounds more like hard swearing. "

I think you must now understand why the greater part of these lecturesshould be delivered in English. 

Manx is a dialect mainly Celtic, and differing only slightly from theancient Scottish Gaelic. I have heard my father say that when he wasa boy in Ramsey, sixty years ago, a Scotch ship came ashore on theCarrick, and next morning after the wreck a long, lank, bony creature, with bare legs, and in short petticoats, came into the marketplace andplayed a tune on a little shrieking pair of smithy bellows, and thensang a song. It was a Highland piper, and he sang in his Gaelic, but theManx boys and girls who gathered round him understood almost every wordof his song, though they thought his pronunciation bad. Perhaps theytook him for a poor old Manxman, somehow strayed and lost, a sort ofManx Rip Van Winkle who had slept a century in Scotland, and therebylost part of his clothes. 

You will wonder that there is not more Norse in our language, remembering how much of the Norse is in our blood. But the predominanceof the Celtic is quite natural. Our mothers were Celts, speaking Celtic, before our Norse-fathers came. Was it likely that our Celtic mothersshould learn much of the tongue of their Norse husbands? Then, is it notour mother, rather than our father, who teaches us to speak when we arechildren? So our Celtic mothers taught us Celtic, and thus Celtic becamethe dominant language of our race. 

MANX NAMES

But though our Norse fathers could not impose their Norse tongue ontheir children, they gave them Norse names, and to the island theygave Norse place-names. Hence we find that though Manx names showa preponderance of the Celtic, yet that the Norse are numerous andimportant. Thus we have many _dales, fells, garths_, and _ghylls_. Indeed, we have many pure Scandinavian surnames and place-names. WhenI was in Iceland I sometimes found myself face to face with names whichalmost persuaded me that I was at home in our little island of the IrishSea. There is, for example, a Snaefell in Man as well as in Iceland. Then, our Norwegian surnames often took Celtic prefixes, such as _Mac_, and thus became Scandio-Gaelic. But this is a subject on which I haveno right to speak with authority. You will find it written down withlearning and judgment in the good book of my friend Mr. A. W. Moore, of Cronkbourne. What concerns me more than the scientific aspect of thelanguage is its literary character. I seem to realise that it was thelanguage of a poetic race. The early generations of a people are oftenpoetic. They are child-like, and to be like a child is the best half ofbeing like a poet. They name their places by help of their observatorypowers. These are fresh and full of wonder, and Nature herself isbeautiful or strange until man tampers with her. 

So when an untaught and uncorrupted mind looks upon a new scene andbethinks itself of a name to fit it, the name is almost certainly fullof charm or rugged power. Thus we find in Man such mixed Norse andCeltic names as: _Booildooholly_ (Black fold of the wood), _Douglas_(Black stream), _Soderick_ (South creek), _Trollaby_ (Troll's farm), _Gansy_ (Magic isle), _Cronk-y-Clagh Bane_ (Hill of the white stone), _Cronk-ny-hey_ (Hill of the grave), _Cronk-ny-arrey-lhaa_ (Hill of theday watch). 

MANX IMAGINATION

This poetic character of the place-names of the island is a standingreproach to us as a race. We have degenerated in poetic spirit sincesuch names were the natural expression of our feelings. I tremble tothink what our place-names would be if we had to make them now. Our fewmodern Christenings set my teeth on edge. We are not a race of poets. We are the prosiest of the prosy. I have never in my life met with anyrace, except Icelanders and Norwegians, who are so completely the slaveof hard fact. It is astounding how difficult the average Manxman findsit to put himself into the mood of the poet. That anything could comeout of nothing, that there is such a thing as imagination, that anyhuman brother of an honest man could say that a thing had been, whichhad not been, and yet not lie--these are bewildering difficulties tothe modern Manxman. That a novel can be false and yet true--that, wellthat's foolishness. I wrote a Manx romance called "The Deemster;" and Idid not expect my fellow-countrymen of the primitive kind to tolerate itfor a moment. It was merely a fiction, and the true Manxman of the oldsort only believes in what is true. He does not read very much, and whenhe does read it is not novels. But he could not keep his hands off thisnovel, and on the whole, and in the long run, he liked it--that is, ashe would say, "middling, " you know! But there was only one condition onwhich he could take it to his bosom--it must be true. There was the rub, for clearly it transgressed certain poor little facts that were patentto everybody. 

Never mind, Hall Caine did not know poor Man, or somebody had toldhim wrong. But the story itself! The Bishop, Dan, Ewan, Mona, the bodycoming ashore at the Mooragh, the poor boy under the curse by the Calf, lord-a-massy, that was thrue as gospel! What do you think happened? Ihave got the letters by me, and can show them to anybody. A good Manxmanwrote to remonstrate with me for calling the book a "romance. " How dareI do so? It was all true. Another wrote saying that maybe I would liketo know that in his youth he knew my poor hero, Dan Mylrea, well. Theyoften drank together. In fact, they were the same as brothers. Forhis part he had often warned poor Dan the way he was going. After themurder, Dan came to him and gave him the knife with which he had killedEwan. He had got it still!

Later than the "Deemster, " I published another Manx romance, "TheBondman. " In that book I mentioned, without thought of mischief, certainnames that must have been lying at the back of my head since my boyhood. One of them becomes in the book the name of an old hypocrite who in theend cheats everybody and yet prays loudly in public. Now it seems thatthere is a man up in the mountains who owns that name. When he firstencountered it in the newspapers, where the story was being published asa serial, he went about saying he was in the "Bondman, " that it wasall thrue as gospel, so it was, that he knew me when I was a boy, overRamsey way, and used to give me rides on his donkey, so he did. This wasbefore the hypocrite was unmasked; and when that catastrophe occurred, and his villany stood naked before all the island, his anger knewno limits. I am told that he goes about the mountains now like athunder-cloud, and that he wants to meet me. I had never heard of theman before in all my life. 

What I say is true only of the typical Manxman, the natural-man amongManxmen, not of the Manxman who is Manxman plus man of the world, theeducated Manxman, who finds it as easy as anybody else to put himselfinto a position of sympathy with works of pure imagination. But you mustgo down to the turf if you want the true smell of the earth. Educationlevels all human types, as love is said to level all ranks; and topreserve your individuality and yet be educated seems to want a strainof genius, or else a touch of madness. 

The Manx must have been the language of a people with few thoughtsto express, but such thoughts as they had were beautiful in theirsimplicity and charm, sometimes wise and shrewd, and not rarely full offeeling. Thus _laa-noo_ is old Manx for child, and it means literallyhalf saint--a sweet conception, which says the best of all thatis contained in Wordsworth's wondrous "Ode on the Intimations ofImmortality. " _Laa-bee_ is old Manx for bed, literally half-meat, aprofound commentary on the value of rest. The old salutation at the doorof a Manx cottage before the visitor entered was this word spokenfrom the porch: _Vel peccaghs thie?_ Literally: Any sinner within? Allhumanity being sinners in the common speech of the Manx people. 

MANX PROVERBS

Nearly akin to the language of a race are its proverbs, and some of theManx proverbs are wise, witty, and racy of the soil. Many of them arethe common possession of all peoples. Of such kind is "There's manya slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. " Here is one which sounds like anEastern saying: "Learning is fine clothes for the rich man, and richesfor the poor man. " But I know of no foreign parentage for a proverb likethis: "A green hill when far away; bare, bare when it is near. "

That may be Eastern also. It hints of a long weary desert; no grass, no water, and then the cruel mirage that breaks down the heart of thewayfarer at last. On the other hand, it is not out of harmony withthe landscape of Man, where the mountains look green sometimes from adistance when they are really bare and stark, and so typify that wasteof heart when life is dry of the moisture of hope, and all the world isas a parched wilderness. However, there is one proverb which is so Manxin spirit that I could almost take oath on its paternity, so exactlydoes it fit the religious temper of our people, though it contains aword that must strike an English ear as irreverent: "When one poor manhelps another poor man, God himself laughs. "

MANX BALLADS

Next to the proverbs of a race its songs are the best expression of itsspirit, and though Manx songs are few, some of them are full of Manxcharacter. Always their best part is the air. A man called Barrowcompiled the Manx tunes about the beginning of the century, but his bookis scarce. In my ignorance of musical science I can only tell you howthe little that is left of Manx music lives in the ear of a man who doesnot know one note from another. Much of it is like a wail of the wind ina lonely place near to the sea, sometimes like the soughing of the longgrass, sometimes like the rain whipping the panes of a window aswith rods. Nearly always long-drawn like a moan rarely various, nevermartial, never inspiriting, often sad and plaintive, as of a peoplekept under, but loving liberty, poor and low down, but with souls alive, looking for something, and hoping on, --full of the brine, the salt foam, the sad story of the sea. Nothing would give you a more vivid sense ofthe Manx people than some of our old airs. They would seem to take youinto a little whitewashed cottage with sooty rafters and earthen floor, where an old man who looks half like a sailor and half like a landsmanis dozing before a peat fire that is slumbering out. Have I in mymusical benightedness conveyed an idea of anything musical? If not, letme, by the only vehicle natural to me, give you the rough-shod words ofone or two of our old ballads. There is a ballad, much in favour, called_Ny kirree fo niaghey_, the Sheep under the Snow. Another, yet betterknown, is called _Myle Charaine_. This has sometimes been called theManx National Air, but that is a fiction. The song has nothing to dowith the Manx as a nation. Perhaps it is merely a story of a miserand his daughter's dowry. Or perhaps it tells of pillage, probably ofwrecking, basely done, and of how the people cut the guilty one off fromall intercourse with them. 

 O, Myle Charaine, where got you your gold? Lone, lone, you have left me here, O, not in the curragh, deep under the mould, Lone, lone, and void of cheer. 

This sounds poor enough, but it would be hard to say how deeply thisballad, wedded to its wailing music, touches and moves a Manxman. Evento my ear as I have heard it in Manx, it has seemed to be one of theweirdest things in old ballad literature, only to be matched by some ofthe old Irish songs, and by the gruesome ditty which tells how "the sunshines fair on Carlisle wa'. "

MANX CAROLS

The paraphrase I have given you was done by George Borrow, who oncevisited the island. My friend the Rev. T. E. Brown met him and showedhim several collections of Manx carols, and he pronounced them alltranslations from the English, not excepting our famous _Drogh Vraane_, or carol of every bad woman whose story is told in the Bible, beginningwith the story of mother Eve herself. And, indeed, you will not besurprised that to the shores of our little island have drifted allkinds of miscellaneous rubbish, and that the Manxmen, from their verysimplicity and ignorance of other literatures, have had no means ofsifting the flotsam and assigning value to the constituents. Besidesthis, they are so irresponsible, have no literary conscience, andaccordingly have appropriated anything and everything. This is true ofsome Manx ballads, and perhaps also of many Manx carols. The carols, called Carvals in Manx, serve in Man, as in other countries, the purposeof celebrating the birth of Jesus, but we have one ancient customattached to them which we can certainly claim for our own, so Manx isit, so quaint, so grimly serious, and withal so howlingly ludicrous. 

It is called the service of Oiel Verree, probably a corruption of_Feaill Vorrey_, literally the Feast of Mary, and it is held in theparish church near to midnight on Christmas Eve. Scott describes it in"Peveril of the Peak, " but without personal knowledge. 

Services are still held in many churches on Christmas Eve; and I thinkthey are called Oiel Verree, but the true Oiel Verree, the real, pure, savage, ridiculous, sacrilegious old Oiel Verree, is gone. I myself justcame in time for it; I saw the last of it, nevertheless I saw it at itsprime, for I saw it when it was so strong that it could not live anylonger. Let me tell you what it was. 

The story carries me back to early boyish years, when, from the lonelyschool-house on the bleak top of Maughold Head, I was taken in secret, one Christmas Eve, between nine and ten o'clock, to the old church ofKirk Maughold, a parish which longer than any other upheld the roughertraditions. My companion was what is called an original. His name wasBilly Corkill. We were great chums. I would be thirteen, he was aboutsixty. Billy lived alone in a little cottage on the high-road, andworked in the fields. He had only one coat all the years I knew him. Itseemed to have been blue to begin with, but when it had got torn Billyhad patched it with anything that was handy, from green cloth to redflannel. He called it his Joseph's coat of many colours. Billy was apoet and a musical composer. He could not read a word, but he wouldrather have died than confess his ignorance. He kept books andnewspapers always about him, and when he read out of them, he usuallyheld them upside down. If any one remarked on that, he said he couldread them any way up--that was where his scholarship came in. Billy wasa great carol singer. He did not know a note, but he never sang exceptfrom music. His tunes were wild harmonies that no human ear ever heardbefore. It will be clear to you that old Billy was a man of genius. 

Such was my comrade on that Christmas Eve long ago. It had been a bitterwinter in the Isle of Man, and the ground was covered with snow. But thechurch bells rang merrily over the dark moorland, for Oiel Verree waspeculiarly the people's service, and the ringers were ringing in the oneservice of the year at which the parishioners supplanted the Vicar, andappropriated the old parish church. In spite of the weather, the churchwas crowded with a motley throng, chiefly of young folks, the young menbeing in the nave, and the girls (if I remember rightly) in the littleloft at the west end. Most of the men carried tallow dips, tiedabout with bits of ribbon in the shape of rosettes, duly lighted, andguttering grease at intervals on to the book-ledge or the tawny fingersof them that held them. It appeared that there had been an ordinaryservice before we arrived, and the Vicar was still within the railsof the communion. From there he addressed some parting words of solemnwarning to the noisy throng of candle-carriers. As nearly as I canremember, the address was this: "My good people, you are about tocelebrate an old custom. For my part, I have no sympathy with suchcustoms, but since the hearts of my parishioners seem to be set onthis one, I have no wish to suppress it. But tumultuous and disgracefulscenes have occurred on similar occasions in previous years, and Ibeg you to remember that you are in God's house, " &c. &c. The graveinjunction was listened to in silence, and when it ended, the Vicar, aworthy but not very popular man, walked towards the vestry. To do so, he passed the pew where I sat under the left arm of my companion, and hestopped before him, for Billy had long been a notorious transgressor atOiel Verree. 

"See that you do not disgrace my church to-night, " said the Vicar. ButBilly had a biting tongue. 

"Aw, well, " said he, "I'm thinking the church is the people's. "

"The people are as ignorant as goats, " said the Vicar. 

"Aw, then, " said Billy, "you are the shepherd, so just make sheeps ofthem. "

At that the Vicar gave us the light of his countenance no more. The lastglimpse of his robe going through the vestry door was the signal for abuzz of low gossip, and straightway the business of Oiel Verree began. 

It must have been now approaching eleven o'clock, and two old greybeardswith tousled heads placed themselves abreast at the door of the westporch. There they struck up a carol in a somewhat lofty key. It was amost doleful ditty. Certainly I have never since heard the like of it. I remember that it told the story of the Crucifixion in startlinglanguage, full of realism that must have been horribly ghastly, if ithad not been so comic. At the end of each verse the singers made onestride towards the communion. There were some thirty verses, and everymortal verse did these zealous carollers give us. They came to an end atlength, and then another old fellow rose in his pew and sang a dittyin Manx. It told of the loss of the herring-fleet in Douglas Bay in thelast century. After that there was yet another and another carol--somethat might be called sacred, others that would not be badly wronged withthe name of profane. As I recall them now, they were full of a burningearnestness, and pictured the dangers of the sinner and the punishmentof the damned. They said nothing about the joys of heaven, or thepleasures of life. Wherever these old songs came from they must havedated from some period of religious revival. The Manxman may haveappropriated them, but if he did so he was in a deadly earnest mood. Itmust have been like stealing a hat-band. 

My comrade had been silent all this time, but in response to variouswinks, nods, and nudges, he rose to his feet. Now, in prospect of OielVerree I had written the old man a brand new carol. It was a mightyachievement in the sentimental vein. I can remember only one of itscouplets:

 Hold your souls in still communion, Blend them in a holy union. 

I am not very sure what this may mean, and Billy must have been in thesame uncertainty. Shall I ever forget what happened? Billy standing inthe pew with my paper in his hand the wrong way up. Myself by his sideholding a candle to him. Then he began to sing. It was an awful tune--Ithink he called it sevens--but he made common-sense of my doggerel byone alarming emendation. When he came to the couplet I have given you, what do you think he sang?

 "Hold your souls in still communion, Blend them in--a hollow onion!"

Billy must have been a humorist. He is long dead, poor old Billy. Godrest him!

DECAY OF THE MANX LANGUAGE

If in this unscientific way I have conveyed my idea of Manx carvals, Manx ballads, or Manx proverbs, you will not be surprised to hear me saythat I do not think that any of these, can live long apart from the Manxlanguage. We may have stolen most of them; they may have been wrecked onour coast, and we may have smuggled them; but as long as they wear ournative homespun clothes they are ours, and as soon as they put it offthey cease to belong to us. A Manx proverb is no longer a Manx proverbwhen it is in English. The same is true of a Manx ballad translated, andof a Manx carval turned into an English carol. What belongs to us, our way of saying things, in a word, our style, is gone. The spirit isdeparted, and that which remains is only an English ghost flitting aboutin Manx grave-clothes. 

Now this is a sad fact, for it implies that little as we have got ofManx literature, whether written or oral, we shall soon have none atall. Our Manx language is fast dying out. If we had any great work inthe Manx tongue, that work alone would serve to give our language aliterary life at least. But we have no such great work, no fine Manxpoem, no good novel in Manx, not even a Manx sermon of high mark. Thusfar our Manx language has kept alive our pigmies of Manx literature; butboth are going down together. The Manx is not much spoken now. Inthe remoter villages, like Cregnesh, Ballaugh, Kirk Michael, and KirkAndreas, it may still be heard. Moreover, the Manxman may hear Manx ahundred times for every time an Englishman hears it. But the youngergeneration of Manx folk do not speak Manx, and very often do notunderstand it. This is a rapid change on the condition of things in myown boyhood. Manx is to me, for all practical uses, an unknown tongue. I cannot speak it, I cannot follow it when spoken, I have only a sortof nodding acquaintance with it out of door, and yet among my earliestrecollections is that of a household where nothing but Manx was everspoken except to me. A very old woman, almost bent double over aspinning wheel, and calling me Hommy-Veg, and _baugh-millish_, and soforth. This will suggest that the Manx people are themselves responsiblefor the death of the Manx language. That is partly true. The Manx tonguewas felt to be an impediment to intercourse with the English people. Then the great English immigration set in, and the Isle of Man became aholiday resort. That was the doomster of the Manx language. In anotherfive-and-twenty years the Manx language will be as dead as a Manxherring. 

One cannot but regret this certain fate. I dare not say that thelanguage itself is so good that it ought to live. Those who know itbetter say that "it's a fine old tongue, rich and musical, full ofmeaning and expression. " {*} I know that it is at least forcible, andloud and deep in sound. I will engage two Manxmen quarrelling in Manxto make more noise in a given time than any other two human brethren inChristendom, not excepting two Irishmen. Also I think the Manx must becapable of notes of sweet feeling, and I observe that a certain higherlilt in a Manx woman's voice, suggesting the effort to speak about thesound of the sea, and the whistle of the wind in the gorse, is lost inthe voices of the younger women who speak English only. But apart fromtangible loss, I regret the death of the Manx tongue on grounds ofsentiment. In this old tongue our fathers played as children, bought andsold as men, prayed, preached, gossiped, quarrelled, and made love. Itwas their language at Tynwald; they sang their grim carvals in it, andtheir wailing, woful ballads. 

 * The Rev. T. E. Brown. 

When it is dead more than half of all that makes us Manxmen will begone. Our individuality will be lost, the greater barrier that separatesus from other peoples will be broken down. Perhaps this may have itsadvantages, but surely it is not altogether a base desire not to besubmerged into all the races of the earth. The tower of Babel is built, the tongues of the builders are confounded, and we are not all anxiousto go back and join the happy family that lived in one ark. 

But aside from all lighter thoughts there is something very moving andpathetic in the death of an old language. Permit me to tell you, notas a philologist, a character to which I have no claim, but as animaginative writer, how the death of an ancient tongue affects me. It isunlike any other form of death, for an unwritten language is even as abreath of air which when it is spent leaves no trace behind. A nationmay die, yet its history remains, and that is the tangible part of itspast. A city may fall to decay and lie a thousand years under the sandsof the desert, yet its relics revivify its life. But a language that isdead, a tongue that has no life in its literature, is a breath of windthat is gone. A little while and it went from lip to lip, from lip toear; it came we know not whence; it has passed we know not where. It wasan embodied spirit of all man's joys and sorrows, and like a spirit ithas vanished away. 

Then if this old language has been that of our own people its death is aloss to our affections. Indeed, language gets so close to our heart thatwe can hardly separate it from our emotions. If you do not speak theItalian language, ask yourself whether Dante comes as close to you asShakespeare, all questions of genius and temperament apart. And if Danteseems a thousand miles away, and Shakespeare enters into your closestchamber, is it not first of all because the language of Shakespeare isyour own language, alive with the life that is in your own tongue, vitalwith your own ways of thought and even tricks and whims of speech? LetEnglish die, and Shakespeare goes out of your closet, and passes awayfrom you, and is then your brother-Englishman only in name. So close isthe bond of language, so sweet and so mysterious. 

But there is yet a more sacred bond with the language of our fatherswhen it can have no posthumous life in books. This is the bond of love. Think what it is that you miss first and longest when death robs you ofa friend. Is it not the living voice? The living face you can bring backin memory, and in your dark hours it will shine on you still; the gooddeed can never die; the noble thought lives for ever. Death is notconqueror over such as these, but the human voice, the strange andbeautiful part of us that is half spirit in life, is lost in death. Fora while it startles us as an echo in an empty chamber, and then it isgone, and not all the world's wealth could bring one note of it back. And such as the vanishing away of the voice of the friend we loved isthe death of the old tongue which our fathers spoke. _It is the death ofthe dead_. 

MANX SUPERSTITIONS

When the Manx tongue is dead there will remain, however, just one badgeof our race--our superstition. I am proud to tell you that we are themost superstitious people now left among the civilised nations of theworld. This is a distinction in these days when that poetry of life, as Goethe names it, is all but gone from the face of the earth. Manxmenhave not yet taken the poetry out of the moon and the stars, and themist of the mountains and the wail of the sea. Of course we are ashamedof the survival of our old beliefs and try to hide them, but let nobodysay that as a people we believe no longer in charms, and the evil eye, and good spirits and bad. I know we do. It would be easy to give you ahundred illustrations. I remember an ill-tempered old body living onthe Curragh, who was supposed to possess the evil eye. If a cow died atcalving, she had witched it. If a baby cried suddenly in its sleep, the old witch must have been going by on the road. If the potatoeswere blighted, she had looked over the hedge at them. There was a charmdoctor in Kirk Andreas, named Teare-Ballawhane. He was before my time, but I recall many stories of him. When a cow was sick of the witching ofthe woman of the Curragh, the farmer fled over to Kirk Andreas for thecharm of the charm-doctor. From the moment Teare-Ballawhane began toboil his herbs the cow recovered. If the cow died after all, there wassome fault in the farmer. I remember a child, a girl, who twenty yearsago had a birth-mark on her face--a broad red stain like a hand on hercheek. Not long since, I saw her as a young woman, and the stain waseither gone entirely or hidden by her florid complexion. When I askedwhat had been done for her, I heard that a good woman had charmed her. "Aw, yes, " said the girl's mother, "a few good words do no harm anyway. "Not long ago I met an old fellow in Onchan village who believed in theNightman, an evil spirit who haunts the mountains at night predictingtempests and the doom of ships, the _dooinney-oie_ of the Manx, akin tothe _banshee_ of the Irish. "Aw, man, " said he, "it was up Snaefell way, and I was coming from Kirk Michael over, and it was black dark, and Iheard the Nightman after me, shoutin' and wailin' morthal, _how-la-a, how-a-a_. But I didn't do nothin', no, and he came up to me lek a besom, and went past me same as a flood, _who-o-o!_ And I lerr him! Aw, yes, man, yes!"

I remember many a story of fairies, some recited half in humour, others in grim earnest. One old body told me that on the night of herwedding-day, coming home from the Curragh, whither she had stolen awayin pursuit of a belated calf, she was chased in the moonlight by atroop of fairies. They held on to her gown, and climbed on her back, andperched on her shoulders, and clung to her hair. There were "hundredsand tons" of them; they were about as tall as a wooden broth-ladle, andall wore cocked-hats and velvet jackets. 

A good fairy long inhabited the Isle of Man. He was called in Manx thePhynnodderee. It would appear that he had two brothers of likefeatures with himself, one in Scotland called the Brownie, the other inScandinavia called the Swart-alfar. 

I have often heard how on a bad night the Manx folk would go off to bedearly so that the Phynnodderee might come in out of the cold. Beforegoing upstairs they built up the fire, and set the kitchen table withcrocks of milk and pecks of oaten cake for the entertainment of theirguest. Then while they slept the Phynnodderee feasted, yet he alwaysleft the table exactly as he found it, eating the cake and drinking themilk, but filling up the peck and the crock afresh. Nobody ever intrudedupon him, so nobody ever saw him, save the Manx Peeping Tom. I rememberhearing an old Manxman say that his curiosity overcame his reverence, and he "leff the wife, " stepped out of bed, crept to the head of thestairs, and peeped over the banisters into the kitchen. There he sawthe Phynnodderee sitting in his own arm-chair, with a great company ofbrother and sister fairies about him, baking bread on the griddle, andchattering together like linnets in spring. But he could not understanda word they were saying. 

I have told you that the Manxman is not built by nature for a gallant. He has one bad fairy, and she is the embodied spirit of a beautifulwoman. Manx folk-lore, like Manx carvals, Manx ballads, and Manxproverbs, takes it for a bad sign of a woman's character that she haspersonal beauty. If she is beautiful, ten to one she is a witch. That ishow it happens that there are so many witches in the Isle of Man. 

The story goes that a beautiful wicked witch entrapped the men of theisland. They would follow her anywhere. So she led them into the sea, and they were all drowned. Then the women of the island went forth topunish her, and, to escape from them, she took the form of a wren andflew away. That is how it comes about that the poor little wren ishunted and killed on St. Stephen's Day. The Manx lads do it, thoughsurely it ought to be the Manx maidens. At midnight they sally forth ingreat companies, armed with sticks and carrying torches. They beat thehedges until they light on a wren's nest, and, having started the wrenand slaughtered it, they suspend the tiny mite to the middle of a longpole, which is borne by two lads from shoulder to shoulder. They thensing a rollicking native ditty, of which one version runs:--

 We'll hunt the wren, says Robbin the Bobbin; We'll hunt the wren, says Richard the Robbin; We'll hunt the wren, says Jack of the Lan'; We'll hunt the wren, says every one. 

But Robbin the Bobbin and Richard the Robbin are not the only creatureswho have disappeared into the sea. The fairies themselves have also gonethere. They inhabit Man no more. A Wesleyan preacher declared some yearsago that he witnessed the departure of all the Manx fairies from the Bayof Douglas. They went away in empty rum puncheons, and scudded beforethe wind as far as the eye could reach, in the direction of Jamaica. Sowe have done with them, both good and bad. 

However, among the witches whom we have left to us in remote corners ofthe island is the very harmless one called the Queen of the Mheillia. Her rural Majesty is a sort of first cousin of the Queen of the May. TheMheillia is the harvest-home. It is a picturesque ceremonial, observeddifferently in different parts. Women and girls follow the reapersto gather and bind the corn after it has fallen to the swish of thesickles. A handful of the standing corn of the last of the farmer'sfields is tied about with ribbon. Nobody but the farmer knows where thathandful is, and the girl who comes upon it by chance is made the Queenof the Mheillia. She takes it to the highest eminence near, and wavesit, and her fellow-reapers and gleaners shout huzzas. Their voices areheard through the valley, where other farmers and other reapersand gleaners stop in their work and say, "So-and-so's Mheillia!""Ballamona's Mheillia's took!" That night the farmer gives a feast inhis barn to celebrate the getting in of his harvest, and the close ofthe work of the women at the harvesting. Sheep's heads for a change onManx herrings, English ale for a change on Manx jough; then dancing ledby the mistress, to the tune of a fiddle, played faster and wilderas the night advances, reel and jig, jig and reel. This pretty ruralfestival is still observed, though it has lost much of its quaintness. Ithink I can just remember to have heard the shouts of the Mheillia fromthe breasts of the mountains. 

You will have gathered that in no part of the world could you finda more reckless and ill-conditioned breeding-ground of suppositions, legends, traditions, and superstitions than in the Isle of Man. Thecustom of hunting the wren is widely spread throughout Ireland; and ifI were to tell you of Manx wedding customs, Manx burial customs, Manxbirth customs, May day, Lammas, Good Friday, New Year, and Christmascustoms, you would recognise in the Manxman the same irresponsibletendency to appropriate whatever flotsam drifts to his shore. What Ihave told you has come mainly of my own observation, but for a completepicture of Manx manners and customs, beliefs and superstitions, I willrefer you to William Kennish's "Mona's Isle, and other Poems, " a rarebook, with next to no poetic quality, and containing much that isworthless, but having a good body of real native stuff in it, such ascannot be found elsewhere. A still better anthology is likely to be soonforthcoming from the pen of Mr. A. W. Moore (the excellent editor of"Manx Names") and the press of Mr. Nutt. 

It is easy to laugh at these old superstitions, so childish do theyseem, so foolish, so ignorant. But shall we therefore set ourselves somuch above our fathers because they were slaves to them, and we believethem not? Bethink you. Are we so much wiser, after all? How much fartherhave we got? We know the mists of Mannanan. They are only the vapoursfrom the south, creeping along the ridge of our mountains, going north. Is that enough to know? We know the cold eye of the evil man, whose merepresence hurts us, and the warm eye of the born physician, whose merepresence heals us. Does that tell us everything? We hear the moans whichthe sea sends up to the mountains, when storms are coming, and ships areto be wrecked, and we do not call them the voices of the Nightman, butonly the voices of the wind. We have changed the name; but we have takennone of the mystery and marvel out of the thing itself. It is the Windfor us; it was the Nightman for our fathers. That is nearly all. The wind bloweth where it listeth. We are as far off as ever. Oursuperstitions remain, only we call them Science, and try not to beafraid of them. But we are as little children after all, and the best ofus are those that, being wisest, see plainest that, before the wondersand terrors of the great world we live in, we are children, walkinghand-in-hand in fear. 

MANX STORIES

You will say that there ought to be many good stories of a people likethe Manx; and here again I have to confess to you that the absence ofall literary conscience, all perception of keeping and relation, allsense of harmony and congruity in the Manxman has so demoralised ouranecdotal _ana_ that I hesitate to offer you certain of the best ofour Manx yarns from fear that they may be venerable English, Irish, andScotch familiars. I will content myself with a few that bear undoubtedManx lineaments. As an instance of Manx hospitality, simple and rude, but real and hearty, I think you would go the world over to match this. The late Rev. Hugh Stowell Brown, a Manxman, brother of the most famousof living Manxmen, and himself our North-country Spurgeon, with hiswife, his sister, and his mother, were belated one evening up BaldwinGlen, and stopped at a farm-house to inquire their way. But the farmerwould not hear of their going a step further. "Aw, nonsense!" he said. "What's the use of talkin', man? You'll be stoppin' with us to-night. Aw 'deed ye will, though. The women can get along together aisy, and_you're a clane lookin' sort o' chap; you'll be sleepin' with me!_"

In the old days of, say, two steamboats a week to England the old Manxcaptains of the Steamboat Company were notorious soakers. There is astory of one of them who had the Archdeacon of the island aboard in astorm. It was night. The reverend Archdeacon was in an agony of pain andterror. He inquired anxiously of the weather. The captain, very drunk, answered, "If it doesn't mend we'll all be in heaven before morning, Archdeacon!" "Oh, God forbid, captain, " cried the Archdeacon. 

I have said what true work for religion Nonconformity must have donein those evil days when the clergy of the Athols were more busy withbackgammon than with theology. But the religion of the old type of ManxMethodist was often an amusing mixture of puritanism and its opposite, a sort of grim, white-faced sanctity, that was never altogether free ofthe suspicion of a big boisterous laugh behind it. The Methodist localpreachers have been the real guardians and repositories of one sideof the Manx genius, a curious, hybrid thing, deadly earnest, oftenhowlingly ludicrous, simple, generally sincere, here and thereaudaciously hypocritical. Among local preachers I remember some of thesweetest, purest, truest men that ever walked this world of God; butI also remember a > man who was brought home from market on Saturdaynight, dead drunk, across the bottom of his cart drawn by his faithfulhorse, and I saw him in the pulpit next morning, and heard his sermon onthe evils of backsliding. There is a story of the jealousy of two localpreachers. The one went to hear the other preach. The preacher laid outhis subject under a great many heads, firstly, secondly, thirdly, up totenthly. His rival down below in the pew spat and _haw'd_ and _tchut'd_a good deal, and at last, quite impatient of getting no solid religiousfood, cried aloud, "Give us mate, man, give us mate!" Whereupon thepreacher leaned over the pulpit cushion, and said, "Hould on, man, tillI've done with the carving. "

But to tell of Happy Dan, and his wondrous sermon on the Prodigal Sonat the Clover Stones, Lonan, and his discourse on the swine possessedof devils who went "triddle-traddle, triddle-traddle down the brews andwere clane drownded;" and of the marvellous account of how King Davidremonstrated in broadest Manx _patois_ with the "pozzle-tree, " for beingblown down; and then of the grim earnestness of a good man who couldnever preach on a certain text without getting wet through to thewaistcoat with perspiration--to open the flood-gates of this kind ofManx story would be to liberate a reservoir that would hardly know anend, so I must spare you. 

MANX "CHARACTERS"

At various points of my narrative I have touched on certain of oureccentric Manx "characters. " But perhaps more interesting than any suchwhom I have myself met with are some whom I have known only by repute. These children of Nature are after all the truest touchstones of anation's genius. Crooked, distorted, deformed, they nevertheless, andperhaps therefore, show clearly the bent of their race. If you arewithout brake or curb you may be blind, but you must know when you aregoing down hill. The curb of education, and the brake of common-senseare the surest checks on a people's individuality. And these poorhalfwits of the Manx race, wiser withal than many of the Malvolios whosmile on them so demurely, exhibit the two great racial qualities ofthe Manx people--the Celtic and the Norse--in vivid companionship andcontrast. It is an amusing fact that in some wild way the bardic spiritbreaks out in all of them. They are all singers, either of their ownsongs, or the songs of others. That surely is the Celtic strain in them. But their songs are never of the joys of earth or of love, or yet ofwar; never, like the rustic poetry of the Scotch, full of pawky humour;never cynical, never sarcastic; only concerned with the terrors ofjudgment and damnation and the place of torment. That, also, may be afierce and dark development of the Celtic strain, but I see more of theNorse spirit in it. When my ancient bard in Glen Rushen took down histhumb-marked, greasy, discoloured poems from the "lath" against theopen-timbered ceiling, and read them aloud to me in his broad Manxdialect, with a sing-song of voice and a swinging motion of body, whilethe loud hailstorm pelted the window pane and the wind whistled roundthe house, I found they were all startling and almost ghastly appeals tothe sinner to shun his evil courses. One of them ran like this:

HELL IS HOT. 

 O sinner, see your dangerous state, And think of hell ere 'tis too late; When worldly cares would drown each thought, Pray call to mind that hell is hot. Still to increase your godly fears, Let this be sounding in your ears, Still bear in mind that hell is hot, Remember and forget it not. 

There was another poem about a congregation of the dead in the region ofthe damned:

 I found a reverend parson there, A congregation too, Bowed on their bended knees at prayer, As they were wont to do. But soon my heart was struck with pain, I thought it truly odd, The parson's prayer did not contain A word concerning God. 

You will remember the Danish book called "Letters from Hell, " containingexactly the same idea, and conclude that the Manx bard was poking fun atsome fashionable yet worldly-minded preacher. But no; he was too much achild of Nature for that. 

There is not much satire in the Manx character, and next to no cynicismat all. The true Manxman is white-hot. I have heard of one, John Gale, called the Manx Burns, who lampooned the upstarts about him, and also ofone, Tom the Dipper, an itinerant Manx bard, who sang at fairs; but in ageneral way the Manx bard has been a deadly earnest person, most at homein churchyards. There was one such, akin in character to my old friendBilly of Maughold, but of more universal popularity, a quite privilegedpet of everybody, a sort of sacred being, though as crazy as man may be, called Chalse-a-Killey. Chaise was scarcely a bard, but a singer ofthe songs of bards. He was a religious monomaniac, who lived before histime, poor fellow; his madness would not be seen in him now. The idolof his crazed heart was Bishop Wilson. He called him _dear_ and _sweet_, vowed he longed to die, just that he might meet him in heaven; thenWilson would take him by the hand, and he would tell him all his mind, and together they would set up a printing press, with the types ofdiamonds, and print hymns, and send them back to the Isle of Man. Poor, 'wildered brain, haunted by "half-born thoughts, " not all delusions, butquaint and grotesque. Full of valiant fury, Chaise was always ready tofight for his distorted phantom of the right. When an uncle of myown died, whose name I bear, Chaise shocked all the proprieties byannouncing his intention of walking in front of the funeral processionthrough the streets and singing his terrible hymns. He would yield tono persuasion, no appeals, and no threats. He had promised the dead manthat he would do this, and he would not break his oath to save his life. It was agony to the mourners, but they had to submit. Chaise fulfilledhis vow, walked ten yards in front, sang his fierce music with the tearsstreaming from his wild eyes down his quivering face. But the spectaclelet loose no unseemly mirth. Nobody laughed, and surely if the heaventhat Chaise feared was listening and looking down, his crazy voice wasnot the last to pierce the dome of it. My friend the Rev. T. E. Brownhas written a touching and beautiful poem, "To Chaise in Heaven":

 So you are gone, dear Chaise! Ah well; it was enough-- The ways were cold, the ways were rough, O Heaven! O home! No more to roam, Chaise, poor Chaise! And now it's all so plain, dear Chaise! So plain-- The 'wildered brain, The joy, the pain The phantom shapes that haunted, The half-born thoughts that daunted: All, all is plain, Dear Chaise! All is plain. 

*****

 Ah now, dear Chaise! of all the radiant host, Who loves you most? I think I know him, kneeling on his knees; Is it Saint Francis of Assise? Chaise, poor Chaise. 

MANX CHARACTERISTICS

I have rambled on too long about my eccentric Manx characters, and leftmyself little space for a summary of the soberer Manx characteristics. These are independence, modesty, a degree of sloth, a non-sanguinetemperament, pride, and some covetousness. This uncanny combination ofcharacteristics is perhaps due to our mixed Celtic and Norse blood. Ourindependence is pure Norse. I have never met the like of it, except inNorway, where a Bergen policeman who had hunted all the morning for mylost umbrella would not take anything for his pains; and in Iceland, where a poor old woman in a ragged woollen dress, a torn hufa on herhead, torn skin shoes on her feet, and with rheumatism playing visiblehavoc all over her body, refused a kroner with the dignity, grave look, stiffened lips, and proud head that would have become a duchess. But theManxman's independence almost reaches a vice. He is so unwilling to oweanything to any man that he is apt to become self-centred and cold, and to lose one of the sweetest joys of life--that of receiving greatfavours from those we greatly love, between whom and ourselves there isno such thing as an obligation, and no such thing as a debt. There issomething in the Manxman's blood that makes him hate rank; and though hehas a vast respect for wealth, it must be his own, for he will take offhis hat to nobody else's. 

The modesty of the Manxman reaches shyness, and his shyness is capableof making him downright rude. One of my friends tells a charming story, very characteristic of our people, of a conversation with the men of theherring-fleet. "We were comin' home from the Shetland fishing, ten boatsof us; and we come to an anchor in a bay. And there was a tremenjis finecastle there, and a ter'ble great lady. Aw, she was a ter'ble kind lady;she axed the lot of us (eighty men and boys, eight to each boat) to comeup and have dinner with her. So the day come--well, none of us went!That shy!" My friend reproved them soundly, and said he wished he knewwho the lady was that he might write to her and apologise. Then followeda long story of how a breeze sprung up and eight of the boats sailed. After that the crew of the remaining two boats, sixteen men and boys, went up to the tremenjis great castle, and the ter'ble great lady, andhad tea. If any lady here present knows a lady on the north-west coastof Scotland who a year or two back invited eighty Manx men and boys todinner, and received sixteen to tea, she will redeem the character ofour race if she will explain that it was not because her hospitality wasnot appreciated that it was not accepted by our foolish countrymen. 

There is nothing that more broadly indicates the Norse strain in theManx character than the non-sanguine temperament of the Manxmen. Wherethe pure Celt will hope anything and promise everything, the Manxmanwill hope not at all and promise nothing. "Middling" is the commonestword in a Manxman's mouth. Hardly anything is entirely good, or whollybad, but nearly everything is middling. It's a middling fine day, or amiddling stormy one; the sea is middling smooth or middling rough; theherring harvest is middling big or middling little; a man is never muchmore, than middling tired, or middling well, or middling hungry, ormiddling thirsty, and the place you are travelling to is alwaya middlingnear or middling far. The true Manxman commits himself to nothing. When Nelson was shot down at Trafalgar, Cowle, a one-armed Manxquartermaster, caught him in his remaining arm. This was Cowle's story:"He fell right into my arms, sir. 'Mr. Cowle, ' he says, 'do you think Ishall recover?' 'I think, my lord, ' I says, 'we had better wait for theopinion of the medical man. '" Dear old Cowle, that cautious word showedyou were no Irishman, but a downright middling Manxman. 

I have one more story to tell, and that is of Manx pride, which is awondrous thing, usually-very ludicrous. A young farming girl who will goabout barefoot throughout the workdays of the week would rather perishthan not dress in grand attire, after her own sort, on Sunday afternoon. But Manx pride in dress can be very touching and human. When thelighthouse was built on the Chickens Rock, the men who were to live init were transferred from two old lighthouses on the little isletcalled the Calf of Man, but their families were left in the disusedlighthouses. Thus the men were parted from their wives and children, buteach could see the house of the other, and on Sunday mornings the wivesin their old lighthouses always washed and dressed the children and madethem "nice" and paraded them to and fro on the platforms in front ofthe doors, and the men in their new lighthouse always looked across theSound at their little ones through their powerful telescopes. 

MANX TYPES

Surely that is a lovely story, full of real sweetness and pathos. It reminds me that amid many half-types of dubious quality, selfish, covetous, quarrelsome, litigious, there are at least two types of Manxcharacter entirely charming and delightful. The one is the best type ofManx seaman, a true son of the sea, full of wise saws and proverbs, fullof long yarns and wondrous adventures, up to anything, down to anything, pragmatical, a mighty moralist in his way, but none the less equal toa round ringing oath; a sapient adviser putting on the airs of aphilosopher, but as simple as the baby of a girl--in a word, dear oldTom Baynes of "Fo'c's'le Yarns, " old salt, old friend, old rip. Theother type is that of the Manx parish patriarch. This good soul itwould be hard to beat among all the peoples of earth. He unites the bestqualities of both sexes; he is as soft and gentle as a dear old woman, and as firm of purpose as a strong man. Garrulous, full of platitudes, easily moved to tears by a story of sorrow and as easily taken in, butbeloved and trusted and reverenced by all the little world about him. I have known him as a farmer, and seen him sitting at the head of histable in the farm kitchen, with his sons and daughters and men-servantsand women-servants about him, and, save for ribald gossip, no one ofwhatever condition abridged the flow of talk for his presence. I haveknown him as a parson, when he has been the father of his parish, thepatriarch of his people, the "ould angel" of all the hillside roundabout. Such sweetness in his home life, such nobility, such gentle, old-fashioned ceremoniousness, such delightful simplicity of manners. Then when two of these "ould angels" met, two of these Parson Adamses, living in content on seventy pounds a year, such high talk on greatthemes, long hour after long hour in the little low-ceiled Vicaragestudy, with no light but the wood fire, which glistened on the diamondwindow-pane! And when midnight came seeing each other home, spendinghalf the night walking to and fro from Vicarage to Vicarage, or turningout to saddle the horse in the field, but (far away "in wandering mazeslost") going blandly up to the old cow and putting on the blinkers andsaying, "Here he is, sir. " Have we anything like all this in England?Their type is nearly extinct even in the Isle of Man, where they havelongest survived. And indeed they are not the only good things that aredying out there. 

LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS

The island has next to no literary associations, but it would beunpardonable in a man of letters if he were to forget the few it canboast. Joseph Train, our historian, made the acquaintance of Scott in1814, and during the eighteen years following he rendered importantservices to "The Great Unknown" as a collector of some of the legendarystories used as foundations for what were then called the Scotch Novels. But it is a common error that Train found the groundwork of the Manxpart of "Peveril of the Peak. " It was Scott who directed Train to theIsle of Man as a fine subject for study. Scott's brother Thomas livedthere, and no doubt this was the origin of Scott's interest in theisland. Scott himself never set foot on it. Wordsworth visited theisland about 1823, and he recorded his impressions in various sonnets, and also in the magnificent lines on Peel Castle--"I was thy neighbouronce, thou rugged pile. " He also had a relative living there--MissHutchinson, his sister-in-law. A brother of this lady, a mariner, liesburied in Braddan churchyard, and his tombstone bears an epitaph whichWordsworth indited. The poet spent a summer at Peel, pitching his tentabove what is now called Peveril Terrace. One of my friends tried longago to pump up from this sapless soil some memory of Wordsworth, but noone could remember anything about him. Shelley is another poet of whomthere remains no trace in the Isle of Man. He visited the island earlyin 1812, being driven into Douglas harbour by contrary winds on hisvoyage from Cumberland to Ireland. He was then almost unknown; Harrietwas still with him, and his head was full of political reforms. Theisland was in a state of some turmoil, owing to the unpopularity ofthe Athols, who still held manorial rights and the patronage of theBishopric. The old Norse Constitution was intact, and the House of Keyswas then a self-elected chamber. It is not wonderful that Shelley madeno impression on Man in 1812, but it is surprising that Man seems tohave made no impression on Shelley. It made a very sensible impressionon Hawthorne, who left his record in the "English Note Book. "

MANX PROGRESS

I am partly conscious that throughout these lectures I have kept my facetowards the past. That has been because I have been loth to look at thepresent, and almost afraid to peep into the future. The Isle of Man isnot now what it was even five-and-twenty years ago. It has becometoo English of late. The change has been sudden. Quite within my ownrecollection England seemed so far away that there was something beyondconception moving and impressive in the effect of it and its people uponthe imagination of the Manx. There were only about two steamers a weekbetween England and the Isle of Man at that time. Now there are abouttwo a day. There are lines of railway on this little plot of land, whichyou might cross on foot between breakfast and lunch, and cover fromend to end in a good day's walk. This is, of course, a necessity of thealtered conditions, as also, no doubt, are the parades, and esplanades, and promenades, and iron piers, and marine carriage drives, and EiffelTower, and old castles turned into Vauxhall Gardens, and fairy glensinto "happy day" Roshervilles. God forbid that I should grudge thefactory hand his breath of the sea and glimpse of the gorse-bushes; butI know what price we are paying that we may entertain him. 

Our young Manxman is already feeling the English immigration on hischaracter. He is not as good a man as his father was before him. I daresay that in his desire to make everything English that is Manx, hemay some day try to abolish the House of Keys, or at least dig up theTynwald Hill. In one fit of intermittent mania, he has already attemptedto "restore" the grand ruins of Peel Castle, getting stones fromWhitehaven, filling up loop-holes, and doing other indecencies withthe great works of the dead. All this could be understood if the youngManxman were likely to be much the richer for the changes he is bringingabout. But he is not; the money that comes from England is largely takenby English people, and comes back to England. 

CONCLUSION

From these ungracious thoughts let me turn again, in a last word, tothe old island itself, the true Mannin-veg-Veen of the real Manxman. Inthese lectures you have seen it only as in flashes from a dark lantern. I am conscious that an historian would have told you so much more ofsolid fact that you might have carried away tangible ideas. Fact is notmy domain, and I shall have to be content if in default of it I have gotyou close to that less palpable thing, the living heart of Manx-land, shown you our island, helped you to see its blue waters and to scent itsgolden gorse, and to know the Manxman from other men. Sometimes I havebeen half ashamed to ask you to look at our countrymen, so rude are theyand so primitive--russet-coated, currane-shod men and women, untaught, superstitious, fishing the sea, tilling their stony land, playing nextto no part in the world, and only gazing out on it as a mystery faraway, whereof the rumour comes over the great waters. No great man amongus, no great event in our history, nothing to make us memorable. But Ihave been re-assured when I have remembered that, after all, to look ona life so simple and natural might even be a tonic. Here we are in theheart of the mighty world, which the true Manxman knows only by vaguereport; millions on millions huddled together, enough to make fivehundred Isles of Man, more than all the Manxmen that have lived sincethe days of Orry, more than all that now walk on the island, added toall that rest under it; streets on streets of us, parks on parks, livinga life that has no touch of Nature in the ways of it; save only in ourown breasts, which often rebel against our surroundings, strugglingwith weariness under their artificiality, and the wild travesty of whatwe are made for. Do what we will, and be what we may, sometimes we feelthe falseness of our ways of life, and surely it is then a good andwholesome thing to go back in thought to such children of Nature as myhomespun Manx people, and see them where Nature placed them, breathingthe free air of God's proper world, and living the right lives of Hisservants, though so simple, poor, and rude.