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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Manx Nation - 1891, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Little Manx Nation - 1891
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2008 [EBook #25571]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE MANX NATION - 1891 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+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 the
+Spring. In making a little book of them I have thought it best to
+leave them as they were delivered, with all the colloquialisms that are
+natural to spoken words frankly exposed to cold print. This does not
+help them to any particular distinction as literature, but perhaps it
+lends them an ease and familiarity which may partly atone to you and to
+all good souls for their plentiful lack of dignity. I have said so often
+that I am not an historian, that I ought to add that whatever history
+lies hidden here belongs to Train, our only accredited chronicler,
+and, even at the risk of bowing too low, I must needs protest, in our
+north-country homespun, that he shall have the pudding if he will
+also take the pudding-bag. You know what I mean. At some points our
+history--especially our early history--is still so vague, so dubious,
+so full of mystery. It is all the fault of little Mannanan, our ancient
+Manx magician, who enshrouded our island in mist. Or should I say it
+is to his credit, for has he not left us through all time some shadowy
+figures to fight about, like "rael, thrue, reg'lar" Manxmen. As for the
+stories, 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 that
+they are mainly my own. On second thought it occurs to me that maybe
+they 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, any
+pathos, any racy touches of our rugged people, you will permit me to
+determine their ownership in the way of this paraphrase of Coleridge's
+doggerel 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--King
+Orry--The Tynwald--The Lost Saga--The Manx Macbeth--The Manx
+Glo'ster--Scotch and English Dominion--The Stanley Dynasty--Iliam
+Dhoan--The Athol Dynasty--Smuggling and Wrecking--The Revestment--Home
+Rule--Orry's Sons
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE MANX BISHOPS
+
+The Druids--Conversion to Christianity--The Early Bishops of
+Man--Bishops of the Welsh Dynasty--Bishops of the Norse Dynasty--Sodor
+and Man--The Early Bishops of the House of Stanley--Tithes in
+Kind--The Gambling Bishop--The Deemsters--The Bishopric Vacant--Bishop
+Wilson--Bishop Wilson's Censures--The Great Corn Famine--The Bishop at
+Court--Stories of Bishop Wilson--Quarrels of Church and State--Some
+Old Ordeals--The Herring Fishery--The Fishermen's Service--Some Old
+Laws--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--Manx
+Ballads--Manx Carols--Decay of the Manx Language--Manx
+Superstitions--Manx Stories--Manx "Characters"--Manx
+Characteristics--Manx Types--Literary Associations--Manx
+Progress--Conclusion
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE MANX NATION
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE MANX KINGS
+
+There are just two ideas which are associated in the popular imagination
+with the first thought of the Isle of Man. The one is that Manxmen have
+three legs, and the other that Manx cats have no tails. But whatever
+the popular conception, or misconception, of Man and its people, I shall
+assume that what you ask from me is that simple knowledge of simple
+things which has come to me by the accident of my parentage. I must
+confess to you at the outset that I am not much of a hand at grave
+history. Facts and figures I cannot expound with authority. But I know
+the history of the Isle of Man, can see it clear, can see it whole, and
+perhaps it will content you if I can show you the soul of it and make
+it to live before you. In attempting to traverse the history I feel like
+one who carries a dark lantern through ten dark centuries. I turn the
+bull's eye on this incident and that, take a peep here and there, a
+white light now, and then a blank darkness. Those ten centuries are
+full 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 human
+heart of Manxland. I want to show it to you, if you will allow me to
+spare the needful time from facts and figures. It will get you close to
+Man 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 lives
+on an island that is an islander. You know what I mean. I mean by an
+islander one whose daily life is affected by the constant presence of
+the sea. This is possible in a big island if it is far enough away from
+the rest of the world, Iceland, for example, but it is inevitable in a
+little one. The sea is always present with Manxmen. Everything they do,
+everything they say, gets the colour and shimmer of the sea. The sea
+goes into their bones, it comes out at their skin. Their talk is full of
+it. They buy by it, they sell by it, they quarrel by it, they fight by
+it, they swear by it, they pray by it. Of course they are not conscious
+of this. Only their degenerate son, myself to wit, a chiel among them
+takin' notes, knows how the sea exudes from the Manxmen. Say you ask if
+the Governor is at home. If he is not, what is the answer? "He's not on
+the island, sir." You inquire for the best hotel. "So-and-so is the
+best hotel on the island, sir." You go to a Manx fair and hear a farmer
+selling a cow. "Aw," says he, "she's a ter'ble gran' craythuer for
+milkin', sir, and for butter maybe there isn' the lek of her on the
+island, sir." Coming out of church you listen to the talk of two old
+Manxwomen 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, the
+island, 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 can
+never 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 went
+up into the mountains to seek an old Manx bard, last of a race of whom I
+shall have something to tell you in their turn. All his life he had been
+a poet. I did not gather that he had read any poetry except his own. Up
+to seventy he had been a bachelor. Then this good Boaz had lit on his
+Ruth 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 bush
+in sight, a dead stretch of sea in front, rarely brightened by a sail. I
+had come through a blinding hail-storm. The old man was sitting in the
+chimney nook, a little red shawl round his head and knotted under his
+chin. Within this aureole his face was as strong as Savonarola's, long
+and gaunt, and with skin stretched over it like parchment. He was no
+hermit, but a farmer, and had lived on that land, man and boy, nearly
+ninety years. He had never been off the island, and had strange notions
+of the rest of the world. Talked of England, London, theatres, palaces,
+king's entertainments, evening parties. He saw them all through the
+mists 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. I
+dare not tell you what they were. A Royal Institution audience would
+be aghast. They had, as a whole, a strong smell of sulphur. But the old
+bard was not merely an islander, he belonged to his land more than his
+land belonged to him. The fishing town nearest to his farm was Peel, the
+great 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," he
+answered. 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, the
+place 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, its
+point of touch with the world, was nine miles away. How long since he
+had been in Douglas? "Sixty years," said the old bard. God bless him,
+the sweet, dear old soul! Untaught, narrow, self-centred, bred on his
+byre like his bullocks, but keeping his soul alive for all that, caring
+not a ha'porth for the things of the world, he was a true Manxman, and
+I'm proud of him. One thing I have to thank him for. But for him, and
+the like of him, we should not be here to-day. It is not the cultured
+Manxman, the Manxman that goes to the ends of the earth, that makes the
+Manx nation valuable to study. Our race is what it is by virtue of
+the Manxman who has had no life outside Man, and so has kept alive our
+language, our customs, our laws and our patriarchal Constitution.
+
+
+OUR ISLAND
+
+It lies in the middle of the Irish Sea, at about equal distances from
+England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Seen from the sea it is a lovely
+thing to look upon. It never fails to bring me a thrill of the heart as
+it comes out of the distance. It lies like a bird on the waters. You
+see it from end to end, and from water's edge to topmost peak, often
+enshrouded in mists, a dim ghost on a grey sea; sometimes purple against
+the setting sun. Then as you sail up to it, a rugged rocky coast, grand
+in its beetling heights on the south and west, and broken into the
+sweetest bays everywhere. The water clear as crystal and blue as the sky
+in summer. You can see the shingle and the moss through many fathoms.
+Then mountains within, not in peaks, but round foreheads. The colour of
+the island is green and gold; its flavour is that of a nut. Both colour
+and 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, the
+beauty and delight of it in the Spring! Long, broad stretches glittering
+under the sun with the gold of the gorse, and all the air full of the
+nutty perfume. There is nothing like it in the world. Then the glens,
+such fairy spots, deep, solemn, musical with the slumberous waters, clad
+in dark mosses, brightened by the red fuchsia. The fuchsia is everywhere
+where the gorse is not. At the cottage doors, by the waysides, in the
+gardens. If the gorse should fail the fuchsia might even take its place
+on the mountains. Such is Man, but I am partly conscious that it is Man
+as seen by a Manxman. You want a drop of Manx blood in you to see it
+aright. Then you may go the earth over and see grander things a thousand
+times, things more sublime and beautiful, but you will come back to
+Manxland and tramp the Mull Hills in May, long hour in, and long hour
+out, and look at the flowering gorse and sniff its flavour, or lie by
+the chasms and listen to the screams of the sea-birds, as they whirl and
+dip and dart and skim over the Sugar-loaf Rock, and you'll say after
+all that God has smiled on our little island, and that it is the fairest
+spot 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; others
+say 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 derives
+its name from Mannin--in being an old Celtic word for island, therefore
+Meadhon-in (pronounced Mannin) would signify: The middle island. That
+definition requires that the Manxman had no hand in naming Man. He would
+never think of describing its geographical situation on the sea.
+Manxmen say the island got its name from a mythical personage called
+Mannanan-Beg-Mac-y-Learr, Little Mannanan, son of Learr. This man was
+a sort of Prospero, a magician, and the island's first ruler. The story
+goes that if he dreaded an enemy he would enshroud the island in mist,
+"and that by art magic." Happy island, where such faith could ever
+exist! Modern science knows that mist, and where it comes from.
+
+
+OUR HISTORY
+
+It falls into three periods, first, a period of Celtic rule, second of
+Norse rule, third of English dominion. Manx history is the history of
+surrounding nations. We have no Sagas of our own heroes. The Sagas are
+all of our conquerors. Save for our first three hundred recorded years
+we have never been masters in our own house. The first chapter of our
+history has yet to be written. We know we were Celts to begin with, but
+how we came we have never learnt, whether we walked dry-shod from Wales
+or sailed in boats from Ireland. To find out the facts of our early
+history would be like digging up the island of Prospero. Perhaps we had
+better 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 the
+first and last time that it could be said of us.
+
+
+KING ORRY
+
+Early in the sixth century Man became subject to the kings and princes
+of Wales, who ruled from Anglesea. There were twelve of them in
+succession, and the last of them fell in the tenth century. We know next
+to nothing about them but their names. Then came the Vikings. The young
+bloods of Scandinavia had newly established their Norse kingdom in
+Iceland, and were huckstering and sea roving about the Baltic and among
+the British Isles. They had been to the Orkneys and Shetlands, and
+Faroes, perhaps to Ireland, certainly to the coast of Cumberland, making
+Scandinavian settlements everywhere. So they came to Moen early in the
+tenth century, led by one Orry, or Gorree. Some say this man was
+nothing but a common sea-rover. Others say he was a son of the Danish or
+Norwegian monarch. It does not matter much. Orry had a better claim to
+regard than that of the son of a great king. He was himself a great
+man. 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's
+ships were at anchor behind him; and with his men he had touched the
+beach, when down came the Celts to face him, and to challenge him. They
+demanded to know where he came from. Then the red-haired sea-warrior
+pointed to the milky way going off towards the North. "That is the way
+of my country," he answered. The Celts went down like one man in awe
+before him. He was their born king. It is what the actors call a fine
+moment. Still, nobody has ever told us how Orry and the Celts understood
+one another, speaking different tongues. Let us not ask.
+
+King Orry had come to stay, and sea-warriors do not usually bring their
+women over tempestuous seas. So the Norsemen married the Celtic women,
+and from that union came the Manx people. Thus the Manxman to begin with
+was half Norse, half Celt. He is much the same still. Manxmen usually
+marry Manx women, and when they do not, they often marry Cumberland
+women. As the Norseman settled in Cumberland as well as in Man the race
+is 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 that
+ever was done there. He established our Constitution. It was on the
+model of the Constitution just established in Iceland. The government
+was representative and patriarchal. The Manx people being sea-folk,
+living by the sea, a race of fishermen and sea-rovers, he divided the
+island into six ship-shires, now called Sheadings. Each ship-shire
+elected 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 derived
+from the Manx name _Kiare-as-Feed_, meaning the four-and-twenty. Train
+says the representatives were called Taxiaxi, signifying pledges or
+hostages, and consequently were styled Keys. Vigfusson's theory was
+that Keys is from the Norse word _Keise_, or chosen men. The common Manx
+notion, the idea familiar to my own boyhood, is, that the twenty-four
+members of the House of Keys are the twenty-four material keys whereby
+the closed doors of the law are unlocked. But besides the sea-folk of
+the ship-shires King Orry remembered the Church. He found it on the
+island at his coming, left it where he found it, and gave it a voice
+in the government. He established a Tynwald Court, equivalent to
+the Icelandic All Moot, where Church and State sat together. Then he
+appointed two law-men, called Deemsters, one for the north and the other
+for the south. These were equivalent to his Icelandic Loegsoegumadur,
+speaker of the law and judge of all offences. Finally, he caused to
+be built an artificial Mount of Laws, similar in its features to the
+Icelandic Logberg at Thingvellir. Such was the machinery of the Norse
+Constitution which King Orry established in Man. The working of it was
+very simple. The House of Keys, the people's delegates, discussed all
+questions of interest to the people, and sent up its desires to the
+Tynwald Court. This assembly of people and Church in joint session
+assented, and the desires of the people became Acts of Tynwald. These
+Acts were submitted to the King. Having obtained the King's sanction
+they were promulgated on the Tynwald Hill on the national day in the
+presence of the nation. The scene of that promulgation of the laws was
+stirring and impressive. Let me describe it.
+
+
+THE TYNWALD
+
+Perhaps there were two Tynwald Hills in King Orry's time, but I shall
+assume that there was one only. It stood somewhere about midway in
+the island. In the heart of a wide range of hill and dale, with a long
+valley to the south, a hill to the north, a table-land to the east, and
+to the west the broad Irish Sea. Not, of course, a place to be compared
+with the grand and gloomy valley of the Logberg, where in a vast
+amphitheatre of dark hills and great joekulls tipped with snow, with deep
+chasms and yawning black pits, one's heart stands still. But the place
+of the Manx Tynwald was an impressive spot. The Hill itself was a
+circular mount cut into broad steps, the apex being only a few feet in
+diameter. About it was a flat grass plot. Near it, just a hundred and
+forty yards away, connected with the mount by a beaten path, was a
+chapel. All around was bare and solitary, perhaps as bleak and stark as
+the lonely plains of Thingvellir.
+
+Such was the scene. Hither came the King and his people on Tynwald
+Day. It fell on the 24th of June, the first of the seven days of the
+Icelandic gathering of the Althing. What occurred in Iceland occurred
+also in Man. The King with his Keys and his clergy gathered in the
+chapel. Thence they passed in procession to the law-rock. On the top
+round of the Tynwald the King sat on a chair and faced to the east. His
+sword was held before him, point upwards. His barons and beneficed men,
+his deemsters, knights, esquires, coroners, and yeomen, stood on the
+lower steps of the mount. On the grass plot beyond the people were
+gathered in crowds. Then the work of the day began. The coroners
+proclaimed a warning. No man should make disturbance at Tynwald on pain
+of death. Then the Acts of Tynwald were read or recited aloud by the
+deemsters; first in the language of the laws, and next in the language
+of the people. After other formalities the procession of the King
+returned to the chapel, where the laws were signed and attested, and so
+the annual Tynwald ended.
+
+Now this primitive ceremonial, begun by King Orry early in the tenth
+century, is observed to this day. On Midsummer-day of this year of grace
+a ceremony similar in all its essentials will be observed by the present
+Governor, his Keys, clergy, deemsters, coroners, and people, on or near
+the same spot. It is the old Icelandic ordinance, but it has gone
+from Iceland. The year 1800 saw the last of it on the lava law-rock of
+Thingvellir. It is gone from every other Norse kingdom founded by the
+old sea-rovers among the Western Isles. Manxmen alone have held on to
+it. Shall we also let it go? Shall we laugh at it as a bit of mummery
+that is useless in an age of books and newspapers, and foolish and
+pompous in days of frock-coats and chimney-pot hats? I think not. We
+cannot afford to lose it. Remember, it is the last visible sign of our
+independence as a nation. It is our hand-grasp with the past. Our little
+nation is the only Norse nation now on earth that can shake hands with
+the days of the Sagas, and the Sea-Kings. Then let him who will laugh at
+our primitive ceremonial. It is the badge of our ancient liberty, and we
+need 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 of
+our kings, but also the greatest. We may be sure of that; first, by what
+we know; and next, by what we do not know. He was a conqueror, and yet
+we do not learn that he ever attempted to curtail the liberties of his
+subjects. He found us free men, and did not try to make us slaves. On
+the contrary, he gave us a representative Constitution, which has
+lasted a thousand years. We might call him our Manx King Alfred, if the
+indirections of history did not rather tempt us to christen him our Manx
+King Lear. His Saga has never been written, or else it is lost. Would
+that we could recover it! Oh, that imagination had the authority of
+history to vitalise the old man and his times! I seem to see him as he
+lived. There are hints of his character in his laws, that are as stage
+directions, telling of the entrances and exits of his people, though the
+drama of their day is gone. For example, in that preliminary warning
+of 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 that
+implies? Again, there is another clause which forbids any man, "on paine
+of 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 between
+the lines of that edict? Once more, no inquest of a deemster, no judge
+or jury, was necessary to the death-sentence of a man who rose against
+the king or his governor on his seat on Tynwald. Nobody can miss the
+meaning of that. Once again, it was a common right of the people to
+present petitions at Tynwald, a common privilege of persons unjustly
+punished to appeal against judgment, and a common prerogative of outlaws
+to ask at the foot of the Tynwald Mount on Tynwald Day for the removal
+of their outlawry. All these old rights and regulations came from
+Iceland, and by the help of the Sagas it needs no special imagination
+to make the scenes of their action live again. I seem to see King Orry
+sitting on his chair on the Tynwald with his face towards the east. He
+has long given up sea-roving.
+
+His long red hair is become grey or white. But the old lion has the
+muscles and fiery eye of the warrior still. His deemsters and barons
+are about him, and his people are on the sward below. They are free
+men; 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 a
+great voice and a sword, and ploughs a way through the fighters and
+scatters 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 and
+gaunt and dirty, a famished and hunted wolf. He is an outlaw, has killed
+a 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 and
+revenge, 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 was
+its hero. Our Manx Alfred, our Manx Arthur, our Manx Lear. Then room for
+him among our heroes! he must stand high.
+
+
+THE MANX MACBETH
+
+The line of Orry came to an end at the beginning of the eleventh
+century. Scotland was then under the sway of the tyrant Macbeth, and,
+oddly enough, a parallel tragedy to that of Duncan and his kinsman was
+being enacted in Man. A son of Harold the Black, of Iceland, Goddard
+Crovan, a mighty soldier, conquered the island and took the crown by
+treachery, coming first as a guest of the Manx king. Treachery breeds
+treachery, duplicity is a bad seed to sow for loyalty, and the Manx
+people were divided in their allegiance. About twenty years after
+Crovan's conquest the people of the south of the island took up arms
+against the people of the north, and the story goes that, when victory
+wavered, the women of the north rushed out to the help of their
+husbands, and so won the fight. For that day's work, the northern wives
+were 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 of
+Goddard Crovan died in 1265, and so ended the dynasty of the Norsemen in
+Man. They had been three hundred years there. They found us a people
+of the race and language of the people of Ireland, and they left us
+Manxmen. They were our only true Manx kings, and when they fell, our
+independence as a nation ceased.
+
+
+THE MANX GLO'STER
+
+Then the first pretender to the throne was one Ivar, a murderer, a sort
+of Richard III., not all bad, but nearly all; said to possess virtues
+enough to save the island and vices enough to ruin it. The island
+was surrendered to Scotland by treaty with Norway. The Manx hated the
+Scotch. They knew them as a race of pirates. Some three centuries later
+there was one Cutlar MacCullock, whose name was a terror, so merciless
+were his ravages. Over the cradles of their infants the Manx mothers
+sang 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 the
+kingdom of Scotland, supported Ivar. They were beaten. Ivar was a brave
+tiger, and died fighting.
+
+
+SCOTCH AND ENGLISH DOMINION
+
+Man was conquered, and the King of Scotland appointed a lieutenant to
+rule the island. But the Manx loved the Scotch no better as masters than
+as pirates, and they petitioned the English king, Edward I., to take
+them under his protection. He came, and the Scotch were driven out. But
+King Robert Bruce reconquered the island for the Scotch. Yet again the
+island fell to English dominion. This was in the time of Henry IV. It is
+a sorry story. Henry gave the island to the Earl of Salisbury. Salisbury
+sold 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 crowned
+with a golden crown." Scroop was beheaded by Henry, who confiscated his
+estate, and gave the island to the Earl of Northumberland. It is a silly
+inventory, 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 whom
+had, 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 be
+gathered 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. I
+dare say he thought the gift horse was something of a white elephant. No
+wonder if he did, for words could not exaggerate the wretched condition
+of the island and its people. The houses of the poor were hovels built
+of sod, with floors of clay, and sooty rafters of briar and straw and
+dried gorse. The people were hardly better fed than their beasts.
+So Stanley left the island alone. It will be interesting to mark how
+different was the mood of his children, and his children's children. The
+second Stanley went over to Man and did good work there. He promulgated
+our laws, and had them written down for the first time--they had
+hitherto been locked in the breasts of the deemsters in imitation of the
+practice of the Druids. The line of the Stanleys lasted more than three
+hundred years. Their rule was good for the island. They gave the tenants
+security of tenure, and the landowners an act of settlement. They lifted
+the material condition of our people, gave us the enjoyment of our
+venerable laws, and ratified our patriarchal Constitution. Honour to the
+Stanleys 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 of
+everybody who knows anything about our island and its people. This is
+the incident of the betrayal of Man and the Stanleys to the Parliament
+in the time of Cromwell. It was a stirring drama, and though the curtain
+has long fallen on it, the dark stage is still haunted by the ghosts
+of its characters. Chief among these was William Christian, the Manxman
+called Iliam Dhoan, Brown William, a familiar name that seems to hint
+of a fine type of man. You will find him in "Peveril of the Peak." He is
+there mixed up with Edward Christian, a very different person, just as
+Peel Castle is mixed up with Castle Rushen, consciously no doubt, and
+with an eye to imaginative effects, for Scott had a brother in the Isle
+of Man who could have kept him from error if fact had been of any great
+consequence 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 nearly
+everything under his command that fell within the province of his
+lordship. Then came the struggle with Rigby at Latham House, and the
+imprisonment of the Earl's six children by Fairfax. The Manx were
+against the Parliament, and subscribed L500, probably the best part of
+the money in the island, in support of the king. Then the Earl of Derby
+left the island with a body of volunteers, and in going away committed
+his wife to the care of Christian. You know what happened to him. He
+was taken prisoner in Lancashire, charged with bearing arms for Charles
+Stuart and holding the Isle of Man against the Commons, condemned, and
+executed at Bolton.
+
+With the forfeiture of the Earl the lordship of the island was granted
+by Parliament to Lord Fairfax. He sent an army to take possession, but
+the Countess-Dowager still held the island. Christian commanded the Manx
+militia. At this moment the Manx people showed signs of disaffection.
+They suddenly remembered two grievances, one was a grievance of
+land tenure, the other was that a troop of soldiers was kept at free
+quarterage. I cannot but wish they had bethought them of both a little
+earlier. They formed an association, and broke into rebellion against
+the Countess-Dowager within eight days of the Earl's execution. Perhaps
+they did not know of the Earl's death, for news travelled slowly over
+sea in those days. But at least they knew of his absence. As a Manxman I
+am not proud of them.
+
+During these eight days Mr. Receiver-General had begun to trim his
+sails. He had a lively wit, and saw which way things were going. Rumour
+says he was at the root of the secret association. Be that as it may, he
+carried the demands of the people to the Countess. She had no choice but
+to yield. The troops were disbanded. It was a bad victory.
+
+A fortnight before, when her husband lay under his death sentence, the
+Countess had offered the island in exchange for his life. So now Mr.
+Receiver-General used this act of love against her. He seized some of
+the forts, saying the Countess was selling the island to the Parliament.
+Then the army of the Parliament landed, and Christian straightway
+delivered the island up to it, protesting that he had taken the forts
+on its behalf. Some say the Countess was imprisoned in the vaults of the
+Castle. 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 office
+under the Parliament. From the place of Receiver-General he was promoted
+to the place of Governor. He had then the money of the island under his
+control, and he used it badly. Deficits were found in his accounts.
+He fled to London, was arrested for a large debt, and clapped into the
+Fleet. Then the Commonwealth fell, the Dowager Countess went upstairs
+again, and Charles II. restored the son of the great Earl to the
+lordship of Man. After that came the Act of Indemnity, a general pardon
+for all who had taken part against the royal cause. Thereupon Christian
+went back to the Isle of Man, was arrested on a charge of treason to
+the Countess-Dowager of Derby, pleaded the royal act of general pardon
+against all proceedings libelled against him, was tried by the House of
+Keys, and condemned to death. So ended act two.
+
+Christian had a nephew, Edward Christian, who was one of the two
+deemsters. This man dissented from the voice of the court, and hastened
+to 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 came
+too late; some say the Governor had it early enough and ignored it.
+At all events Christian was shot. He protested that he had never been
+anything but a faithful servant to the Derbys, and made a brave end.
+The place of his execution was Hango Hill, a bleak, bare stretch of
+land with the broad sea Under it. The soldiers wished to bind Christian.
+"Trouble not yourselves for me," he said, "for I that dare face death
+in 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, and
+you do your own work and mine." Then he stretched forth his arms as a
+signal, was shot through the heart, and fell. Such was the end of Brown
+William. 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, and
+to take the spoils. He ordered the Governor, the remaining Deemsters,
+and three of the Keys to be brought before him, pronounced the execution
+of Christian to be a violation of his general pardon, and imposed severe
+penalties of fine and imprisonment. "The rest" in this drama has not
+been "silence." One long clamour has followed. Christian's guilt has
+been questioned, the legality of his trial has been disputed, the
+validity of Charles's censure of the judges has been denied. The case
+is a mass of tangle, as every case must be that stands between the two
+stools of the Royal cause and the Commonwealth. But I shall make bold to
+summarise the truth in a very few words:
+
+First, that Christian was untrue to the house of Derby is as clear as
+noonday. If he had been their loyal servant he could never have taken
+office under the Parliament.
+
+Second, though untrue to the Countess-Dowager, Christian could not be
+guilty of treason to her, because she had ceased to be the sovereign
+when her husband was executed. Fairfax was then the Lord of Man, and
+Christian was guilty of no treason to him.
+
+Third, whether true or untrue to the Countess-Dowager, the act of pardon
+had nothing on earth to do with Christian, who was not charged with
+treason to King Charles, but to the Manx reigning family. The Isle of
+Man was not a dominion of England, and if Charles's order had arrived
+before Christian's execution, the Governor, Keys, and Deemster would
+have been fully justified in shooting the man in defiance of the king.
+
+I feel some diffidence in offering this opinion, but I can have none
+whatever in saying what I think of Christian. My fellow Manxmen are
+for the most part his ardent supporters. They affirm his innocence, and
+protest that he was a martyr-hero, declaring that at least he met his
+fate by asserting the rights of his countrymen. I shall not hesitate to
+say that I read the facts another way. This is how I see the man:
+
+First, he was a servant of the Derbys, honoured, empowered, entrusted
+with the care of his mistress, the Countess, when his master, the Earl,
+left the island to fight for the king. Second, eight days after his
+master's fate, he rose in rebellion against his mistress and seized some
+of the forts of defence. Third, he delivered the island to the army of
+the Parliament, and continued to hold his office under it. Fourth, he
+robbed the treasury of the island and fled from his new masters, the
+Parliament. Fifth, when the new master fell he chopped round, became a
+king's man once more, and returned to the island on the strength of the
+general pardon. Sixth, when he was condemned to death he, who had held
+office under the Parliament, protested that he had never been anything
+but a faithful servant to the Derbys.
+
+Such is Christian. _He_ a hero! No, but a poor, sorry, knock-kneed
+time-server. A thing of rags and patches. A Manx Vicar of Bray. Let us
+talk of him as little as we may, and boast of him not at all. Man and
+Manxmen 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, and
+then the lordship of Man devolved by the female line on the second Duke
+of Athol by right of his grandmother, who was a daughter of the great
+Earl of Derby. There is little that is good to say of the Lords of the
+House of Athol except that they sold the island. Almost the first, and
+quite the best, thing they did on coming to Man, was to try to get out
+of it. Let us make no disguise of the clear truth. The Manx Athols were
+bad, and nearly everything about them was bad. Never was the condition
+of the island so abject as during their day. Never were the poor so
+poor. Never was the name of Manxman so deservedly a badge of disgrace.
+The chief dishonour was that of the Athols. They kept a swashbuckler
+court in their little Manx kingdom. Gentlemen of the type of Barry
+Lyndon overran it. Captain Macheaths, Jonathan Wilds, and worse, were
+masters of the island, which was now a refuge for debtors and felons.
+Roystering, philandering, gambling, fighting, such was the order of
+things.
+
+What days they had! What nights! His Grace of Athol was himself in the
+thick of it all. He kept a deal of company, chiefly rogues and rascals.
+For example, among his "lord captains" was one Captain Fletcher. This
+Blue Beard had a magnificent horse, to which, when he was merry, he made
+his wife, who was a religious woman, kneel down and say her prayers. The
+mother of my friend, the Reverend T. E. Brown, came upon the dead body
+of one of these Barry Lyndons, who had fallen in a duel, and the blue
+mark was on the white forehead, where the pistol shot had been. I
+remember to have heard of another Sir Lucius O'Trigger, whose body lay
+exposed in the hold of a fishing-smack, while a parson read the burial
+service from the quay. This was some artifice to prevent seizure for
+debt. Oh, these good old times, with their soiled and dirty splendours!
+There was no lively chronicler, no Pepys, no Walpole then, to give us a
+picture of the Court of these Kings of Man. What a picture it must
+have been! Can you not see it? The troops of gentlemen debtors from
+the Coffee Houses of London, with their periwigs, their canes, and
+fine linen; down on their luck, but still beruffled, besnuffed, and
+red-heeled. I can see them strutting with noses up, through old Douglas
+market-place on market morning, past the Manx folk in their homespun,
+their curranes and undyed stockings. Then out at Mount Murray, the home
+of the Athols, their imitations of Vauxhall, torches, dancings, bows and
+conges, bankrupt shows, perhaps, but the bankrupt Barrys making the
+best of them--one seems to see it all. And then again, their genteel
+quarrels--quarrels were easily bred in that atmosphere. "Sir, I have the
+honour 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, and
+presently two men were crossing swords under the trees, and by-and-by
+one of them was left under the moonlight, with the shadow of the leaves
+playing on his white face.
+
+Poor gay dogs, they are dead! The page of their history is lost. Perhaps
+that is just as well. It must have been a dark page, maybe a little red
+too, 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 tables
+they 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. An
+author who wrote fifty years after the advent of the Athols gives a
+description of such misery that one's flesh creeps as one reads it.
+Badly housed, badly clad, badly fed, and hardly taught at all, the very
+poor were in a state of abjectness unfit for dogs. Treat men as dogs and
+they speedily acquire the habits of dogs, the vices of dogs, and none of
+their virtues. That was what happened to a part of the Manx people; they
+developed the instincts of dogs, while their masters, the other dogs,
+the gay dogs, were playing their bad game together. Smuggling became
+common on the coasts of Man. Spirits and tobacco were the goods chiefly
+smuggled, and the illicit trade rose to a great height. There was no
+way to check it. The island was an independent kingdom. My lord of Athol
+swept in the ill-gotten gains, and his people got what they could. It
+was a game of grab. Meantime the trade of the surrounding countries,
+England, Wales, and Ireland, was suffering grievously. The name of the
+island must have smelt strong in those days.
+
+But there was a fouler odour than that of smuggling. Wrecking was not
+unknown. The island lent itself naturally to that evil work. The mists
+of Little Mannanan, son of Lear, did not forsake our island when Saint
+Patrick 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 on
+to our rocks. Our coasts were badly lighted, or lighted not at all. An
+open flare stuck out from a pole at the end of a pier was often all
+that a dangerous headland had to keep vessels away from it. Nothing was
+easier than for a fishing smack to run down pole and flare together, as
+if by accident, on returning to harbour. But there was a worse danger
+than bad lights, and that was false lights. It was so easy to set them.
+Sometimes they were there of themselves, without evil intention of any
+human soul, luring sailors to their destruction. Then when ships came
+ashore it was so easy to juggle with one's conscience and say it was the
+will of God, and no bad doings of any man's. The poor sea-going men were
+at the bottom of the sea by this time, and their cargo was drifting up
+with the tide, so there was nothing to do but to take it. Such was the
+way of things. The Manxman could find his excuses. He was miserably
+poor, he had bad masters, smuggling was his best occupation, his coasts
+were indifferently lighted, ships came ashore of themselves--what was he
+to 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 that
+behind all this wicked work there were splendid virtues doing noble duty
+somewhere. The real sap, the true human heart of Manxland, was somehow
+kept alive. Besides cut-throats in ruffles, and wreckers in homespun,
+there were true, sweet, simple-hearted people who would not sell their
+souls to fill their mouths.
+
+Does it surprise you that some of all this comes within the memory of
+men still living? I am myself well within the period of middle life,
+and, though too young to touch these evil days, I can remember men
+and women who must have been in the thick of them. On the north of the
+island is Kirk Maughold Head, a bold, rugged headland going far out into
+the sea. Within this rocky foreland lie two bays, sweet coverlets of
+blue waters, washing a shingly shore under shelter of dark cliffs. One
+of 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, a
+treacherous 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, all
+bachelors, and all old, and never a woman or child among them--Jemmy of
+eighty years, Danny of seventy, and Billy of sixty something. Year in,
+year out, they worked at their looms, and early or late, whenever you
+passed on the road behind, you heard the click of them. Fishermen coming
+back to harbour late at night always looked for the light of their
+windows. "Yander's Jemmy-Danny-Billy's," they would say, and steer home
+by that landmark. But the light which guided the native seamen misled
+the stranger, and many a ship in the old days was torn to pieces on the
+jagged teeth of that sea-lion, the Carrick. Then, hearing loud human
+cries above the shrieks of wind and wave, the three helpless old men
+would 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 looms
+had done.
+
+But there were those who were not so guileless. Among them was a sad old
+salt, whom I shall call Hommy-Billy-mooar, Tommy, son of big Billy. Did
+I know him, or do I only imagine him as I have heard of him? I cannot
+say, but nevertheless I see him plainly. One of his eyes was gone, and
+the other was badly damaged. His face was of stained mahogany, one side
+of his mouth turned up, the other side turned down, he could laugh and
+cry together. He was half landsman, tilling his own croft, half seaman,
+going out with the boats to the herrings. In his youth he had sailed
+on a smuggler, running in from Whitehaven with spirits. The joy of "the
+trade," as they called smuggling, was that a man could buy spirits at
+two 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 house
+near the church, the venerable St. Maughold away on the headland, with
+its lonely churchyard within sound of the sea.
+
+There on tempestuous nights the old eagle looked out from his eyrie on
+the doings of the sea, over the back of the cottage of the old weavers
+to the Carrick. If anything came ashore he awakened his boys, scurried
+over to the bay, seized all they could carry, stole back home, hid his
+treasures 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, and
+listened to the story of last night's doings with a face full of
+surprise. They say that Hommy carried on this work for years, and though
+many suspected, none detected him, not even his wife, who was a good
+Methodist. The poor woman found him out at last, and, being troubled
+with a conscience, she died, and Hommy buried her in Kirk Maughold
+churchyard, and put a stone over her with a good inscription. Then he
+went on as before. But one morning there was a mighty hue and cry. A
+ship had been wrecked on the Carrick, and the crew who were saved had
+seen some rascals carrying off in the darkness certain rolls of Irish
+cloth which they had thrown overboard. Suspicion lit on Hommy and his
+boys. 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 gorse
+stored up on the "lath" in his cowhouse. That night he carried them off
+to the churchyard, took up the stone from over his wife's grave, dug the
+grave open and put in the cloth. Next day his one eye wept a good deal
+while 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 the
+cloth from his wife's grave because he had doubts about how she could
+rise in the resurrection with such a weight on her coffin. Poor old
+Hommy, he came to a bad end. He spent his last days in jail in Castle
+Rushen. A one-eyed mate of his told me he saw him there. Hommy was
+unhappy. He said "Castle Rushen wasn't no place for a poor man when he
+was gettin' anyways ould."
+
+
+THE REVESTMENT
+
+It is hardly a matter for much surprise that the British Government did
+what it could to curb the smuggling that was rife in Man in the days of
+the Athols. The bad work had begun in the days of the Derbys, when an
+Act was passed which authorised the Earl of Derby to dispose of his
+royalty and revenue in the island, and empowered the Lords of the
+Treasury 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 matters
+off. But the evil had by this time grown so grievously that the British
+Government threatened to strip the Duke without remuneration. Then he
+agreed to accept L70,000 as compensation for the absolute surrender of
+the island. He was also to have L2000 out of the Irish revenue, which,
+as well as the English revenue, was to benefit by the suppression of the
+clandestine trade. This was in exchange for some L6000 a year which
+was the Duke's Manx revenue, much of it from duties and customs paid
+in goods which were afterwards smuggled into England, Ireland, and
+Scotland. So much for his Grace of Athol. Of course the Manx people got
+nothing. The thief was punished, the receiver was enriched; it is the
+way of the world.
+
+In our history of Man, we call this sweet transaction, which occurred in
+1765, "The Revestment," meaning the revesting of the island in the
+crown of England. Our Manx people did not like it at all. I have heard a
+rugged 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 came
+of their anxiety about the fate of their ancient Constitution, the other
+came of their foolish generosity. They dreaded that the government of
+the island would be merged into that of England, and they imagined that
+because the Duke of Athol had been compelled to surrender, he had been
+badly treated. Their patriotism was satisfied when the Duke of Athol was
+made Governor-in-Chief under the English crown, for then it was clear
+that they were to be left alone; but their sympathy was moved to see him
+come back as servant who had once been lord. They had disliked the Duke
+of Athol down to that hour, but they forgot their hatred in sight of his
+humiliation, and when he landed in his new character, they received
+him with acclamations. I am touched by the thought of my countrymen's
+unselfish conduct in that hour; but I thank God I was not alive to
+witness it.
+
+I should have shrieked with laughter. The absurdity of the situation
+passes the limits even of a farce. A certain Duke, who had received
+L6000 a year, whereof a large part came of an immoral trade, had been
+to London and sold his interest in it for L70,000, because if he had
+not taken that, he would probably have got nothing. With thirteen
+years' purchase of his insecure revenue in his pocket, and L2000 a year
+promised, and his salary as Governor-in-Chief besides, he returns to the
+island where half the people are impoverished by his sale of the island,
+and nobody else has received a copper coin, and everybody is doomed to
+pay 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 to
+take him to the house, where he and his have kept swashbuckler courts,
+with troops of fine gentlemen debtors from London. The Manxmen forget
+everything except that his dignity is reduced. They unyoke his horses,
+get into his shafts, drag him through the streets, toss up their caps
+and cry hurrah! hurrah! One seems to see the Duke sitting there with
+his arms folded, and his head on his breast. He can't help laughing. The
+thing is too ridiculous. Oh, if Swift had been there to see it, what a
+scorching satire we should have had!
+
+But the Athols soon spirited away their popularity. First they clamoured
+for a further sum on account of the lost revenues, and they got it. Then
+they tried to appropriate part of the income of the clergy. Again, they
+put members of their family into the bishopric, and one of them sold his
+tithes to a factor who tried to extort them by strong measures, which
+led to green crop riots. In the end, their gross selfishness, which
+thought of their own losses but forgot the losses of the people, raised
+such open marks of aversion in the island that they finally signified to
+the king their desire to sell all their remaining rights, their land
+and manorial rights. This they did in 1829, receiving altogether, for
+custom, revenue, tithes, patronage of the bishopric, and quit rents,
+the sum of L416,000. Such was the value to the last of the Athols of the
+Manx dynasty, of that little hungry island of the Irish Sea, which Henry
+IV. gave to the Stanleys, and Sir John de Stanley did not think worth
+while to look at. So there was an end of the House of Athol. Exit the
+House of Athol! The play goes on without them.
+
+
+HOME RULE
+
+It might be said that with the final sale of 1829 the history of the
+Isle of Man came to a close. Since then we have been in the happy
+condition of the nation without a history. Man is now a dependency of
+the English crown. The crown is represented by a Lieutenant-Governor.
+Our old Norse Constitution remains. We have Home Rule, and it works
+well. The Manx people are attached to the throne of England, and her
+Majesty has not more loyal subjects in her dominions. We are deeply
+interested in Imperial affairs, but we have no voice in them. I do not
+think we have ever dreamt of a day when we should send representatives
+to Westminster. Our sympathies as a nation are not altogether, I think,
+with the party of progress. We are devoted to old institutions, and
+hold fast to such of them as are our own. All this is, perhaps, what you
+would expect of a race of islanders with our antecedents.
+
+Our social history has not been brilliant. I do not gather that the Isle
+of Man was ever Merry Man. Not even in its gayest days do we catch any
+note of merriment amid the rumpus of its revelries. It is an odd thing
+that 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 a
+finger. In this respect the island justifies the ungallant reading of
+its name--it is distinctly the Isle of Man. Not even amid the glitter
+and gewgaws of our Captain Macheaths do you catch the glint of the gown
+of a Polly. No bevy of ladies, no merry parties, no pageants worthy of
+the name. No, our social history gives no idea of Merry Man.
+
+Our civil history is not glorious. We are compelled to allow that it
+has no heroism in it. There has been no fight for principle, no brave
+endurance of wrong. Since the days of Orry, we have had nothing to tell
+in Saga, if the Sagaman were here. We have played no part in the work of
+the world. The great world has been going on for ten centuries without
+taking much note of us. We are a little nation, but even little nations
+have held their own. We have not.
+
+One great king we have had, King Orry. He gave us our patriarchal
+Constitution, and it is a fine thing. It combines most of the best
+qualities of representative government. Its freedom is more free than
+that of some republics. The people seem to be more seen, and their voice
+more heard, than in any other form of government whose operation I have
+witnessed. Yet there is nothing noisy about our Home Rule. And this
+Constitution we have kept alive for a thousand years, while it has died
+out of every other Norse kingdom. That is, perhaps, our highest national
+honour. We may have played a timid part; we may have accepted rulers
+from anywhere; we may never have made a struggle for independence; and
+no Manxman may ever have been strong enough to stand up alone for his
+people. It is like our character that we have taken things easily, and
+instead of resisting our enemies, or throwing them from our rocky
+island into the sea, we have been law abiding under lawless masters
+and peaceful under oppression. But this one thing we have done: we
+have clung to our patriarchal Constitution, not caring a ha'p'orth
+who administered our laws so long as the laws were our own. That is
+something; I think it is a good deal. It means that through many changes
+undergone by the greater peoples of the world, we are King Orry's men
+still. Let me in a last word tell you a story which shows what that
+description implies.
+
+ORRY'S SONS
+
+On the west coast of the Isle of Man stands the town of Peel. It is a
+little fishing port, looking out on the Irish Sea. To the north of
+it there is a broad shore, to the south lies the harbour with a rocky
+headland called Contrary Head; in front--until lately divided from the
+mainland by a narrow strait--is a rugged island rock. On this rock stand
+the broken ruins of a castle, Peel Castle, and never did castle stand
+on a grander spot. The sea flows round it, beating on the jagged cliffs
+beneath, and behind it are the wilder cliffs of Contrary. In the water
+between and around Contrary contrary currents flow, and when the wind
+is high they race and prance there like an unbroken horse. It is a grand
+scene, 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 was
+drifting on to Contrary Head. She was labouring hard in the heavy
+sea, rearing, plunging, creaking, groaning, and driving fast through
+clamouring winds and threshing breakers on to the cruel, black, steep
+horns of rock. All Peel was down at the beach watching her. Flakes of
+sea-foam were flying around, and the waves breaking on the beach were
+scooping up the shingle and flinging it through the air like sleet.
+
+Peel has a lifeboat, and it was got out. There were so many volunteers
+that 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 her
+masts, and her spars were floating around her in the snow-like surf. She
+was dangerous to approach, but the lifeboat reached her. Charlie cried
+out 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 until
+you bring the odd one on deck." The odd one, a disabled man, had been
+left below to his fate. Now he was brought up, and all were taken aboard
+the lifeboat.
+
+On landing at Peel there was great excitement, men cheering and women
+crying. The Manx women spotted a baby among the Norwegians, fought for
+it, one woman got it, and carried it off to a fire and dry clothing. It
+was the captain's wife's baby, and an hour afterwards the poor captain's
+wife, like a creature distracted, was searching for it all over the
+town. And to heighten the scene, report says that at that tremendous
+moment a splendid rainbow spanned the bay from side to side. That ought
+to be true if it is not.
+
+It was a brilliant rescue, but the moving part of the story is yet to
+tell. The Norwegian Government, touched by the splendid heroism of the
+Manxmen, struck medals for the lifeboat men and sent them across to the
+Governor. These medals were distributed last summer on the island rock
+within the ruins of old Peel Castle. Think of it! One thousand years
+before, not far from that same place, Orry the Viking came ashore from
+Denmark 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, and
+down the milky way, whence Orry himself once came, come now to the
+Manxmen the thanks and the blessings of their kinsmen, Orry's father's
+children.
+
+Such a story as this thrills one to the heart. It links Manxmen to the
+great past. What are a thousand years before it? Time sinks away, and
+the old sea-warrior seems to speak to us still through the surf of that
+storm at Peel.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE MANX BISHOPS
+
+Some years ago, in going down the valley of Foxdale, towards the mouth
+of Glen Rushen, I lost my way on a rough and unbeaten path under the
+mountain called Slieu Whallin. There I was met by a typical old Manx
+farmer, who climbed the hillside some distance to serve as my guide.
+"Aw, man," said he, "many a Sunday I've crossed these mountains in
+snow and hail together." I asked why on Sunday. "You see," said the old
+fellow, "I'm one of those men that have been guilty of what St. Paul
+calls the foolishness of preaching." It turned out that he was a local
+preacher to the Wesleyans, and that for two score years or more, in all
+seasons, in all weathers, every Sunday, year in, year out, he had made
+the journey from his farm in Foxdale to the western villages of Kirk
+Patrick, where his voluntary duty lay. He left me with a laugh and
+a cheery word. "Ask again at the cottage at the top of the brew," he
+shouted. "An ould widda lives there with her gel." At the summit of the
+hill, just under South Barrule, with Cronk-ny-arrey-Lhaa to the west, I
+came upon a disused lead mine, called the old Cross Vein, its shaft open
+save for a plank or two thrown across it, and filled with water almost
+to the surface of the ground. And there, under the lee of the roofless
+walls of the ruined engine-house, stood the tiny one-story cottage where
+I had been directed to inquire my way again. I knocked, and then saw the
+outer conditions of an existence about as miserable as the mind of man
+can conceive. The door was opened by a youngish woman, having a thin,
+white face, and within the little house an elderly woman was breaking
+scraps of vegetables into a pot that swung from a hook above a handful
+of turf fire, which burned on the ground. They were the widow and
+daughter. Their house consisted of two rooms, a living room and a
+sleeping closet, both open to the thatch, which was sooty with smoke.
+The floor was of bare earth, trodden hard and shiny. There was one
+little window in each apartment, but after the breakages of years,
+the panes were obscured by rags stuffed into the gaps to keep out the
+weather. The roof bore traces of damp, and I asked if the rain came into
+the house. "Och, yes, and bad, bad, bad!" said the elder woman. "He left
+us, sir, years ago." That was her way of saying that her husband was
+dead, and that since his death there had been no man to do an odd
+job about the place. The two women lived by working in the fields, at
+weeding, at planting potatoes, at thinning cabbages, and at the hay in
+its season. Their little bankrupt barn belonged to them, and it was all
+they had. In that they lived, or lingered, on the mountain top, a
+long stretch of bare hillside, away from any neighbour, alone in their
+poverty, with mountains before and behind, the broad grey sea, without
+ship or sail, down a gully to the west, nothing visible to the east
+save the smoke from the valley where lay the habitations of men, nothing
+audible anywhere but the deep rumble of the waves' bellow, or the chirp
+of the birds overhead, or, perhaps, when the wind was southerly, the
+church bells on Sunday morning. Never have I looked upon such lonely
+penury, and yet there, even there, these forlorn women kept their souls
+alive. "Yes," they said, "we're working when we can get the work, and
+trusting, trusting, trusting still."
+
+I have lingered too long over this poor adventure of losing my way to
+Glen Rushen, but my little sketch may perhaps get you close to that side
+of Manx life whereon I wish to speak to-day. I want to tell the history
+of 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 or
+Spiritual Barons, are any peeps into the hearts and home lives of the
+Manx, which will show what is called the "innate religiosity" of the
+humblest of the people. To this end also, when I have discharged my
+scant duty to church history, or perhaps in the course of my hasty
+exposition of it, I shall dwell on some of those homely manners and
+customs, which, more than prayer-books and printed services, tell us
+what our fathers believed, what we still believe, and how we stand
+towards that other life, that inner life, that is not concerned with
+what 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 Druids
+occupied the island seems to some people to be clear from many Celtic
+names and some remains, such as we are accustomed to call Druidical,
+and certain customs still observed. Perhaps worthy of a word is the
+circumstance that in the parish where the Bishop now lives, and has
+always lived, Kirk Michael, there is a place called by a name which in
+the Manx signifies Chief Druid. Strangely are the faiths of the ages
+linked together.
+
+
+CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY
+
+We do not know, with any certainty, at what time the island was
+converted to Christianity. The accepted opinion is that Christianity was
+established 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 from
+England, when a storm cast him ashore on a little islet on the western
+coast of Man. This islet was afterwards called St. Patrick's Isle. St.
+Patrick built his church on it. The church was rebuilt eight centuries
+later within the walls of a castle which rose on the same rocky site. It
+became the cathedral church of the island. When the Norwegians came they
+renamed the islet Holm Isle. Tradition says that St. Patrick's coming
+was in the time of Mannanan, the magician, our little Manx Prospero. It
+also says that St. Patrick drove Mannanan away, and that St. Patrick's
+successor, St. Germain, followed up the good work of exterminating evil
+spirits by driving out of the island all venomous creatures whatever. We
+sometimes 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 of
+transfigured Manx Caliban. I trust the name does him no wrong. He had
+been an Irish prince, had lived a bad, gross life as a robber at the
+head of a band of robbers, had been converted by St. Patrick, and,
+resolving to abandon the temptations of the world, had embarked on the
+sea in a wicker boat without oar or helm. Almost he had his will at
+once, but the north wind, which threatened to remove him from the
+temptations of this world, cast him ashore on the north of the Isle of
+Man. There he built his church, and the rocky headland whereon it stands
+is still known by his name. High on the craggy cliff-side, looking
+towards 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 possess
+miraculous properties. It is called St. Maughold's Well. Thus tradition
+has perpetuated the odour of his great sanctity, which is the more
+extraordinary in a variation of his legend, which says that it was not
+after his conversion, and in submission to the will of God, that he put
+forth 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 a
+captain of banditti.
+
+But if Maughold was Caliban in Ireland, he was more than Prospero in
+Man. Rumour of his piety went back to Ireland, and St. Bridget, who had
+founded a nunnery at Kildare, resolved on a pilgrimage to the good
+man's island. She crossed the water, attended by her virgins, called
+her daughters of fire, founded a nunnery near Douglas, worked miracles
+there, touched the altar in testimony of her virginity, whereupon it
+grew green and flourished. This, if I may be pardoned the continued
+parallel, is our Manx Miranda. And indeed it is difficult to shake off
+the idea that Shakespeare must have known something of the early
+story of Man, its magicians and its saints. We know the perfidy of
+circumstance, the lying tricks that fact is always playing with us, too
+well and painfully to say anything of the kind with certainty. But the
+angles of resemblance are many between the groundwork of the "Tempest"
+and the earliest of Manx records. Mannanan-beg-Mac-y-Lear, the magician
+who surrounded the island with mists when enemies came near in ships;
+Maughold, the robber and libertine, bound hand and foot, and driven
+ashore in a wicker boat; and then Bridget, the virgin saint. Moreover,
+the stories of Little Man-nanan, of St. Patrick, and of St. Maughold
+were printed in Manx in the sixteenth century. Truly that is not
+enough, for, after all, we have no evidence that Shakespeare, who knew
+everything, 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 he
+died. The best days, or the worst days--which?--of the trade of the West
+Coast of Africa saw Manx captains in the thick of it. Shall I confess to
+you that in the bad days of the English slave trade the four merchantmen
+that brought the largest black cargo to the big human auction mart at
+the Goree Piazza at Liverpool were commanded by four Manxmen! They were
+a sad quartet. One of them had only one arm and an iron hook; another
+had only one arm and one eye; a third had only one leg and a stump; the
+fourth was covered with scars from the iron of the chains of a slave
+which he had worn twelve months at Barbadoes. Just about enough humanity
+in the four to make one complete man. But with vigour enough, fire
+enough, heart enough--I daren't say soul enough--in their dismembered
+old trunks to make ten men apiece; born sea-rovers, true sons of Orry,
+their blood half brine. Well, is it not conceivable that in those
+earlier days of treasure seeking, when Elizabeth's English captains were
+spoiling the Spaniard in the Indies, Manx sailors were also there?
+If so, why might not Shakespeare, who must have ferreted out many a
+stranger 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 Manx
+Miranda?
+
+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 men
+at the beginning. Irishmen, chiefly, living the lives of hermits
+and saints. Apparently they were at first appointed by the people
+themselves. Would it be interesting to know the grounds of selection?
+One was selected for his sanctity, a natural qualification, but another
+was chosen because he had a pleasant face, and a fine portly figure;
+not bad qualifications, either. Thus things went on for about a hundred
+years, and, for all we know, Celtic Bishops and Celtic people lived
+together in their little island in peace, hearing nothing of the loud
+religious hubbub that was disturbing Europe.
+
+
+BISHOPS OF THE WELSH DYNASTY
+
+Then came the rule of the Welsh kings, and, though we know but little
+with certainty, we seem to realise that it brought great changes to the
+religious' life of Man. The Church began to possess itself of lands: the
+baronial territories of the island fell into the hands of the clergy;
+the early Bishops became Barons. This gave the Church certain powers
+of government. The Bishops became judges, and as judges they possessed
+great power over the person of the subject. Sometimes they stood in the
+highest place of all, being also Governor to the Welsh Kings. Then they
+were called Sword-Bishops. Their power at such times, when the crosier
+and 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 of
+things had passed away. The hermit-saints, the saintly hermits, had
+gone, and in their place were monkish barons, living in abbeys and
+monasteries, whipping the poor bodies of their people, as well as
+comforting their torn hearts, fattening on broad lands, praying each
+with his lips: "Give us this day our daily bread," but saying each to
+his soul: "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine
+ease; eat, drink, and be merry."
+
+
+BISHOPS OF THE NORSE DYNASTY
+
+Little as we know of these times, we see that things must have come to
+a pretty pass, for when the Scandinavian dynasty came in the
+ecclesiastical authorities were forbidden to exercise civil control over
+any subjects of the king that were not also the tenants of their own
+baronies. So the Bishops were required to confine themselves to keeping
+their own house in order. The Norse Constitution established in Man by
+King Orry made no effort to overthrow the Celtic Church founded by St.
+Patrick, and corrupted by his Welsh successors, but it curtailed its
+liberties, and reduced its dignity. It demanded as an act of fealty that
+the 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 and
+certain 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 its
+Metropolitan, and its young clergy were sent over to Drontheim to be
+educated. Its revenues were apportioned after the most apostolic manner;
+one-third of the tithes to the Bishop for his maintenance, the support
+of his courts, his churches, and (miserable conclusion! ) his prisons;
+one-third to the priests, and the remaining third to the relief of the
+poor and the education of youth. It is a curious and significant fact
+that 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 of
+Man, but Sodor and Man. The title has given rise to much speculation.
+One authority derives it from _Soterenssis_, a name given by Danish
+writers to the western islands, and afterwards corrupted to _Soderensk_.
+Another authority derives it from _Sudreyjas_, signifying in the
+Norwegian the Southern Isles. A third derives it from the Greek _Soter_,
+Saviour, to whose name the cathedral of Iona was dedicated. And yet a
+fourth authority derives it from the supposed third name of the little
+islet rock called variously Holm Isle, Sodor, Peel, and St. Patrick's
+Isle, whereon St. Patrick or St. Germain built his church, I can claim
+no right to an opinion where these good doctors differ, and shall
+content myself with saying that the balance of belief is in favour of
+the Norwegian derivation, which offers this explanation of the title of
+Bishop of Sodor and Man, that the Isle of Man was not included by the
+Norsemen in the southern cluster of islands called the Sudereys, and
+that the Bishop was sometimes called the Bishop of Man and the Isles,
+and sometimes Bishop of the Sudereys and the Isle of Man. Only one
+warning note shall I dare, as an ignorant layman, to strike on that
+definition, and it is this: that the title of Bishop of Sodor dates back
+to the seventh century certainly, and that the Norseman did not come
+south 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. When
+the Isle of Man passed to the Stanley family, the Bishopric fell to
+their patronage, and they lost no time in putting their own people into
+it. It was then under the English metropolitan of Canterbury, but early
+in the sixteenth century it became part of the province of York. About
+that time the baronies, the abbeys, and the nunneries were suppressed.
+It does not appear that the change of metropolitan had made much
+change of religious life. Apparently the clergy kept the Manx people in
+miserable ignorance. It was not until the seventeenth century that the
+Book of Common Prayer was translated into the Manx language. The Gospels
+and the Acts were unknown to the Manx until nearly a century later. Nor
+was this due to ignorance of the clergy of the Manx tongue, for most
+of them must have been Manxmen, and several of the Bishops were Manxmen
+also. But grievous abuses had by this time attached themselves to the
+Manx Church, and some of them were flagrant and wicked, and some were
+impudent and amusing.
+
+
+TITHES IN KIND
+
+Naturally the more outrageous of the latter sort gathered about the
+process of collecting tithes.
+
+Tithes were paid in kind in those days. It was not until well within our
+own century that they were commuted to a money payment. The Manxman paid
+tithe 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 is
+a hard saying, but nevertheless a simple truth. Throughout his
+journey from the cradle to the grave, the Manxman paid tithe on all he
+inherited, on all he had, on all he did, on all his wife did, and on
+all he left behind him. We have the equivalent of this in England at
+the present hour, but it was yet more tyrannical, and infinitely more
+ludicrous, in the Isle of Man down to the year 1839. It is only vanity
+and folly and vexation of spirit to quarrel with the modern English
+taxgatherer; you are sure to go the wall, with humiliation and with
+disgrace. It was not always so when taxes were paid in kind. There was,
+at least, the satisfaction of cheating. The Manx people could not always
+deny themselves that satisfaction. For instance, they were required to
+pay tithe of herring as soon as the herring boats were brought above
+full sea mark, and there were ways of counting known to the fishermen
+with which the black-coated arithmeticians of the Church were not able
+to cope. A man paid tithe on such goods and even such clothes as his
+wife possessed on their wedding day, and young brides became wondrous
+wise in the selection for the vicarage of the garments that were out of
+fashion. A corpse-present was demanded over the grave of a dead man out
+of the horses and cattle whereof he died possessed, and dying men left
+verbal wills which consigned their broken-winded horses and dry cows to
+the mercy and care of the clergyman. You will not marvel much that such
+dealings led to disputes, sometimes to quarrels, occasionally to riots.
+In my boyhood I heard old people over the farm-house fire chuckle
+and tell of various wise doings, to outwit the parson. One of these
+concerned the oats harvest. When the oats were in sheaf, the parson's
+cart came up, driven by the sumner, the parson's official servant. The
+gate of the field was thrown open, and honestly and religiously one
+sheaf out of every ten was thrown into the cart. But the husbandman had
+been thrifty in advance. The parson's sheaves had all been grouped thick
+about the gate, and they were the shortest, and the thinnest, and the
+blackest, and the dirtiest, and the poorest that the field had yielded.
+Similar were the doings at the digging of the potatoes, but the scenes
+of recrimination which often ensued were usually confined to the farmer
+and the sumner. More outrageous contentions with the priest himself
+sometimes occurred within the very walls of the church. It was the
+practice to bring tithe of butter and cheese and eggs, and lay it on the
+altar on Sunday. This had to be done under pain of exclusion from the
+communion, and that was a penalty most grievous to material welfare. So
+the Manxmen and Manxwomen were compelled to go to church much as they
+went to market, with their butter- and egg-baskets over their arms. It
+is a ludicrous picture, as one sees it in one's mind's eye, but what
+comes after reaches the extremity of farce. Say the scene is Maughold
+old church, once the temple of the saintly hermit. It is Sunday morning,
+the bells are ringing, and Juan-beg-Marry-a-thruss, a rascally old
+skinflint, is coming along with a basket. It contains some butter that
+he could not sell at Ramsey market yesterday because it was rank, and a
+few eggs which he knows to be stale and addled--the old hen has sat on
+them, and they have brought forth nothing. These he places reverently on
+the altar. But the parson knows Juan, and proceeds to examine his tithe.
+May I take so much liberty with history, and with the desecrated old
+church, 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 your
+reverence." "Pig-swill and chalk you mean, man!" "Aw 'deed if I'd known
+your reverence was so morthal partic'lar the ould hen herself should
+have been layin' some fresh eggs for your reverence."
+
+"Take them away, you thief of the Church! Do you think what isn't fit
+for your pig is good enough for your priest? Bring better, or never let
+me look on your wizened old wicked face again."
+
+Exit Juan-beg-Marry-a-thruss, perhaps with butter and eggs flying after
+his retreating figure.
+
+
+THE GAMBLING BISHOP
+
+This is an imaginary picture, but no less outrageous things happened
+whereof the records remain. A demoralised laity usually co-exists with
+a demoralised clergy, and there are some bad stories of the Bishops who
+preceded the Reformation. There is one story of a Bishop of that period,
+who was a gross drunkard and notorious gambler. He played with his
+clergy as long as they had anything to lose, and then he played with a
+deemster and lost five hundred pounds himself. Poor little island, that
+had two such men for its masters, the one its master in the things of
+this world, the other its master in the things of the world to come! If
+anything is needful to complete the picture of wretchedness in which
+the poor Manx people must have existed then, it is the knowledge of what
+manner of man a deemster was in those days, what his powers were, and
+how he exercised them.
+
+
+THE DEEMSTERS
+
+The two deemsters--a name of obvious significance, deem-sters, such as
+deem the laws--were then the only judges of the island, all other legal
+functionaries being of more recent date. On entering into office, the
+deemster took an oath, which is sworn by all deemsters to this day,
+declaring by the wonderful works which God hath miraculously wrought in
+six days and seven nights, that he would execute the laws of the island
+justly "betwixt party and party, as indifferently as the herring's
+backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish." But these laws down to the
+time of the second Stanley existed only in the breasts of the deemsters
+themselves, being therefore called Breast Laws, and thus they were
+supposed to be handed down orally from deemster to deemster. The
+superstition fostered corruption as well as incapacity, and it will not
+be wronging the truth to say that some of the deemsters of old time were
+both ignorant and unprincipled. Their jurisdiction was absolute in all
+that were then thought to be temporal affairs, beginning with a debt
+of a shilling, and going up to murder. They kept their courts in the
+centres of their districts, one of them being in the north of the
+island, the other in the south, but they were free to hold a court
+anywhere, and at any time. A deemster riding from Ramsey to Peel might
+find his way stopped by a noisy claimant, who held his defendant by the
+lug, having dragged him bodily from the field to the highway, to receive
+instant judgment from the judge riding past. Or at midnight, in his
+own home, a deemster might be broken in upon by a clamorous gang of
+disputants and their witnesses, who came from the pot-house for the
+settlement of their differences. On such occasions, the deemster
+invariably acted on the sound old legal maxim, once recognised by an Act
+of Parliament, that suits not likely to bear good costs should always be
+settled out of court. First, the deemster demanded his fee. If neither
+claimant nor defendant could give it, he probably troubled himself no
+further 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 the
+weak righted, but the memory of deemsters of this kind is not green. The
+bulk of men are not better than their opportunities, and the temptations
+of the deemsters of old were neither few nor slight.
+
+
+THE BISHOPRIC VACANT
+
+With such masters in the State, and such masters in the Church, the
+island fell low in material welfare, and its poverty reacted on both.
+Within fifty years the Bishopric was nineteen years vacant, though it
+may be that at the beginning of the seventeenth century this was partly
+due to religious disturbances. Then in 1697, with the monasteries and
+nunneries 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 Church
+history is like a star on a dark night, when only one is shining--Bishop
+Thomas Wilson. He was a strange and complex creature, half angel,
+only half man, the serenest of saints, and yet almost the bitterest of
+tyrants. Let me tell you about him.
+
+
+BISHOP WILSON
+
+Thomas Wilson was from Trinity College, Dublin, and became domestic
+chaplain to William, Earl of Derby, and preceptor to the Earl's son, who
+died young. While he held this position, the Bishopric of Sodor and
+Man became vacant, and it was offered to him. He declined it, thinking
+himself unworthy of so high a trust. The Bishopric continued vacant.
+Perhaps the candidates for it were few; certainly the emoluments
+were small; perhaps the patron was slothful--certainly he gave little
+attention to the Church. At length complaint was made to the King that
+the spiritual needs of the island were being neglected. The Earl was
+commanded to fill the Bishopric, and once again he offered it to his
+chaplain. Then Wilson yielded. He took possession in 1698, and was
+enthroned at Peel Castle. The picture of his enthronement must have been
+something to remember. Peel Castle was already tumbling to its fall, and
+the cathedral church was a woful wreck. It is even said that from a
+hole in the roof the soil and rain could enter, and blades of grass were
+shooting up on the altar. The Bishop's house at Kirk Michael, which
+had been long shut up, was in a similar plight; damp, mouldy,
+broken-windowed, green with moss within and without. What would one give
+to turn back the centuries and look on at that primitive ceremony in
+St. Germain's Chapel in April 1698! There would be the clergy, a
+sorry troop, with wise and good men among them, no doubt, but a poor,
+battered, bedraggled, neglected lot, chiefly learned in dubious arts
+of collecting tithes. And the Bishop himself, the good chaplain of Earl
+Derby, the preceptor of his son, what a face he must have had to watch
+and to study, as he stood there that April morning, and saw for the
+first 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 resolute
+hand. He found himself in a twofold trust. Since the Reformation, the
+monasteries and nunneries had been dispersed, and all the baronies had
+been broken up, save one, the barony of the Bishop. Thus Bishop Wilson
+was the head of the court of his barony. This was a civil court with
+power, of jurisdiction over felonies. Its separate criminal control came
+to an end in 1777, Such was Bishop Wilson's position as last and sole
+Baron of Man. Then as head of the Church he had powers over offences
+which were once called offences against common law. Irregular behaviour,
+cursing, quarrelling, and drinking, as well as transgressions of the
+moral code, adultery, seduction, prostitution, and the like, were
+punishable by the Church and the Church courts. The censures of Bishop
+Wilson on such offences did not err on the side of clemency. He was
+the enemy of sin, and no "gentle foe of sinners." He was a believer
+in witchcraft, and for suspicion of commerce with evil spirits and
+possession of the evil eye he punished many a blameless old body. For
+open and convicted adultery he caused the offenders to stand for an hour
+at high fair at each of the market-places of Douglas, Peel, Ramsey, and
+Castletown, bearing labels on their breasts calling on all people
+to take warning lest they came under the same Church censure. Common
+unchastity he punished by exposure in church at full congregation, when
+the guilty man or the poor victimised girl stepped up from the west
+porch to the altar, covered from neck to heels in a white sheet.
+Slanderers and evil speakers he clapped into the Peel, or perhaps the
+whipping-stocks, with tongue in a noose of leather, and when after a
+lapse of time the gag was removed the liberated tongue was obliged to
+denounce itself by saying thrice, clearly, boldly, probably with good
+accent and discretion, "False tongue, thou hast lied."
+
+It is perhaps as well that some of us did not live in Bishop Wilson's
+time. We might not have lived long. If the Church still held and
+exercised the same powers over evil speakers we should never hear our
+own ears in the streets for the din of the voices of the penitents; and
+if it still punished unchastity in a white sheet the trade of the linen
+weaver would be brisk.
+
+You will say that I have justified my statement that Bishop Wilson was
+the bitterest of tyrants. Let me now establish my opinion that he was
+also the serenest of saints. I have told you how low was the condition
+of the Church, how lax its rule, how deep its clergy lay in sloth and
+ignorance, and perhaps also in vice, when Bishop Wilson came to Man in
+1698. Well, in 1703, only five years later, the Lord Chancellor King
+said this: "If the ancient discipline of the Church were lost elsewhere
+it might be found in all its force in the Isle of Man." This points
+first to force and vigour on the Bishop's part, but surely it also
+points to purity of character and nobility of aim. Bishop Wilson began
+by putting his own house in order. His clergy ceased to gamble and to
+drink, and they were obliged to collect their tithes with mercy. He once
+suspended a clergyman for an opinion on a minor point, but many times he
+punished his clergy for offences against the moral law and the material
+welfare of the poor. In a stiff fight for integrity of life and purity
+of thought, he spared none. I truly believe that if he had caught
+himself in an act of gross injustice he would have clambered up into
+the pillory. He was a brave, strong-hearted creature, of the build of
+a great man. Yes! In spite of all his contradictions, he _was_ a great
+man. 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. The
+fisheries had failed that season, and the crops had been blighted
+two years running. Miserably poor at all times, ill-clad, ill-housed,
+ill-fed at the best, the people were in danger of sheer destitution. In
+that day of their bitter trouble the poorest of the poor trooped off to
+Bishop's court. The Bishop threw open his house to them all, good and
+bad, improvident and thrifty, lazy and industrious, drunken and sober;
+he made no distinctions in that bad hour. He asked no man for his name
+who couldn't give it, no woman for her marriage lines who hadn't got
+them, no child whether it was born in wedlock. That they were all
+hungry was all he knew, and he saved their lives in thousands. He bought
+ship-loads of English corn and served it out in bushels; also tons of
+Irish potatoes, and served them out in _kischens_. He gave orders that
+the measure was to be piled as high as it would hold, and never smoothed
+flat again. Yet he was himself a poor man. While he had money he spent
+it. When every penny was gone he pledged his revenue in advance.
+After his credit was done he begged in England for his poor people in
+Man--_he_ begged for _us_ who would not have held out his hat to save his
+own 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 other
+world. Prayers and blessings are the wealth that is there, and these
+went up after him to the great White Throne from the swelling throats of
+his people.
+
+
+THE BISHOP AT COURT
+
+Not of Bishop Wilson could it be said, as it was said of another, that
+he "flattered princes in the temple of God." One day, when he was coming
+to Court, Queen Caroline saw him and said to a company of Bishops and
+Archbishops that surrounded her, "See, my lords, here is a Bishop who
+does 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 she
+is poor." When Bishop Wilson was an old man, Cardinal Fleury sent over
+to ask after his age and health, saying that they were the two oldest
+and poorest Bishops in the world. At the same time he got an order that
+no French privateer should ever ravage the Isle of Man. The order has
+long lapsed, but I am told that to this day French seamen respect a
+Manxman. It touches me to think of it that thus does the glory of this
+good 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 are
+of rather general application, but some of them ought to be true if they
+are not.
+
+One day in the old three-cornered market-place at Ramsey a little
+maiden of seven crossed his path. She was like sunshine, rosy-cheeked,
+bright-eyed, bare-footed and bare-headed, and for love of her sweetness
+the grey old Bishop patted her head and blest her. "God bless you, my
+child; God bless you," he said. The child curtseyed and answered, "God
+bless you, too, sir." "Thank you, child, thank you," the Bishop said
+again; "I dare say your blessing will be as good as mine."
+
+It was customary in those days, and indeed down to my own time, when
+a suit of clothes was wanted, to have the journeyman tailor at home to
+make it. One, Danny of that ilk, was once at Bishop's Court making
+a long walking coat for the Bishop. In trying it on in its nebulous
+condition, that leprosy of open white seams and stitches, Danny made
+numerous chalk marks to indicate the places of the buttons. "No, no,
+Danny," said the Bishop, "no more buttons than enough to fasten it--only
+one, that will do. It would ill become a poor priest like me to go
+a-glitter with things like those." Now, Danny had already bought his
+buttons, and had them at that moment in his pocket. So, pulling a
+woful face, he said, "Mercy me, my lord, what would happen to the poor
+button-makers, if everybody was of your opinion?" "Button it all over,
+Danny," said the Bishop. A coat of Bishop Wilson's still exists. Would
+that we had that one of the numerous buttons, and could get a few more
+made of the same pattern! It would be out of fashion--Danny's progeny
+have taken care of that. There are not many of us that it would fit--we
+have few men of Bishop Wilson's build nowadays. But human kindliness is
+never old-fashioned, and there are none of us that the garment of sweet
+grace would not suit.
+
+
+QUARRELS OF CHURCH AND STATE
+
+So far from "flattering princes in the temple of God," Bishop Wilson was
+even morbidly jealous of the authority of the Church, and he resisted
+that of the State when the civil powers seemed to encroach upon it. More
+than once he came into collision with the State's highest functionary,
+the Lieutenant-Governor, representative of the Lord of Man himself. One
+day the Governor's wife falsely defamed a lady, and the lady appealed
+to the Bishop. Thereupon the Bishop interdicted the Governor's wife
+from receiving the communion. But the Governor's chaplain admitted
+her. Straightway the Bishop suspended the Governor's chaplain. Then the
+Governor fined the Bishop in the sum of fifty pounds. The Bishop refused
+to 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 that
+he lost the use of some of his fingers. After that the Bishop appealed
+to the Lord, who declared the imprisonment illegal. The Bishop was
+liberated, and half the island went to the prison gate to fetch him
+forth in triumph. The only result was that the Bishop lost L500, whereof
+L300 were subscribed by the people. One hardly knows whether to laugh
+or cry at it all. It is a sorry and silly farce. Of course it made
+a tremendous hurly-burly in its day, but it is gone now, and doesn't
+matter a ha'porth to anybody. Nevertheless because Gessler's cap goes up
+so often nowadays, and so many of us are kneeling to it, it is good and
+wholesome to hear of a poor Bishop who was brave enough to take a shot
+at it instead.
+
+
+SOME OLD ORDEALS
+
+Notwithstanding Bishop Wilson's severity, his tyranny, his undue pride
+in the authority of the Church, and his morbid jealousy of the powers
+of the State, his rule was a wise and just one, and he was a spiritual
+statesman, who needed not to be ashamed. He raised the tone of life in
+the 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 meanness
+of poor humanity reveals itself in lies and subterfuges. This he did by
+making false swearing a terror. One ancient ordeal of swearing he set
+his face against, but another he encouraged, and often practised, let me
+describe both.
+
+In the old days, when a man died intestate, leaving no record of his
+debts, a creditor might establish a claim by going with the Bishop to
+the grave of the dead man at midnight, stretching himself on it with
+face 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 so
+much." After that the debt was allowed. What warning the Bishop first
+pronounced I do not know, but the scene is a vivid one, even if we think
+of the creditor as swearing truly, and a startling and terrible one if
+we think of him as about to swear to what is false. The dark night, the
+dark figures moving in it, the churchyard, the debtor's grave, the sham
+creditor, who had been loud in his protests under the light of the inn
+of the village, now quaking and trembling as the Bishop's warning comes
+out of the gloom, then stammering, and breaking down, and finally, with
+ghostly visions of a dead hand clutching at him from the grave, starting
+up, shrieking, and flying away. It is a nightmare. Let us not remember
+it when the candles are put out.
+
+This ordeal was in force until the seventeenth century, but Bishop
+Wilson judged it un-Christian, and never practised it. The old Roman
+canon law of Purgation, a similar ordeal, he used not rarely. It was
+designed to meet cases of slander in which there was no direct and
+positive evidence. If a good woman had been accused of unchastity in
+that vague way of rumour which is always more damaging and devilish than
+open accusation, she might of her own free choice, or by compulsion of
+the Bishop, put to silence her false accusers by appearing in church,
+with witnesses ready to take oath that they believed her, and there
+swearing at the altar that common fame and suspicion had wronged her. If
+a man doubted her word he had to challenge it, or keep silence for ever
+after. The severest censures of the Church were passed upon those who
+dared to repeat an unproved accusation after the oaths of Purgation and
+Compurgation had been taken unchallenged. It is a fine, honest ordeal,
+very old, good for the right, only bad for the wrong, giving strength to
+the weak and humbling the mighty. But it would be folly and mummery in
+our day. The Church has lost its powers over life and limb, and no one
+capable of defaming a pure woman would care a brass penny about the
+Church's excommunication. Yet a woman's good name is the silver thread
+that runs through the pearl chain of her virtues. Pity that nowadays it
+can be so easily snapped. Conversation at five o'clock tea is enough to
+do that. The ordeal of compulsory Purgation was abolished in Man as late
+as 1737.
+
+
+THE HERRING FISHERY
+
+Bishop Wilson began, or revived, a form of service which was so
+beautiful, so picturesque, and withal so Manx that I regret the loss of
+scarce any custom so much as the discontinuance of this one. It was the
+fishermen's service on the shore at the beginning of the herring-season.
+But in order to appreciate it you must first know something of the
+herring fishing itself. It is the chief industry of the island. Half the
+population is connected with it in some way. A great proportion of the
+men of the humbler classes are half seamen, half landsmen, tilling their
+little crofts in the spring and autumn, and going out with the herring
+boats in summer. The herring is the national fish. The Manxman swears
+by its flavour. The deemsters, as we have seen, literally swear by its
+backbone. Potatoes and herrings constitute a common dish of the country
+people. They are ready for it at any hour of the day or night. I have
+had 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 the
+middle of the table two great crocks, one of potatoes boiled in their
+jackets, the other of herrings fresh or salted; a plate and a bowl
+of new milk at every seat, and lumps of salt here and there. To be a
+Manxman you must eat Manx herrings; there is a story that to transform
+himself into a Manxman one of the Dukes of Athol ate twenty-four of them
+at breakfast, a herring for every member of his House of Keys.
+
+The Manx herring fishery is interesting and very picturesque. You know
+that the herrings come from northern latitudes, Towards mid-winter a
+vast colony of them set out from the arctic seas, closely pursued by
+innumerable sea-fowl, which deal death among the little emigrants. They
+move in two divisions, one westward towards the coasts of America, the
+other eastward in the direction of Europe. They reach the Shetlands in
+April and the Isle of Man about June. The herring is fished at night. To
+be 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, and
+you are running before a light breeze through the dusk. The sea-gulls
+are skimming about the brown sails of your boat. They know what you are
+going to do, and have come to help you, Presently you come upon a flight
+of them wheeling and diving in the gathering darkness. Then you know
+that you have lit on the herring shoal. The boat is brought head to the
+wind and left to drift. By this time the stars are out, perhaps the moon
+also--though too much moon is not good for the fishing--and you can just
+descry 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 are
+hauled from below, passed over the bank-board, and paid out into the
+sea--a solid wall of meshes, floating upright, nine feet deep and a
+quarter of a mile long. It is a calm, clear night, just light enough
+to see the buoys on the back of the first net. The lamp is fixed on the
+mitch-board. All is silence, only the steady plash, plash, plash of the
+slow waters on the boat's side; no singing among the men, no chaff, no
+laughter, all quiet aboard, for the fishermen believe that the fish can
+hear; all quiet around, where the deep black of the watery pavement
+is brightened by the reflection of stars. Then out of the white
+phosphorescent patches come minute points of silver and countless faint
+popping sounds, The herrings are at play about the nets. You see them in
+numbers exceeding imagination, shoals on shoals. "Pull up now, there's
+a heavy strike," cries the skipper, and the nets are hauled up, and come
+in white and moving--a solid block of fish, cheep, cheep, cheeping like
+birds in the early morning. At the grey of dawn the boats begin to run
+for home, and the sun is shining as the fleet makes the harbour. Men and
+women are waiting there to buy the night's catch. The quay is full of
+them, 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 a
+thing it could be if this industry failed the island even for a single
+season. 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 that
+service must have been wondrously beautiful and impressive. Why does not
+some great painter paint it? Let me, by the less effectual vehicle of
+words, attempt to realise what it must have been.
+
+The place of it was Peel bay, a wide stretch of beach, with a gentle
+slope to the left, dotted over with grey houses; the little town farther
+on, with its nooks and corners, its blind alleys and dark lanes, its
+narrow, crabbed, crooked streets. Behind this the old pier and the
+herring boats rocking in the harbour, with their brown sails half set,
+waiting for the top of the tide. In the distance the broad breast of
+Contrary Head, and, a musket-shot outside of it, the little rocky islet
+whereon stand the stately ruins of the noble old Peel Castle. The
+beach is dotted over with people--old men, in their curranes and undyed
+stockings, leaning on their sticks; children playing on the shingle;
+young women in groups, dressed in sickle-shaped white sun-bonnets, and
+with petticoats tucked up; old women in long blue homespun cloaks. But
+these are only the background of the human picture. In the centre of
+it 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 the
+cook--rude figures in blue and with great sea-boots. They are on their
+knees on the sand, with their knitted caps at their rusty faces, and
+in the middle of them, standing in an old broken boat, is the Bishop
+himself, bareheaded, white-headed, with upturned face praying for
+the fishing season that is about to begin. The June day is sweet and
+beautiful, and the sun is going down behind the castle. Some sea-gulls
+are 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 of
+the wavelets on the pebbles of the shore, nothing is heard but the slow
+tones of the Bishop and the fishermen's deep _Amen_. Such was Bishop
+Wilson'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 Wilson
+presided over its spiritual courts. He was good to illegitimate
+children, making them legitimate if their parents married within two
+years of their birth, and often putting them on the same level with
+their less injured brothers and sisters where inheritance was in
+question. But he was unmerciful to the parents themselves. There is
+one story of his treatment of a woman which passes all others in its
+tyranny. It is, perhaps, the only deep stain on his character. I thank
+God that it can never have come to the ears of Victor Hugo. Told as Hugo
+would have told it, surely it must have blasted for ever the name of a
+good man. It is the dark story of Katherine Kinrade.
+
+
+KATHERINE KINRADE
+
+She was a poor ruin of a woman, belonging to Kirk Christ, but wandering
+like a vagrant over the island. The fact of first consequence is, that
+she was only half sane. In the language of the clergy of the time, she
+"had a degree of unsettledness and defect of understanding." Thus she
+was 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 church
+doors. But her poor, dull brain had no power to restrain her. A second
+child was born. Then the Bishop committed her for twenty-one days to
+his prison at the Peel. Let me tell you what the place is like. It is
+a crypt of the cathedral church. You enter it by a little door in the
+choir, leading to a tortuous flight of steep steps going down. It is
+a chamber cut out of the rock of the little island, dark, damp, and
+noisome. A small aperture lets in the light, as well as the sound of
+the sea beating on the rocks below. The roof, if you could see it in the
+gloom, 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 a
+prison more terrible for any prisoner, the strongest man or the bravest
+soldier? Think of it on a tempestuous night in winter. The lonely islet
+rock, with the swift seas rushing around it; the castle half a ruin, its
+guard-room empty, its banqueting hall roofless, its sally port silent;
+then the cathedral church falling to decay; and under the floor of its
+choir, 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 it
+beats 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 of
+terrors by only one human soul--this poor, bedraggled, sin-laden woman
+with "the defect of understanding." Can anything be more awful? Yet
+there is worse to follow. The records tell us that Katherine Kinrade
+submitted to her punishment "with as much discretion as could be
+expected of the like of her." But such punishments do not cleanse the
+soul that is "drenched with unhallowed fire." Perhaps Katherine did not
+know that she was wronged; nevertheless God's image was being trodden
+out of her. She went from bad to worse, became a notorious strumpet,
+strolled about the island, and led "a scandalous life on other
+accounts." A third child was born. Then the Bishop concluded that for
+the honour of the Christian name, "to prevent her own utter destruction,
+and for the example of others," a timely and thorough reformation must
+be made by a further and severer punishment. It was the 15th day of
+March, and he ordered that on the 17th day, being the fair of St.
+Patrick, at the height of the market, the said Katherine Kinrade
+should be taken to Peel Town in charge of the general sumner, and the
+constables and soldiers of the garrison, and there dragged after a boat
+in the sea! Think of it! On a bitter day in March this wretched woman
+with the "defect of understanding" was to be dragged through the sea by
+a rope tied to the tail of a boat! And if any owner, master, and crew of
+any boat proved refractory by refusing to perform this service for the
+restraining of vice, they were to be subject to fine and imprisonment!
+When St. Patrick's Day came the weather was so stormy that no boat
+could live in the bay, but on St. Germain's Day, about the height of the
+market, the censure was performed. After undergoing the punishment the
+miserable 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 doomed
+by the tribunal of that saintly man, Bishop Thomas Wilson! She has met
+him at another tribunal since then; not where she has crouched before
+him, but where she has stood by his side. She has carried her great
+account 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 of
+tyrants as well as the serenest of saints? Yet bethink you of the other
+good 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 with
+many such portraits. Poor humanity, weak at the strongest, impure at
+the purest; best take it as it is, and be content. Remember that a good
+man's vices are generally the excess of his virtues. It was so with
+Bishop Wilson. Remember, too, that it is not for what a man does, but
+for what he means to do, that we love him or hate him in the end. And
+in the end the Manx people loved Bishop Wilson, and still they bless his
+memory.
+
+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 strong
+of heart, he lived to be old. Very feeble, his beautiful face grown
+mellower even as his heart was softer for his many years, tottering on
+his staff, drooping like a white flower, he went in and out among his
+people, laying his trembling hands on the children's heads and blessing
+them, remembering their fathers and their fathers' fathers. Beloved by
+the young, reverenced by the old, honoured by the great, worshipped by
+the poor, living in sweet patience, ready to die in hope. His day was
+done, his night was near, and the weary toiler was willing to go to his
+rest. Thus passed some peaceful years. He died in 1755, and was followed
+to his grave by the whole Manx nation. His tomb is our most sacred
+shrine. We know his faults, but we do not speak of them there. Call a
+truce over the place of the old man's rest. There he lies, who was once
+the 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 Manx
+Church in the century or more that has followed Bishop Wilson's death.
+The last fifty years of it are featureless, save for an attempt to
+abolish the Bishopric. This foolish effort first succeeded and then
+failed, and was a poor bit of mummery altogether, ending in nothing
+but waste of money and time, and breath and temper. The fifty years
+immediately succeeding Bishop Wilson were full of activity. But so far
+as the Church was concerned, the activity was not always wholesome. If
+religion was kept alive in Man in those evil days, and the soul hunger
+of the poor Manx people was satisfied, it was not by the masters of the
+Manx Church, the Pharisees who gave alms in the streets to the sound
+of a trumpet going before them, or by the Levites who passed by on
+the other side when a man had fallen among thieves. It was partly by
+dissent, which was begun by Wesley in 1775 (after Quakerism had been
+suppressed), and partly by a small minority of the Manx clergy, who kept
+going the early evangelicalism of Newton and Cowper and Cecil--dear,
+sunny, simple-hearted old Manx vicars, who took sweet counsel together
+in their old-fashioned homes, where you found grace in all senses of the
+word, purity of soul, the life of the mind, and gentle courtliness of
+manners.
+
+Bishop Wilson's successor was Doctor Mark Hildlesley, in all respects
+a worthy man. He completed the translation of the Scriptures into Manx,
+which had been begun by his predecessor, and established Sunday-schools
+in Man before they had been commenced in any other country. But after
+him came a line of worthless prelates, Dr. Richmond, remembered for his
+unbending haughtiness; Dr. Mason, disgraced by his debts; and Claudius
+Cregan, a bishop unfit to be a curate. Do you not read between the
+broad lines of such facts? The Athol dynasty was now some thirty years
+established in Man, and the swashbuckler Court of fine gentlemen was
+in full swing. In that costume drama of soiled lace and uproarious
+pleasures, what part did the Church play? Was it that of the man clad
+in camel's skin, living on locusts and wild honey, and calling on the
+generation of revellers to flee from the wrath to come? No; but that
+of the lover of cakes and ale. The records of this period are few and
+scanty, but they are full enough to show that some of the clergy of the
+Athols knew more of backgammon than of theology. While they pandered to
+the dissolute Court they lived under, going the errands of their masters
+in the State, fetching and carrying for them, and licking their shoes,
+they tyrannised over the poor ignorant Manx people and fleeced them
+unmercifully. Perhaps this was in a way only natural. Corruption was in
+the air throughout Europe. Dr. Youngs were grovelling for preferments
+at the feet of kings' mistresses, and Dr. Warners were kissing the
+shoebuckles of great ladies for sheer love of their faces, plastered red
+and white, The parasites of the Manx clergy were not far behind some
+of their English brethren. There is a story told of their life among
+themselves 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 the
+Manx people to Bishop's Court on some business of the spiritual court,
+Many of the people had come long distances, chiefly a-foot, without
+food, and probably without money. After a short sitting the court was
+adjourned for dinner. The people had no dinner, and they starved. The
+Vicars-general went into the palace to dine with the Bishop. Some hours
+passed. The night was gathering. Then a message came out to say that no
+more 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 that
+the Bishop gave his guests "most excellent wine." What of a scene like
+that? Outside, a sharp day in Spring, two score famished folks tramping
+the glen and the gravel-path, the gravel-path and the glen, to and
+fro, to and fro, minute after minute, hour after hour. Inside, my
+lord 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, laughing
+with them, until his face grows as red as the glowing turf on his
+hearth. Presently a footfall on the gravel, and outside the window a
+hungry, pinched, anxious face looking nervously into the room. Then this
+colloquy:
+
+"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 come
+back 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 day
+is coming when the weak shall be exalted and the mighty laid low, what
+a reckoning they have gone to whose people cried for bread and they gave
+them a stone! And if there is not, if the hope is vain, if it is all a
+sham and a mockery, still the justice of this world is sure. Where are
+they now, these parasites? Their game is played out. They are bones and
+ashes; 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 not
+deliver these lectures in Manx. I answered that there were just forty
+good 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 the
+recital of the remaining nine-and-thirty. But there is at least one of
+the number that will appeal strongly to most of my hearers. What that
+is you shall judge for yourselves after I have braved the pitfalls of
+pronunciation in a tongue I do not know, and given you some clauses of
+the 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 fine
+chest-notes, its force and music, this old language did not sound like
+Italian.
+
+"Well, no," he answered, "it sounds more like hard swearing."
+
+I think you must now understand why the greater part of these lectures
+should be delivered in English.
+
+Manx is a dialect mainly Celtic, and differing only slightly from the
+ancient Scottish Gaelic. I have heard my father say that when he was
+a boy in Ramsey, sixty years ago, a Scotch ship came ashore on the
+Carrick, and next morning after the wreck a long, lank, bony creature,
+with bare legs, and in short petticoats, came into the marketplace and
+played a tune on a little shrieking pair of smithy bellows, and then
+sang a song. It was a Highland piper, and he sang in his Gaelic, but the
+Manx boys and girls who gathered round him understood almost every word
+of his song, though they thought his pronunciation bad. Perhaps they
+took him for a poor old Manxman, somehow strayed and lost, a sort of
+Manx Rip Van Winkle who had slept a century in Scotland, and thereby
+lost 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 predominance
+of the Celtic is quite natural. Our mothers were Celts, speaking Celtic,
+before our Norse-fathers came. Was it likely that our Celtic mothers
+should learn much of the tongue of their Norse husbands? Then, is it not
+our mother, rather than our father, who teaches us to speak when we are
+children? So our Celtic mothers taught us Celtic, and thus Celtic became
+the dominant language of our race.
+
+
+MANX NAMES
+
+But though our Norse fathers could not impose their Norse tongue on
+their children, they gave them Norse names, and to the island they
+gave Norse place-names. Hence we find that though Manx names show
+a preponderance of the Celtic, yet that the Norse are numerous and
+important. Thus we have many _dales, fells, garths_, and _ghylls_.
+Indeed, we have many pure Scandinavian surnames and place-names. When
+I was in Iceland I sometimes found myself face to face with names which
+almost persuaded me that I was at home in our little island of the Irish
+Sea. 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 have
+no right to speak with authority. You will find it written down with
+learning and judgment in the good book of my friend Mr. A. W. Moore,
+of Cronkbourne. What concerns me more than the scientific aspect of the
+language is its literary character. I seem to realise that it was the
+language of a poetic race. The early generations of a people are often
+poetic. They are child-like, and to be like a child is the best half of
+being like a poet. They name their places by help of their observatory
+powers. These are fresh and full of wonder, and Nature herself is
+beautiful or strange until man tampers with her.
+
+So when an untaught and uncorrupted mind looks upon a new scene and
+bethinks itself of a name to fit it, the name is almost certainly full
+of charm or rugged power. Thus we find in Man such mixed Norse and
+Celtic 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 the
+day watch).
+
+
+MANX IMAGINATION
+
+This poetic character of the place-names of the island is a standing
+reproach to us as a race. We have degenerated in poetic spirit since
+such names were the natural expression of our feelings. I tremble to
+think what our place-names would be if we had to make them now. Our few
+modern 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 any
+race, except Icelanders and Norwegians, who are so completely the slave
+of hard fact. It is astounding how difficult the average Manxman finds
+it to put himself into the mood of the poet. That anything could come
+out of nothing, that there is such a thing as imagination, that any
+human brother of an honest man could say that a thing had been, which
+had not been, and yet not lie--these are bewildering difficulties to
+the modern Manxman. That a novel can be false and yet true--that, well
+that's foolishness. I wrote a Manx romance called "The Deemster;" and I
+did not expect my fellow-countrymen of the primitive kind to tolerate it
+for a moment. It was merely a fiction, and the true Manxman of the old
+sort only believes in what is true. He does not read very much, and when
+he does read it is not novels. But he could not keep his hands off this
+novel, and on the whole, and in the long run, he liked it--that is, as
+he would say, "middling," you know! But there was only one condition on
+which 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 patent
+to everybody.
+
+Never mind, Hall Caine did not know poor Man, or somebody had told
+him wrong. But the story itself! The Bishop, Dan, Ewan, Mona, the body
+coming 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? I
+have got the letters by me, and can show them to anybody. A good Manxman
+wrote to remonstrate with me for calling the book a "romance." How dare
+I do so? It was all true. Another wrote saying that maybe I would like
+to know that in his youth he knew my poor hero, Dan Mylrea, well. They
+often drank together. In fact, they were the same as brothers. For
+his part he had often warned poor Dan the way he was going. After the
+murder, Dan came to him and gave him the knife with which he had killed
+Ewan. He had got it still!
+
+Later than the "Deemster," I published another Manx romance, "The
+Bondman." In that book I mentioned, without thought of mischief, certain
+names 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 the
+end cheats everybody and yet prays loudly in public. Now it seems that
+there is a man up in the mountains who owns that name. When he first
+encountered it in the newspapers, where the story was being published as
+a serial, he went about saying he was in the "Bondman," that it was
+all thrue as gospel, so it was, that he knew me when I was a boy, over
+Ramsey way, and used to give me rides on his donkey, so he did. This was
+before the hypocrite was unmasked; and when that catastrophe occurred,
+and his villany stood naked before all the island, his anger knew
+no limits. I am told that he goes about the mountains now like a
+thunder-cloud, and that he wants to meet me. I had never heard of the
+man before in all my life.
+
+What I say is true only of the typical Manxman, the natural-man among
+Manxmen, not of the Manxman who is Manxman plus man of the world, the
+educated Manxman, who finds it as easy as anybody else to put himself
+into a position of sympathy with works of pure imagination. But you must
+go down to the turf if you want the true smell of the earth. Education
+levels all human types, as love is said to level all ranks; and to
+preserve your individuality and yet be educated seems to want a strain
+of genius, or else a touch of madness.
+
+The Manx must have been the language of a people with few thoughts
+to express, but such thoughts as they had were beautiful in their
+simplicity and charm, sometimes wise and shrewd, and not rarely full of
+feeling. Thus _laa-noo_ is old Manx for child, and it means literally
+half saint--a sweet conception, which says the best of all that
+is contained in Wordsworth's wondrous "Ode on the Intimations of
+Immortality." _Laa-bee_ is old Manx for bed, literally half-meat, a
+profound commentary on the value of rest. The old salutation at the door
+of a Manx cottage before the visitor entered was this word spoken
+from the porch: _Vel peccaghs thie?_ Literally: Any sinner within? All
+humanity 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 the
+Manx proverbs are wise, witty, and racy of the soil. Many of them are
+the common possession of all peoples. Of such kind is "There's many
+a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." Here is one which sounds like an
+Eastern saying: "Learning is fine clothes for the rich man, and riches
+for the poor man." But I know of no foreign parentage for a proverb like
+this: "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 the
+wayfarer at last. On the other hand, it is not out of harmony with
+the landscape of Man, where the mountains look green sometimes from a
+distance when they are really bare and stark, and so typify that waste
+of heart when life is dry of the moisture of hope, and all the world is
+as a parched wilderness. However, there is one proverb which is so Manx
+in spirit that I could almost take oath on its paternity, so exactly
+does it fit the religious temper of our people, though it contains a
+word that must strike an English ear as irreverent: "When one poor man
+helps another poor man, God himself laughs."
+
+
+MANX BALLADS
+
+Next to the proverbs of a race its songs are the best expression of its
+spirit, and though Manx songs are few, some of them are full of Manx
+character. Always their best part is the air. A man called Barrow
+compiled the Manx tunes about the beginning of the century, but his book
+is scarce. In my ignorance of musical science I can only tell you how
+the little that is left of Manx music lives in the ear of a man who does
+not know one note from another. Much of it is like a wail of the wind in
+a lonely place near to the sea, sometimes like the soughing of the long
+grass, sometimes like the rain whipping the panes of a window as
+with rods. Nearly always long-drawn like a moan rarely various, never
+martial, never inspiriting, often sad and plaintive, as of a people
+kept 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 of
+the Manx people than some of our old airs. They would seem to take you
+into a little whitewashed cottage with sooty rafters and earthen floor,
+where an old man who looks half like a sailor and half like a landsman
+is dozing before a peat fire that is slumbering out. Have I in my
+musical benightedness conveyed an idea of anything musical? If not, let
+me, by the only vehicle natural to me, give you the rough-shod words of
+one 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 better
+known, is called _Myle Charaine_. This has sometimes been called the
+Manx National Air, but that is a fiction. The song has nothing to do
+with the Manx as a nation. Perhaps it is merely a story of a miser
+and his daughter's dowry. Or perhaps it tells of pillage, probably of
+wrecking, basely done, and of how the people cut the guilty one off from
+all 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 this
+ballad, wedded to its wailing music, touches and moves a Manxman. Even
+to my ear as I have heard it in Manx, it has seemed to be one of the
+weirdest things in old ballad literature, only to be matched by some of
+the old Irish songs, and by the gruesome ditty which tells how "the sun
+shines fair on Carlisle wa'."
+
+
+MANX CAROLS
+
+The paraphrase I have given you was done by George Borrow, who once
+visited the island. My friend the Rev. T. E. Brown met him and showed
+him several collections of Manx carols, and he pronounced them all
+translations from the English, not excepting our famous _Drogh Vraane_,
+or carol of every bad woman whose story is told in the Bible, beginning
+with the story of mother Eve herself. And, indeed, you will not be
+surprised that to the shores of our little island have drifted all
+kinds of miscellaneous rubbish, and that the Manxmen, from their very
+simplicity and ignorance of other literatures, have had no means of
+sifting the flotsam and assigning value to the constituents. Besides
+this, they are so irresponsible, have no literary conscience, and
+accordingly have appropriated anything and everything. This is true of
+some Manx ballads, and perhaps also of many Manx carols. The carols,
+called Carvals in Manx, serve in Man, as in other countries, the purpose
+of celebrating the birth of Jesus, but we have one ancient custom
+attached to them which we can certainly claim for our own, so Manx is
+it, 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 the
+parish 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 think
+they are called Oiel Verree, but the true Oiel Verree, the real, pure,
+savage, ridiculous, sacrilegious old Oiel Verree, is gone. I myself just
+came in time for it; I saw the last of it, nevertheless I saw it at its
+prime, for I saw it when it was so strong that it could not live any
+longer. Let me tell you what it was.
+
+The story carries me back to early boyish years, when, from the lonely
+school-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 of
+Kirk Maughold, a parish which longer than any other upheld the rougher
+traditions. My companion was what is called an original. His name was
+Billy Corkill. We were great chums. I would be thirteen, he was about
+sixty. Billy lived alone in a little cottage on the high-road, and
+worked in the fields. He had only one coat all the years I knew him. It
+seemed to have been blue to begin with, but when it had got torn Billy
+had patched it with anything that was handy, from green cloth to red
+flannel. He called it his Joseph's coat of many colours. Billy was a
+poet and a musical composer. He could not read a word, but he would
+rather have died than confess his ignorance. He kept books and
+newspapers always about him, and when he read out of them, he usually
+held them upside down. If any one remarked on that, he said he could
+read them any way up--that was where his scholarship came in. Billy was
+a great carol singer. He did not know a note, but he never sang except
+from music. His tunes were wild harmonies that no human ear ever heard
+before. 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 bitter
+winter in the Isle of Man, and the ground was covered with snow. But the
+church bells rang merrily over the dark moorland, for Oiel Verree was
+peculiarly the people's service, and the ringers were ringing in the one
+service of the year at which the parishioners supplanted the Vicar, and
+appropriated the old parish church. In spite of the weather, the church
+was crowded with a motley throng, chiefly of young folks, the young men
+being in the nave, and the girls (if I remember rightly) in the little
+loft at the west end. Most of the men carried tallow dips, tied
+about with bits of ribbon in the shape of rosettes, duly lighted, and
+guttering grease at intervals on to the book-ledge or the tawny fingers
+of them that held them. It appeared that there had been an ordinary
+service before we arrived, and the Vicar was still within the rails
+of the communion. From there he addressed some parting words of solemn
+warning to the noisy throng of candle-carriers. As nearly as I can
+remember, the address was this: "My good people, you are about to
+celebrate an old custom. For my part, I have no sympathy with such
+customs, but since the hearts of my parishioners seem to be set on
+this one, I have no wish to suppress it. But tumultuous and disgraceful
+scenes have occurred on similar occasions in previous years, and I
+beg you to remember that you are in God's house," &c. &c. The grave
+injunction was listened to in silence, and when it ended, the Vicar, a
+worthy 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 he
+stopped before him, for Billy had long been a notorious transgressor at
+Oiel Verree.
+
+"See that you do not disgrace my church to-night," said the Vicar. But
+Billy 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 of
+them."
+
+At that the Vicar gave us the light of his countenance no more. The last
+glimpse of his robe going through the vestry door was the signal for a
+buzz of low gossip, and straightway the business of Oiel Verree began.
+
+It must have been now approaching eleven o'clock, and two old greybeards
+with tousled heads placed themselves abreast at the door of the west
+porch. There they struck up a carol in a somewhat lofty key. It was a
+most doleful ditty. Certainly I have never since heard the like of it.
+I remember that it told the story of the Crucifixion in startling
+language, full of realism that must have been horribly ghastly, if it
+had not been so comic. At the end of each verse the singers made one
+stride towards the communion. There were some thirty verses, and every
+mortal verse did these zealous carollers give us. They came to an end at
+length, and then another old fellow rose in his pew and sang a ditty
+in Manx. It told of the loss of the herring-fleet in Douglas Bay in the
+last century. After that there was yet another and another carol--some
+that might be called sacred, others that would not be badly wronged with
+the name of profane. As I recall them now, they were full of a burning
+earnestness, and pictured the dangers of the sinner and the punishment
+of the damned. They said nothing about the joys of heaven, or the
+pleasures of life. Wherever these old songs came from they must have
+dated from some period of religious revival. The Manxman may have
+appropriated them, but if he did so he was in a deadly earnest mood. It
+must have been like stealing a hat-band.
+
+My comrade had been silent all this time, but in response to various
+winks, nods, and nudges, he rose to his feet. Now, in prospect of Oiel
+Verree I had written the old man a brand new carol. It was a mighty
+achievement in the sentimental vein. I can remember only one of its
+couplets:
+
+     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 the
+same uncertainty. Shall I ever forget what happened? Billy standing in
+the pew with my paper in his hand the wrong way up. Myself by his side
+holding a candle to him. Then he began to sing. It was an awful tune--I
+think he called it sevens--but he made common-sense of my doggerel by
+one 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. God
+rest 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 say
+that I do not think that any of these, can live long apart from the Manx
+language. We may have stolen most of them; they may have been wrecked on
+our coast, and we may have smuggled them; but as long as they wear our
+native homespun clothes they are ours, and as soon as they put it off
+they cease to belong to us. A Manx proverb is no longer a Manx proverb
+when it is in English. The same is true of a Manx ballad translated, and
+of 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 is
+departed, and that which remains is only an English ghost flitting about
+in Manx grave-clothes.
+
+Now this is a sad fact, for it implies that little as we have got of
+Manx literature, whether written or oral, we shall soon have none at
+all. Our Manx language is fast dying out. If we had any great work in
+the Manx tongue, that work alone would serve to give our language a
+literary life at least. But we have no such great work, no fine Manx
+poem, no good novel in Manx, not even a Manx sermon of high mark. Thus
+far our Manx language has kept alive our pigmies of Manx literature; but
+both are going down together. The Manx is not much spoken now. In
+the remoter villages, like Cregnesh, Ballaugh, Kirk Michael, and Kirk
+Andreas, it may still be heard. Moreover, the Manxman may hear Manx a
+hundred times for every time an Englishman hears it. But the younger
+generation of Manx folk do not speak Manx, and very often do not
+understand it. This is a rapid change on the condition of things in my
+own 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 sort
+of nodding acquaintance with it out of door, and yet among my earliest
+recollections is that of a household where nothing but Manx was ever
+spoken except to me. A very old woman, almost bent double over a
+spinning wheel, and calling me Hommy-Veg, and _baugh-millish_, and so
+forth. This will suggest that the Manx people are themselves responsible
+for the death of the Manx language. That is partly true. The Manx tongue
+was felt to be an impediment to intercourse with the English people.
+Then the great English immigration set in, and the Isle of Man became a
+holiday resort. That was the doomster of the Manx language. In another
+five-and-twenty years the Manx language will be as dead as a Manx
+herring.
+
+One cannot but regret this certain fate. I dare not say that the
+language itself is so good that it ought to live. Those who know it
+better say that "it's a fine old tongue, rich and musical, full of
+meaning and expression." {*} I know that it is at least forcible, and
+loud and deep in sound. I will engage two Manxmen quarrelling in Manx
+to make more noise in a given time than any other two human brethren in
+Christendom, not excepting two Irishmen. Also I think the Manx must be
+capable of notes of sweet feeling, and I observe that a certain higher
+lilt in a Manx woman's voice, suggesting the effort to speak about the
+sound of the sea, and the whistle of the wind in the gorse, is lost in
+the voices of the younger women who speak English only. But apart from
+tangible loss, I regret the death of the Manx tongue on grounds of
+sentiment. In this old tongue our fathers played as children, bought and
+sold as men, prayed, preached, gossiped, quarrelled, and made love. It
+was their language at Tynwald; they sang their grim carvals in it, and
+their wailing, woful ballads.
+
+     * The Rev. T. E. Brown.
+
+When it is dead more than half of all that makes us Manxmen will be
+gone. Our individuality will be lost, the greater barrier that separates
+us from other peoples will be broken down. Perhaps this may have its
+advantages, but surely it is not altogether a base desire not to be
+submerged 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 anxious
+to go back and join the happy family that lived in one ark.
+
+But aside from all lighter thoughts there is something very moving and
+pathetic in the death of an old language. Permit me to tell you, not
+as a philologist, a character to which I have no claim, but as an
+imaginative writer, how the death of an ancient tongue affects me. It is
+unlike any other form of death, for an unwritten language is even as a
+breath of air which when it is spent leaves no trace behind. A nation
+may die, yet its history remains, and that is the tangible part of its
+past. A city may fall to decay and lie a thousand years under the sands
+of the desert, yet its relics revivify its life. But a language that is
+dead, a tongue that has no life in its literature, is a breath of wind
+that is gone. A little while and it went from lip to lip, from lip to
+ear; it came we know not whence; it has passed we know not where. It was
+an embodied spirit of all man's joys and sorrows, and like a spirit it
+has vanished away.
+
+Then if this old language has been that of our own people its death is a
+loss to our affections. Indeed, language gets so close to our heart that
+we can hardly separate it from our emotions. If you do not speak the
+Italian language, ask yourself whether Dante comes as close to you as
+Shakespeare, all questions of genius and temperament apart. And if Dante
+seems a thousand miles away, and Shakespeare enters into your closest
+chamber, is it not first of all because the language of Shakespeare is
+your own language, alive with the life that is in your own tongue, vital
+with your own ways of thought and even tricks and whims of speech? Let
+English die, and Shakespeare goes out of your closet, and passes away
+from you, and is then your brother-Englishman only in name. So close is
+the bond of language, so sweet and so mysterious.
+
+But there is yet a more sacred bond with the language of our fathers
+when 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 of
+a friend. Is it not the living voice? The living face you can bring back
+in memory, and in your dark hours it will shine on you still; the good
+deed can never die; the noble thought lives for ever. Death is not
+conqueror over such as these, but the human voice, the strange and
+beautiful part of us that is half spirit in life, is lost in death. For
+a while it startles us as an echo in an empty chamber, and then it is
+gone, 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 is
+the death of the old tongue which our fathers spoke. _It is the death of
+the dead_.
+
+
+MANX SUPERSTITIONS
+
+When the Manx tongue is dead there will remain, however, just one badge
+of our race--our superstition. I am proud to tell you that we are the
+most superstitious people now left among the civilised nations of the
+world. 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. Manxmen
+have not yet taken the poetry out of the moon and the stars, and the
+mist of the mountains and the wail of the sea. Of course we are ashamed
+of the survival of our old beliefs and try to hide them, but let nobody
+say 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 a
+hundred illustrations. I remember an ill-tempered old body living on
+the Curragh, who was supposed to possess the evil eye. If a cow died at
+calving, 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 potatoes
+were blighted, she had looked over the hedge at them. There was a charm
+doctor 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 of
+the woman of the Curragh, the farmer fled over to Kirk Andreas for the
+charm of the charm-doctor. From the moment Teare-Ballawhane began to
+boil his herbs the cow recovered. If the cow died after all, there was
+some fault in the farmer. I remember a child, a girl, who twenty years
+ago had a birth-mark on her face--a broad red stain like a hand on her
+cheek. Not long since, I saw her as a young woman, and the stain was
+either gone entirely or hidden by her florid complexion. When I asked
+what 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 the
+Nightman, an evil spirit who haunts the mountains at night predicting
+tempests and the doom of ships, the _dooinney-oie_ of the Manx, akin to
+the _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 I
+heard 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 her
+wedding-day, coming home from the Curragh, whither she had stolen away
+in pursuit of a belated calf, she was chased in the moonlight by a
+troop of fairies. They held on to her gown, and climbed on her back, and
+perched on her shoulders, and clung to her hair. There were "hundreds
+and tons" of them; they were about as tall as a wooden broth-ladle, and
+all wore cocked-hats and velvet jackets.
+
+A good fairy long inhabited the Isle of Man. He was called in Manx the
+Phynnodderee. It would appear that he had two brothers of like
+features with himself, one in Scotland called the Brownie, the other in
+Scandinavia called the Swart-alfar.
+
+I have often heard how on a bad night the Manx folk would go off to bed
+early so that the Phynnodderee might come in out of the cold. Before
+going upstairs they built up the fire, and set the kitchen table with
+crocks of milk and pecks of oaten cake for the entertainment of their
+guest. Then while they slept the Phynnodderee feasted, yet he always
+left the table exactly as he found it, eating the cake and drinking the
+milk, but filling up the peck and the crock afresh. Nobody ever intruded
+upon him, so nobody ever saw him, save the Manx Peeping Tom. I remember
+hearing an old Manxman say that his curiosity overcame his reverence,
+and he "leff the wife," stepped out of bed, crept to the head of the
+stairs, and peeped over the banisters into the kitchen. There he saw
+the Phynnodderee sitting in his own arm-chair, with a great company of
+brother and sister fairies about him, baking bread on the griddle, and
+chattering together like linnets in spring. But he could not understand
+a 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 beautiful
+woman. Manx folk-lore, like Manx carvals, Manx ballads, and Manx
+proverbs, takes it for a bad sign of a woman's character that she has
+personal beauty. If she is beautiful, ten to one she is a witch. That is
+how 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 the
+island. 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 to
+punish her, and, to escape from them, she took the form of a wren and
+flew away. That is how it comes about that the poor little wren is
+hunted and killed on St. Stephen's Day. The Manx lads do it, though
+surely it ought to be the Manx maidens. At midnight they sally forth in
+great companies, armed with sticks and carrying torches. They beat the
+hedges until they light on a wren's nest, and, having started the wren
+and slaughtered it, they suspend the tiny mite to the middle of a long
+pole, which is borne by two lads from shoulder to shoulder. They then
+sing 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 creatures
+who have disappeared into the sea. The fairies themselves have also gone
+there. They inhabit Man no more. A Wesleyan preacher declared some years
+ago that he witnessed the departure of all the Manx fairies from the Bay
+of Douglas. They went away in empty rum puncheons, and scudded before
+the wind as far as the eye could reach, in the direction of Jamaica. So
+we have done with them, both good and bad.
+
+However, among the witches whom we have left to us in remote corners of
+the 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. The
+Mheillia is the harvest-home. It is a picturesque ceremonial, observed
+differently in different parts. Women and girls follow the reapers
+to gather and bind the corn after it has fallen to the swish of the
+sickles. A handful of the standing corn of the last of the farmer's
+fields is tied about with ribbon. Nobody but the farmer knows where that
+handful is, and the girl who comes upon it by chance is made the Queen
+of the Mheillia. She takes it to the highest eminence near, and waves
+it, and her fellow-reapers and gleaners shout huzzas. Their voices are
+heard through the valley, where other farmers and other reapers
+and gleaners stop in their work and say, "So-and-so's Mheillia!"
+"Ballamona's Mheillia's took!" That night the farmer gives a feast in
+his barn to celebrate the getting in of his harvest, and the close of
+the work of the women at the harvesting. Sheep's heads for a change on
+Manx herrings, English ale for a change on Manx jough; then dancing led
+by the mistress, to the tune of a fiddle, played faster and wilder
+as the night advances, reel and jig, jig and reel. This pretty rural
+festival is still observed, though it has lost much of its quaintness. I
+think I can just remember to have heard the shouts of the Mheillia from
+the breasts of the mountains.
+
+You will have gathered that in no part of the world could you find
+a more reckless and ill-conditioned breeding-ground of suppositions,
+legends, traditions, and superstitions than in the Isle of Man. The
+custom of hunting the wren is widely spread throughout Ireland; and if
+I were to tell you of Manx wedding customs, Manx burial customs, Manx
+birth customs, May day, Lammas, Good Friday, New Year, and Christmas
+customs, you would recognise in the Manxman the same irresponsible
+tendency to appropriate whatever flotsam drifts to his shore. What I
+have told you has come mainly of my own observation, but for a complete
+picture of Manx manners and customs, beliefs and superstitions, I will
+refer you to William Kennish's "Mona's Isle, and other Poems," a rare
+book, with next to no poetic quality, and containing much that is
+worthless, but having a good body of real native stuff in it, such as
+cannot be found elsewhere. A still better anthology is likely to be soon
+forthcoming 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 they
+seem, so foolish, so ignorant. But shall we therefore set ourselves so
+much above our fathers because they were slaves to them, and we believe
+them not? Bethink you. Are we so much wiser, after all? How much farther
+have we got? We know the mists of Mannanan. They are only the vapours
+from 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 mere
+presence hurts us, and the warm eye of the born physician, whose mere
+presence heals us. Does that tell us everything? We hear the moans which
+the sea sends up to the mountains, when storms are coming, and ships are
+to be wrecked, and we do not call them the voices of the Nightman, but
+only the voices of the wind. We have changed the name; but we have taken
+none of the mystery and marvel out of the thing itself. It is the Wind
+for 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. Our
+superstitions remain, only we call them Science, and try not to be
+afraid of them. But we are as little children after all, and the best of
+us are those that, being wisest, see plainest that, before the wonders
+and terrors of the great world we live in, we are children, walking
+hand-in-hand in fear.
+
+
+MANX STORIES
+
+You will say that there ought to be many good stories of a people like
+the Manx; and here again I have to confess to you that the absence of
+all literary conscience, all perception of keeping and relation, all
+sense of harmony and congruity in the Manxman has so demoralised our
+anecdotal _ana_ that I hesitate to offer you certain of the best of
+our Manx yarns from fear that they may be venerable English, Irish, and
+Scotch familiars. I will content myself with a few that bear undoubted
+Manx 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 famous
+of living Manxmen, and himself our North-country Spurgeon, with his
+wife, his sister, and his mother, were belated one evening up Baldwin
+Glen, and stopped at a farm-house to inquire their way. But the farmer
+would 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 Manx
+captains of the Steamboat Company were notorious soakers. There is a
+story of one of them who had the Archdeacon of the island aboard in a
+storm. It was night. The reverend Archdeacon was in an agony of pain and
+terror. 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 done
+in those evil days when the clergy of the Athols were more busy with
+backgammon than with theology. But the religion of the old type of Manx
+Methodist was often an amusing mixture of puritanism and its opposite,
+a sort of grim, white-faced sanctity, that was never altogether free of
+the suspicion of a big boisterous laugh behind it. The Methodist local
+preachers have been the real guardians and repositories of one side
+of the Manx genius, a curious, hybrid thing, deadly earnest, often
+howlingly ludicrous, simple, generally sincere, here and there
+audaciously hypocritical. Among local preachers I remember some of the
+sweetest, purest, truest men that ever walked this world of God; but
+I also remember a > man who was brought home from market on Saturday
+night, dead drunk, across the bottom of his cart drawn by his faithful
+horse, and I saw him in the pulpit next morning, and heard his sermon on
+the evils of backsliding. There is a story of the jealousy of two local
+preachers. The one went to hear the other preach. The preacher laid out
+his subject under a great many heads, firstly, secondly, thirdly, up to
+tenthly. 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 religious
+food, cried aloud, "Give us mate, man, give us mate!" Whereupon the
+preacher leaned over the pulpit cushion, and said, "Hould on, man, till
+I've done with the carving."
+
+But to tell of Happy Dan, and his wondrous sermon on the Prodigal Son
+at the Clover Stones, Lonan, and his discourse on the swine possessed
+of devils who went "triddle-traddle, triddle-traddle down the brews and
+were clane drownded;" and of the marvellous account of how King David
+remonstrated in broadest Manx _patois_ with the "pozzle-tree," for being
+blown down; and then of the grim earnestness of a good man who could
+never preach on a certain text without getting wet through to the
+waistcoat with perspiration--to open the flood-gates of this kind of
+Manx story would be to liberate a reservoir that would hardly know an
+end, so I must spare you.
+
+
+MANX "CHARACTERS"
+
+At various points of my narrative I have touched on certain of our
+eccentric Manx "characters." But perhaps more interesting than any such
+whom 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 a
+nation's genius. Crooked, distorted, deformed, they nevertheless, and
+perhaps therefore, show clearly the bent of their race. If you are
+without brake or curb you may be blind, but you must know when you are
+going down hill. The curb of education, and the brake of common-sense
+are the surest checks on a people's individuality. And these poor
+halfwits of the Manx race, wiser withal than many of the Malvolios who
+smile on them so demurely, exhibit the two great racial qualities of
+the Manx people--the Celtic and the Norse--in vivid companionship and
+contrast. It is an amusing fact that in some wild way the bardic spirit
+breaks out in all of them. They are all singers, either of their own
+songs, 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 of
+war; never, like the rustic poetry of the Scotch, full of pawky humour;
+never cynical, never sarcastic; only concerned with the terrors of
+judgment and damnation and the place of torment. That, also, may be a
+fierce and dark development of the Celtic strain, but I see more of the
+Norse spirit in it. When my ancient bard in Glen Rushen took down his
+thumb-marked, greasy, discoloured poems from the "lath" against the
+open-timbered ceiling, and read them aloud to me in his broad Manx
+dialect, with a sing-song of voice and a swinging motion of body, while
+the loud hailstorm pelted the window pane and the wind whistled round
+the house, I found they were all startling and almost ghastly appeals to
+the 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 of
+the 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," containing
+exactly the same idea, and conclude that the Manx bard was poking fun at
+some fashionable yet worldly-minded preacher. But no; he was too much a
+child of Nature for that.
+
+There is not much satire in the Manx character, and next to no cynicism
+at 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 of
+one, Tom the Dipper, an itinerant Manx bard, who sang at fairs; but in a
+general way the Manx bard has been a deadly earnest person, most at home
+in churchyards. There was one such, akin in character to my old friend
+Billy of Maughold, but of more universal popularity, a quite privileged
+pet 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 of
+the songs of bards. He was a religious monomaniac, who lived before his
+time, poor fellow; his madness would not be seen in him now. The idol
+of 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; then
+Wilson 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 of
+diamonds, and print hymns, and send them back to the Isle of Man. Poor,
+'wildered brain, haunted by "half-born thoughts," not all delusions, but
+quaint and grotesque. Full of valiant fury, Chaise was always ready to
+fight for his distorted phantom of the right. When an uncle of my
+own died, whose name I bear, Chaise shocked all the proprieties by
+announcing his intention of walking in front of the funeral procession
+through the streets and singing his terrible hymns. He would yield to
+no persuasion, no appeals, and no threats. He had promised the dead man
+that 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 fulfilled
+his vow, walked ten yards in front, sang his fierce music with the tears
+streaming from his wild eyes down his quivering face. But the spectacle
+let loose no unseemly mirth. Nobody laughed, and surely if the heaven
+that Chaise feared was listening and looking down, his crazy voice was
+not the last to pierce the dome of it. My friend the Rev. T. E. Brown
+has 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 left
+myself little space for a summary of the soberer Manx characteristics.
+These are independence, modesty, a degree of sloth, a non-sanguine
+temperament, pride, and some covetousness. This uncanny combination of
+characteristics is perhaps due to our mixed Celtic and Norse blood. Our
+independence is pure Norse. I have never met the like of it, except in
+Norway, where a Bergen policeman who had hunted all the morning for my
+lost 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 her
+head, torn skin shoes on her feet, and with rheumatism playing visible
+havoc all over her body, refused a kroner with the dignity, grave look,
+stiffened lips, and proud head that would have become a duchess. But the
+Manxman's independence almost reaches a vice. He is so unwilling to owe
+anything 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 great
+favours from those we greatly love, between whom and ourselves there is
+no such thing as an obligation, and no such thing as a debt. There is
+something in the Manxman's blood that makes him hate rank; and though he
+has a vast respect for wealth, it must be his own, for he will take off
+his hat to nobody else's.
+
+The modesty of the Manxman reaches shyness, and his shyness is capable
+of making him downright rude. One of my friends tells a charming story,
+very characteristic of our people, of a conversation with the men of the
+herring-fleet. "We were comin' home from the Shetland fishing, ten boats
+of us; and we come to an anchor in a bay. And there was a tremenjis fine
+castle 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 come
+up 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 knew
+who the lady was that he might write to her and apologise. Then followed
+a 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, and
+had tea. If any lady here present knows a lady on the north-west coast
+of Scotland who a year or two back invited eighty Manx men and boys to
+dinner, and received sixteen to tea, she will redeem the character of
+our race if she will explain that it was not because her hospitality was
+not appreciated that it was not accepted by our foolish countrymen.
+
+There is nothing that more broadly indicates the Norse strain in the
+Manx character than the non-sanguine temperament of the Manxmen. Where
+the pure Celt will hope anything and promise everything, the Manxman
+will hope not at all and promise nothing. "Middling" is the commonest
+word in a Manxman's mouth. Hardly anything is entirely good, or wholly
+bad, but nearly everything is middling. It's a middling fine day, or a
+middling stormy one; the sea is middling smooth or middling rough; the
+herring harvest is middling big or middling little; a man is never much
+more, than middling tired, or middling well, or middling hungry, or
+middling thirsty, and the place you are travelling to is alwaya middling
+near or middling far. The true Manxman commits himself to nothing.
+When Nelson was shot down at Trafalgar, Cowle, a one-armed Manx
+quartermaster, 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 I
+shall recover?' 'I think, my lord,' I says, 'we had better wait for the
+opinion of the medical man.'" Dear old Cowle, that cautious word showed
+you were no Irishman, but a downright middling Manxman.
+
+I have one more story to tell, and that is of Manx pride, which is a
+wondrous thing, usually-very ludicrous. A young farming girl who will go
+about barefoot throughout the workdays of the week would rather perish
+than not dress in grand attire, after her own sort, on Sunday afternoon.
+But Manx pride in dress can be very touching and human. When the
+lighthouse was built on the Chickens Rock, the men who were to live in
+it were transferred from two old lighthouses on the little islet
+called the Calf of Man, but their families were left in the disused
+lighthouses. Thus the men were parted from their wives and children, but
+each could see the house of the other, and on Sunday mornings the wives
+in their old lighthouses always washed and dressed the children and made
+them "nice" and paraded them to and fro on the platforms in front of
+the doors, and the men in their new lighthouse always looked across the
+Sound 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 Manx
+character entirely charming and delightful. The one is the best type of
+Manx seaman, a true son of the sea, full of wise saws and proverbs, full
+of long yarns and wondrous adventures, up to anything, down to anything,
+pragmatical, a mighty moralist in his way, but none the less equal to
+a round ringing oath; a sapient adviser putting on the airs of a
+philosopher, but as simple as the baby of a girl--in a word, dear old
+Tom Baynes of "Fo'c's'le Yarns," old salt, old friend, old rip. The
+other type is that of the Manx parish patriarch. This good soul it
+would be hard to beat among all the peoples of earth. He unites the best
+qualities 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, but
+beloved 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 his
+table in the farm kitchen, with his sons and daughters and men-servants
+and women-servants about him, and, save for ribald gossip, no one of
+whatever condition abridged the flow of talk for his presence. I have
+known him as a parson, when he has been the father of his parish, the
+patriarch of his people, the "ould angel" of all the hillside round
+about. 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 great
+themes, long hour after long hour in the little low-ceiled Vicarage
+study, with no light but the wood fire, which glistened on the diamond
+window-pane! And when midnight came seeing each other home, spending
+half the night walking to and fro from Vicarage to Vicarage, or turning
+out to saddle the horse in the field, but (far away "in wandering mazes
+lost") going blandly up to the old cow and putting on the blinkers and
+saying, "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 have
+longest survived. And indeed they are not the only good things that are
+dying out there.
+
+
+LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS
+
+The island has next to no literary associations, but it would be
+unpardonable in a man of letters if he were to forget the few it can
+boast. Joseph Train, our historian, made the acquaintance of Scott in
+1814, and during the eighteen years following he rendered important
+services to "The Great Unknown" as a collector of some of the legendary
+stories used as foundations for what were then called the Scotch Novels.
+But it is a common error that Train found the groundwork of the Manx
+part of "Peveril of the Peak." It was Scott who directed Train to the
+Isle of Man as a fine subject for study. Scott's brother Thomas lived
+there, and no doubt this was the origin of Scott's interest in the
+island. Scott himself never set foot on it. Wordsworth visited the
+island about 1823, and he recorded his impressions in various sonnets,
+and also in the magnificent lines on Peel Castle--"I was thy neighbour
+once, thou rugged pile." He also had a relative living there--Miss
+Hutchinson, his sister-in-law. A brother of this lady, a mariner, lies
+buried in Braddan churchyard, and his tombstone bears an epitaph which
+Wordsworth indited. The poet spent a summer at Peel, pitching his tent
+above what is now called Peveril Terrace. One of my friends tried long
+ago to pump up from this sapless soil some memory of Wordsworth, but no
+one could remember anything about him. Shelley is another poet of whom
+there remains no trace in the Isle of Man. He visited the island early
+in 1812, being driven into Douglas harbour by contrary winds on his
+voyage from Cumberland to Ireland. He was then almost unknown; Harriet
+was still with him, and his head was full of political reforms. The
+island was in a state of some turmoil, owing to the unpopularity of
+the Athols, who still held manorial rights and the patronage of the
+Bishopric. The old Norse Constitution was intact, and the House of Keys
+was then a self-elected chamber. It is not wonderful that Shelley made
+no impression on Man in 1812, but it is surprising that Man seems to
+have made no impression on Shelley. It made a very sensible impression
+on Hawthorne, who left his record in the "English Note Book."
+
+
+MANX PROGRESS
+
+I am partly conscious that throughout these lectures I have kept my face
+towards the past. That has been because I have been loth to look at the
+present, and almost afraid to peep into the future. The Isle of Man is
+not now what it was even five-and-twenty years ago. It has become
+too English of late. The change has been sudden. Quite within my own
+recollection England seemed so far away that there was something beyond
+conception moving and impressive in the effect of it and its people upon
+the imagination of the Manx. There were only about two steamers a week
+between England and the Isle of Man at that time. Now there are about
+two a day. There are lines of railway on this little plot of land, which
+you might cross on foot between breakfast and lunch, and cover from
+end to end in a good day's walk. This is, of course, a necessity of the
+altered conditions, as also, no doubt, are the parades, and esplanades,
+and promenades, and iron piers, and marine carriage drives, and Eiffel
+Tower, and old castles turned into Vauxhall Gardens, and fairy glens
+into "happy day" Roshervilles. God forbid that I should grudge the
+factory hand his breath of the sea and glimpse of the gorse-bushes; but
+I know what price we are paying that we may entertain him.
+
+Our young Manxman is already feeling the English immigration on his
+character. He is not as good a man as his father was before him. I dare
+say that in his desire to make everything English that is Manx, he
+may some day try to abolish the House of Keys, or at least dig up the
+Tynwald Hill. In one fit of intermittent mania, he has already attempted
+to "restore" the grand ruins of Peel Castle, getting stones from
+Whitehaven, filling up loop-holes, and doing other indecencies with
+the great works of the dead. All this could be understood if the young
+Manxman were likely to be much the richer for the changes he is bringing
+about. But he is not; the money that comes from England is largely taken
+by English people, and comes back to England.
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+From these ungracious thoughts let me turn again, in a last word, to
+the old island itself, the true Mannin-veg-Veen of the real Manxman. In
+these 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 of
+solid fact that you might have carried away tangible ideas. Fact is not
+my domain, and I shall have to be content if in default of it I have got
+you 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 its
+golden gorse, and to know the Manxman from other men. Sometimes I have
+been half ashamed to ask you to look at our countrymen, so rude are they
+and so primitive--russet-coated, currane-shod men and women, untaught,
+superstitious, fishing the sea, tilling their stony land, playing next
+to no part in the world, and only gazing out on it as a mystery far
+away, whereof the rumour comes over the great waters. No great man among
+us, no great event in our history, nothing to make us memorable. But I
+have been re-assured when I have remembered that, after all, to look on
+a life so simple and natural might even be a tonic. Here we are in the
+heart of the mighty world, which the true Manxman knows only by vague
+report; millions on millions huddled together, enough to make five
+hundred Isles of Man, more than all the Manxmen that have lived since
+the days of Orry, more than all that now walk on the island, added to
+all that rest under it; streets on streets of us, parks on parks, living
+a life that has no touch of Nature in the ways of it; save only in our
+own breasts, which often rebel against our surroundings, struggling
+with weariness under their artificiality, and the wild travesty of what
+we are made for. Do what we will, and be what we may, sometimes we feel
+the falseness of our ways of life, and surely it is then a good and
+wholesome thing to go back in thought to such children of Nature as my
+homespun Manx people, and see them where Nature placed them, breathing
+the free air of God's proper world, and living the right lives of His
+servants, though so simple, poor, and rude.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Little Manx Nation - 1891, by Hall Caine
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