TYNWALD HILL AND THE NORTHERN PARTS OF THE ISLAND
Pedestrians who wish to go north-eastward from Peel to Ramsey have a
choice of two very different kinds of way. The first of these is the
great highroad, which, after the first two miles or so, runs side by
side with the little narrow-gauge railway, and passes in succession the
villages of Kirkmichael, Ballaugh, and Sulby. The second is to follow
the highway to Douglas to a point past St. John's, where a lane turns
up to the left in the direction of Greeba Mill; and thence, climbing
on to the moor, to follow the long line of hill-tops over the summits
of Greeba Mountain, Slieau Ruy, Lhargey Ruy, Colden, Beinn-y-Phott,
Snaefell, Clagh Ouyre, and North Barrule, till we drop again to
sea-level at the quays of Ramsey Harbour. To those who love hills,
and scrambling over hills, this is probably by far the best walk in
the island; but the writer, to be honest, has never had the luck to
take it, though he has viewed the chief Manx summits at more or less
close quarters. A little beyond the point where one quits the road to
Peel, Greeba Castle is conspicuous on the green hill slope, with the
lately repaired ruin of St. Trinian's Chapel, lonely in the fields,
on the left just beyond it. This last is now treasured as a public
possession; for Man has displayed a solicitude for the protection
of its old monuments that England would do well were it tardily to
copy. Unhappily it has been found necessary to cut down the graceful
ash trees that are said formerly to have sheltered its ruined walls.
Greeba Castle, as is well known, is the Manx home of the novelist,
Mr. Hall Caine, whose _Deemster_ and _Manxman_ have done so much to
popularize Man in the public imagination. Those who ignore the fells,
and cling to the highroad, may make one or two good deviations. The
first of these is to follow the Douglas road as far as Tynwald Hill,
and thence turn north towards Kirkmichael by the side of the little
River Neb, which flows from the recesses of Glen Helen. This last is
one of the best known and most favourite glens in the island, and is
really very pretty--more one can hardly claim for it--always provided
that we have luck enough to visit it at a time when it is not overrun
by hordes of Douglas "trippers." The writer has only been in February,
when there was not even a custodian to exact the usual fee that is
demanded for admission. It is said to get its name from the daughter
of a former owner, who built what is called the Swiss Cottage--always
a name of disastrous omen--and planted a million trees. Many of these
last were burnt down some twenty years ago or more; and others had
been devastated by a tremendous storm that took place not long before
the writer's visit. It is still, however, a charming woodland walk to
follow up the dell to the Rhenass Fall towards its head, where the
stream descends over mossy crags in a theatre of deep seclusion. This
is the end of the orthodox glen; but by climbing above the fall on
the open hillside and penetrating the upland valley that lies between
Colden (1,599 feet) and Sart Fell (l,560 feet), we soon begin to get
among the mountains. Possibly, however, this digression involves some
trespassing; and trespass in Manx law--I write in utter ignorance--may
perhaps be invested with pains and penalties that do not surround it
in England! Another good digression from the main highroad may be made
by quitting it at Ballaugh, and proceeding through the Curraghs by way
of Jurby and Andreas. The Curraghs is the flattest part of the island,
and is formed of alluvial deposits. Ballaugh old church at any rate
is picturesque outside; and two other churches in this dull corner of
the island--Andreas and Bride--have each at least a brace of ancient
crosses. Of these old Manx crosses we hope soon to say something
more, when treating of the grand collection on the south side of the
graveyard at St. Maughold. Of Manx ecclesiology there is nothing to
be said: it is patently without interest or value. Peel Cathedral, we
have seen, has a little genuine thirteenth-century work, and Braddon
old church, like Jurby, is pleasant enough to look on. Moreover, a
skilled eye will doubtless detect traces of mediaevalism in many a
featureless edifice that might seem at first the uncomely product of
the soulless eighteenth century. But not even the best of the seventeen
old parish churches--and that, perhaps, is St. Maughold--is likely to
hold the archaeologist long, or help to fill his note-book. Even the
pre-Conquest chapel at Peel can hardly be called an exception; it is
simply a matter of four bare walls, quite without instructiveness or
feature.
But whether the visitor proceed from Peel to Ramsey by highroad, with
or without digressions, or resolve to make a day of it by boldly
crossing the fells, he ought not to fail, in any event, before quitting
the neighbourhood of Peel, to pay a visit to the famous Tynwald Hill,
of which notice has already been shortly taken in passing. This lies
to the left of the main road from Peel to Douglas, from which it is
plainly visible, just before entering the village of St. John's. In
itself it is quite inconspicuous--merely like a flattened round barrow,
with a second, smaller round barrow, also flattened, on the top of it;
but the spot is one of immense suggestiveness, as well as of great
existing political interest. Every new Manx law that has passed the
House of Keys, and received the royal assent, is here promulgated in
the open air on July 5 in each year. The ceremony begins with a service
in the adjoining church; and everyone then adjourns to the famous
hillock--the Governor (who is now Lord Raglan), the House of Keys,
the Deemsters, the Bishop, and the people. This rite is a genuine
antiquity that has come down uninterruptedly from old time, not a mere
artificial attempt at archaeological revival, like the Dunmow Flitch, in
Essex--to compare small things with great. Here, in short, as its very
name implies, is perhaps the last survival in Europe of out-of-door
mass legislation--the living representative of a now almost vanished
order that has left its traces in place-names over much of Scandinavian
Great Britain. Dingwall, in Ross, which is virtually the same word;
Thwing, high up on the Yorkshire Wolds; Laughten-en-le-Morthen
(Laughten-in-the-Moor-Thing), in the extreme south of the same county;
Thingwald, in the Cheshire Wirral; Tinwald Hill, near Dumfries--all
point indisputably to the same phonetic origin--the Norse _tinga_ (to
speak)--and all indicate alike the former place of meeting of some
more or less important kind of tribal assembly. In Norway, Canon Isaac
Taylor reminds us, to the present day, the Parliament is called the
Storthing, or Great Council. As to the constituents of this vastly old
assembly, readers of Mr. Hall Caine will not need to be reminded that
the two Deemsters are the chief judges of the island. The House of
Keys, which corresponds with the English House of Commons, consists
of twenty-four members, elected by a franchise that includes female
suffrage. Man, however, still retains the equivalent of the English
House of Lords; though its "Council" is not hereditary in character,
but consists of such officials as the Bishop, the Archdeacon, the
Deemsters, the Attorney-General, and others. The presence in this body
of ecclesiastical dignitaries reminds one of the constitution of the
States of Jersey and Guernsey, in both of which the rectors of the
historic parishes of the Channel Islands sit as of right at the seat
of legislation. Indeed, the constitutions of all three countries--free
States within a State--and their peculiar relation to England, are
worthy of curious scrutiny and close comparative study.
On the present occasion we propose to make our way from Peel to Ramsey
by neither of the two alternatives that have briefly been sketched
above. We propose, on the contrary, to take a composite route--partly
through the lowland, but mostly over hill--which will introduce us
alike to Kirkmichael, and Bishop's Court beyond it, and carry us over
the top of Snaefell--provided always that it be autumn, spring, or
winter, and that the electric tramway is not running.
[Illustration: A BREEZY MORNING AT POINT OF AYRE.
The northern extremity of the Isle of Man with its
lighthouse.]
From Peel to Kirkmichael we either follow the highroad, which is never
very far from the sea, or else take the roundabout route by Tynwald
Hill and Glen Helen. Kirkmichael itself is a hard-featured little
village stretching in a single, long street along the main road to
Ramsey, and distant half a mile from the sea. Luckily, so far, it has
escaped the blight of "development," and has plenty of character and
local Manx colour. The church was rebuilt in 1835--no need to state
in what style--but a fragment of its predecessor remains on the east
of the graveyard. Near this is the tomb of Bishop Thomas Wilson (d.
1755), with an inscription by his son, "Who in obedience to the express
Commands of his worthy Father, Declines giving him the Character He so
justly Deserved. Let this island speak the Rest." There is a portrait
of Bishop Wilson--no doubt sufficiently fanciful--in Mr. Hall Caine's
_Deemster_, where he appears as the good native Bishop. Wilson,
however, was really a Cheshireman, having been born at Burton-in-Wirral
in 1663; and was educated as a sizar at Trinity College, Dublin,
where he was a contemporary of the saturnine Jonathan Swift. In 1692
he was appointed domestic chaplain to the ninth Earl of Derby, and
tutor to his son, which determined the whole after course of his life.
The Stanleys at this time were no longer "Kings of Man," but they
still possessed authority almost regal. "In the year 1393 the Earl of
Salisbury sold to Sir William le Scroop, afterwards Earl of Wiltshire,
the Isle of Man, with the title of King, and the right of being crowned
with a golden crown." In 1406, after some intermediate dealings with
which we need not here concern ourselves, the island (still carrying
with it, no doubt, the right to "the golden round") passed to Sir
John Stanley, who died in 1414; and with the Stanleys it continued
till it passed by the marriage of an heiress to the Atholl Murrays in
1736. The regal title, however, had been dropped by the second Earl of
Derby (d. 1521), "as he preferred being a great lord to being a petty
King." The famous island arms (Gules three legs in armour embossed and
conjoined at the thighs proper, spurred and garnished, or) still figure
among the many quarterings of the house of Stanley. They may also be
found on old work in connection with buildings with which the Stanleys
had presumably something to do--on the west front, for example, of
the fifteenth-century tower of Bidstone Church in Cheshire, and on a
misericorde in Manchester Cathedral.
[Illustration: RAMSEY BAY, LOOKING NORTHWARD.
Ramsey is the second town in size in the island and
like Douglas faces East.]
Among the many other prerogatives that the ninth Earl of Derby still
retained as Lord of Man was the strange one of appointing its Bishop.
The last Bishop, Baptist Levinz, had died in 1693, and for some strange
reason no successor had been appointed. It is said that at last William
III. threatened to take the appointment into his own hand, and the
Earl was thus compelled to make his tardy election. It fell on Thomas
Wilson, who was consecrated at the Savoy in 1698. Wilson from the
first set his face against corruption, and administered his diocese
with firmness and good-nature. He seems, in fact, in his remote island
diocese, to have played a part in some ways not dissimilar to that
which was played by the "admirable Walker" in the Furness parish of
Seathwaite. "He soon became 'a very energetic planter' of fruit and
forest trees, turning 'the bare slopes' into 'a richly-wooded glen.'
He was an equally zealous farmer and miller, doing much by his example
to develop the resources of the island. For some time he was 'the
only physician in the island'; he set up a drug-shop, giving advice
and medicine gratis to the poor. Against the then besetting sin of
pluralism Wilson turned a face of steel; twice he refused the offer
of the rich living of Badsworth, in the West Riding, which twice his
patron offered him, because he disapproved of non-resident incumbents.
His deep practical piety is manifest from his two posthumous books,
_Maxims of Piety and Christianity_ and _Sacra Privata_. But perhaps
the best-known episode in his long episcopate of more than fifty-seven
years--he died at the patriarchal age of ninety-three--was his
imprisonment in Castle Rushen for refusal to pay a fine. In 1722 he
had suspended the Governor's chaplain for administering the Communion
to the Governor's wife, she being then in some sense excommunicate,
and for sanctioning false doctrine. Mulcted for this interference in a
sum of £50, Wilson and his two Vicars-General elected to go to prison
rather than submit to the tyranny of an authority that they held to be
usurped. Wilson, indeed, seems to have endeavoured to maintain in the
Isle of Man a system of moral discipline similar to that the decay of
which is deplored in the Commination Service. His practice, however,
was tolerant; the Quakers are said to have 'loved and respected
him'; Roman Catholics not infrequently attended his services; whilst
Dissenters, since permitted to stand, or sit, at the Communion, were
content to kneel at the altar-rails like ordinary church-folk. To
burial inside the walls of a church he exhibited strong abhorrence; and
provision was expressly inserted in his will that his own body should
be interred in the graveyard." A similar repulsion was entertained by
Dr. Wynne, a former resident of Mold, in Flintshire, whose sentiments
have found public expression, if I recollect rightly, in his epitaph,
composed by himself. In this case, unfortunately, by a curious irony
of fate, a subsequent extension of the chancel to the east has since
brought his grave within the compass of the church.
In the lych-gate on the east side of Kirkmichael Churchyard are
preserved several of those fine old crosses, though more or less in
fragments, that form the chief archaeological glory of Man, and are now
tended with such laudable care. Something of these is said on a later
page. The Bishop's Palace at Bishop's Court, a long mile to the north
from the end of the village, has been the residence of the Bishop from
at least the thirteenth century, and probably for very much longer.
The bishopric of Sodor and Man was founded, according to tradition,
as early as the fourth century, when Amphibalus is reported Bishop in
360; but all its early history is difficult and obscure. Originally it
comprised, not merely Man, but also the Scottish Hebrides (Southern
Isles, or Sudreys, as opposed to the Northern Islands, _i.e._, the
Shetlands and Orkneys); but the latter were necessarily severed when
the island was wrested from the Scots in the reign of Edward III.
Thomas (d. 1348), or William Russel (d. 1374), may approximately be
considered as the first solely Manx Bishop; but the ancient title of
Sodor still forms part of their official title, just as the Kings of
England still continued to quarter the _fleur-de-lys_ of France long
after Mary had lost Calais.
Bishop's Court, however, is a little out of the way for those who wish
to cross the hills from Kirkmichael to Ramsey. Nor does the place
indeed exhibit any interest for the archaeologist, though the Bishop's
private chapel is at present used as a kind of pro-cathedral for the
diocese. From Kirkmichael Village there is a track--that for part
of the distance is no track--almost directly due east, which passes
between Slieau Dhoo (1,139 feet), on the north, and Slieau Fraoghane
(1,602 feet), on the south, and ultimately drops into the head of Sulby
Glen at the bottom of the western slopes of Snaefell.
[Illustration: SULBY GLEN AND SNAEFELL.
Snaefell is the chief height in the island (2034 ft.)
It is now possible to ascend almost to the summit by
an electric railway from Douglas.]
Or the visitor may retrace his steps toward Glen Helen as far as the
chapel at Baregarrow, passing on the left the Hill of Reneuriling,
sometimes called Cronk Urleigh, or Eagle Mount, which is said to have
been the original Tynwald Hill of the island. At Baregarrow a lane
turns away to the left, and winds up along the southern slopes of
Sart Fell (1,560 feet). Whichever route be taken, as we penetrate the
hills we realize more and more the real nature of Manx mountains. The
central chain of hills extends for about twenty miles from Bradda Head,
a sea-cliff (766 feet), in the south-west, to North Barrule (1,842
feet), in the north-east, thus forming a true axis to the island. The
range is interrupted, not exactly in the middle, but more towards
the south, by the great lateral valley that pierces it completely
from sea to sea, and through which run road and rail between Peel and
Douglas. South of this great glen the highest summit is South Barrule
(1,565 feet); but north of it comes a cluster of much higher hills,
the culminating point of which is Snaefell (2,034 feet). These hills
are built of slate, like the hills of Cumberland and North Wales,
but there all analogy ceases. Snowdon and Scafell Pike are convulsed
masses of broken rock, whose black nakedness is not always scantily
clothed with a coverlet of bracken, or wiry grass, or sloppy bog-moss.
From the foot of the sheer crags extend long acres of scree-shoot, and
the hills are further torn in every direction by the deeply furrowed
channels of the torrents. In Man the hill slopes are everywhere smooth,
and modelled in regular contours; they are clad, no doubt, with moor,
and sodden in places with wet, but crag, and scree, and rock, are
almost wholly absent. They have even less ferocity than Skiddaw; and
Skiddaw, in addition, boasts a splendid "double-front," and a bold
black top that excited the enthusiasm of even the town-loving "Elia."
What little rock they exhibit is confined chiefly to the sides of one
or two glens--Sulby Glen, for instance, which is quite the finest in
the island--and to the beds of mountain streams; but none of this is
terrific.
[Illustration: GLEN MAYE.
One of the picturesque little glens with which the
island abounds. It is near Peel, on the western side.]
The truth indeed is this, that this central range of Man, though
akin to Westmoreland and Carnarvonshire in its actual make of rock,
is altogether aloof from them in all tangible characteristics. This
is not to dispraise the hills of Man, but only to rescue them from
the ignominy of an obvious, but quite unfair, comparison. Manx
mountains, in fact, though thus composed of slate, have really much
more resemblance to the limestone hills of Yorkshire. They have no
pretensions to rank with the best; but, judged by themselves, they are
quite satisfactorily noble. We are likely, indeed, to appreciate them
all the better, just because we do not approach them in a mood of too
exalted expectation. On the whole they are less dull than the Cheviots;
and even the Cheviots are full of all kinds of delightful surprises.
Moreover, as we win higher among the moorlands by the lane that climbs
from Baregarrow, we realize more and more that charm of all-round
seascape that distinguishes these hills above all compeers, and gives
them their imperishable charm. The wonderful extent of the view from
Snaefell was noted down as long ago as the "spacious times of great
Elizabeth." Thus, Camden says quite truly: "In medio montibus densius
attolitur, e quibus aeditissimus Sceafell, unde sudo coelo Scotia,
Anglia, and Hibernia prospici possit"--that is, England, Scotland, and
Ireland--and Wales must be added--can all be seen from the top on a
clear day. Drayton, in his _Polyolbion_ (Canto xxvii.), has just the
same remark translated into poetical diction:
Her midst with mountains set, of which, from Sceafel's height,
A clear and perfect eye, the weather being bright
(Be Neptune's visage ne'er so terrible and stern),
The Scotch, the Irish shores, and th' English may discern.
"In clear weather," says Mr. Baddeley, "not only is the 'tight little
island' itself mapped out beneath the eye, with the exception of a
strip of the coast here and there, but Scotland is plainly visible,
from the Mull of Kintyre to beyond Dumfries; Ireland is represented by
the Mourne Mountains; England by the giants of the Lake District; and
even Wales shows up, with the Peak of Snowdon, the 'Carnedds'--Dafydd
and Llewelyn--and the range extending thence, Penmaenmawr to the Great
Orme, with, maybe, the Clwydian range, in cloud-like outline, far away
in the south-east. The nearest point of England to Snaefell is St.
Bees Head, 38 miles distant; of Scotland the Whithorn Promontory, 30
miles; of Ireland the entrance to Strangford Lough, 36 miles; and of
Wales the northern coast of Anglesey, 56 miles; Scafell is 50 miles
away; Merrick, the highest Scottish mountain south of Edinburgh and
Glasgow, 60; Slieve Donard, the highest in the North of Ireland, 60;
and Snowdon, 80."
The lane by which we are now travelling, though sufficiently
rough-and-tumble, is one over which it is possible to push a bicycle;
the writer himself has done it. It is not, in fact, the least strange
feature of these Manx hills that they are thus traversed by high-level
roads--not actually, indeed, climbing to the tops of the mountains,
but winding in and out among them not far below their summits. One of
these, between Douglas and Ramsey, and immediately under the shadow of
Snaefell itself, has been engineered, I fancy, of quite recent years.
One is reminded a little of the many new upland roads that the French
are now constructing in Auvergne among the mountains of Mont Dore.
Climbing along the south breast of Sart Fell, with the Rhenass stream
below us on the right (which flows ultimately down Glen Helen), we
come presently to the slight _col_ between the valleys of the Rhenass
and the Sulby, just before surmounting which the heavy, dome-like
top of Snaefell starts suddenly up through the nick of the pass, with
its castellated hotel on its summit. The electric rail from Laxey--a
hideous double line--almost completely encircles the bare, flattened
cone of the hill as it winds round it in gradual ascent, exactly in
the fashion in which the line from Clermont-Ferrand (though this is
served by an ugly monster that vomits out volumes of smoke) winds
up the Puy de Dôme, almost like the peel of an orange. It must be
pleaded, however, in excuse of the tram-road up Snaefell--if any plea
may be heard to extenuate its bare existence--that at least it has not
scarred harsh lines round the hill, as is the case with its central
French rival--lines that are plainly visible, on a reasonably clear
day, eighteen miles away, or thereabouts, from the top of the Puy de
Sancy. The view now opens on the left into the head of Sulby Glen--more
properly Glen Mooar, the Big Glen--the strength of which lies further
to the north, where it deepens beyond the inn at Tholt-y-Wilt. This
is usually reckoned the finest in the island, and has certainly best
pretensions to recognized mountain grandeur--if any spot, indeed, in
the whole of the Isle of Man may properly be styled either mountainous
or grand. Hereabouts, in succession, two rough roads turn down, to
the south, to Injebreck, deep in the green valley between Colden
and Carraghan (1,520 feet), and the terminus of a good driving-road
from Douglas. Neither can be ridden on a bicycle, and one at least,
when we descended it--but we speak of now two years ago--was rapidly
being swept away by the fury of mountain torrents. Thus Injebreck is
practically a _cul-de-sac_, secluded in the greenest of dale-heads;
and those who are lucky enough to drop down into it, as the writer
dropped down, just towards sunset on a mild February evening, with
nearly a score of croaking ravens circling above his head, will reckon
it perhaps the most beautiful spot in the island, and one that still
remains entirely unspoilt, serene in the possession of its pleasant
rustic graces.
Injebreck, however, on our present route, must be kept for another day:
for the moment we keep the level, round the north face of Beinn-y-Phott
(1,772 feet), till we fall into the great high-level route already
referred to as running from Douglas to Ramsey. This, at the point of
junction, is crossed by a gate the closing of which is enforced by the
threat of legal penalties--a timely reminder that the law of Man is
not always co-extensive with the law of England. Beinn-y-Phott itself
is a prominent summit that perhaps displays more character than most
of its sister peaks. After all, it may be true that the names of Manx
mountains present greater interest than Manx mountains themselves.
Snaefell, of course, is the "hill of snow"--exactly the equivalent
of familiar Snowdon (there are said to be two Snaefells in Iceland).
Cronk-ny-Irey-Lhaa, on the other hand, which drops so splendidly into
the sea between Glen Maye and Port Erin (there is a second hill of
the same title in the north division of the island), is said to mean
the "Hill of the Rising Sun," and bears witness to conditions and an
altitude less rigorous.
From the point where our rough cart-track joins the great high-level
road between Douglas and Ramsey we turn north-eastward along this
latter, between Snaefell and Clagh Ouyre (1,808 feet). Snaefell itself
is easily climbed, if the conditions be really propitious, by diverging
to the left up the gentle hill-slope at almost any point we like after
crossing the electric tramway. Hereabouts, on our right, we look down
into the deep glen, disfigured by a lead-mine, which ends on the sea
at Laxey. A little beyond this, when Snaefell is now behind us, and
growing smaller in the distance, the eye begins to measure the profound
and solemn depths of green and pastoral Glen Auldyn. The elevation is
maintained till quite near Ramsey, when we plunge down suddenly from
our mountain heights by a drop of unexpected and startling abruptness.
Of Ramsey I have little to say: there seems little to say about it. It
is said to look charming when approached from the sea, but the charm
must soon vanish on landing. Down by its quays it is just a little
harbour, with the usual local colour of a place that lives by shipping
and fishing. Of the parts of the town that live by visitors there is
little to be said for good or for evil.