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.