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 Mön 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 Lögsögumadur,
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.