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.