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!