I have rambled on too long about my eccentric Manx characters, and left
myself little space for a summary of the soberer Manx characteristics.
These are independence, modesty, a degree of sloth, a non-sanguine
temperament, pride, and some covetousness. This uncanny combination of
characteristics is perhaps due to our mixed Celtic and Norse blood. Our
independence is pure Norse. I have never met the like of it, except in
Norway, where a Bergen policeman who had hunted all the morning for my
lost umbrella would not take anything for his pains; and in Iceland,
where a poor old woman in a ragged woollen dress, a torn hufa on her
head, torn skin shoes on her feet, and with rheumatism playing visible
havoc all over her body, refused a kroner with the dignity, grave look,
stiffened lips, and proud head that would have become a duchess. But the
Manxman's independence almost reaches a vice. He is so unwilling to owe
anything to any man that he is apt to become self-centred and cold,
and to lose one of the sweetest joys of life--that of receiving great
favours from those we greatly love, between whom and ourselves there is
no such thing as an obligation, and no such thing as a debt. There is
something in the Manxman's blood that makes him hate rank; and though he
has a vast respect for wealth, it must be his own, for he will take off
his hat to nobody else's.
The modesty of the Manxman reaches shyness, and his shyness is capable
of making him downright rude. One of my friends tells a charming story,
very characteristic of our people, of a conversation with the men of the
herring-fleet. "We were comin' home from the Shetland fishing, ten boats
of us; and we come to an anchor in a bay. And there was a tremenjis fine
castle there, and a ter'ble great lady. Aw, she was a ter'ble kind lady;
she axed the lot of us (eighty men and boys, eight to each boat) to come
up and have dinner with her. So the day come--well, none of us went!
That shy!" My friend reproved them soundly, and said he wished he knew
who the lady was that he might write to her and apologise. Then followed
a long story of how a breeze sprung up and eight of the boats sailed.
After that the crew of the remaining two boats, sixteen men and boys,
went up to the tremenjis great castle, and the ter'ble great lady, and
had tea. If any lady here present knows a lady on the north-west coast
of Scotland who a year or two back invited eighty Manx men and boys to
dinner, and received sixteen to tea, she will redeem the character of
our race if she will explain that it was not because her hospitality was
not appreciated that it was not accepted by our foolish countrymen.
There is nothing that more broadly indicates the Norse strain in the
Manx character than the non-sanguine temperament of the Manxmen. Where
the pure Celt will hope anything and promise everything, the Manxman
will hope not at all and promise nothing. "Middling" is the commonest
word in a Manxman's mouth. Hardly anything is entirely good, or wholly
bad, but nearly everything is middling. It's a middling fine day, or a
middling stormy one; the sea is middling smooth or middling rough; the
herring harvest is middling big or middling little; a man is never much
more, than middling tired, or middling well, or middling hungry, or
middling thirsty, and the place you are travelling to is alwaya middling
near or middling far. The true Manxman commits himself to nothing.
When Nelson was shot down at Trafalgar, Cowle, a one-armed Manx
quartermaster, caught him in his remaining arm. This was Cowle's story:
"He fell right into my arms, sir. 'Mr. Cowle,' he says, 'do you think I
shall recover?' 'I think, my lord,' I says, 'we had better wait for the
opinion of the medical man.'" Dear old Cowle, that cautious word showed
you were no Irishman, but a downright middling Manxman.
I have one more story to tell, and that is of Manx pride, which is a
wondrous thing, usually-very ludicrous. A young farming girl who will go
about barefoot throughout the workdays of the week would rather perish
than not dress in grand attire, after her own sort, on Sunday afternoon.
But Manx pride in dress can be very touching and human. When the
lighthouse was built on the Chickens Rock, the men who were to live in
it were transferred from two old lighthouses on the little islet
called the Calf of Man, but their families were left in the disused
lighthouses. Thus the men were parted from their wives and children, but
each could see the house of the other, and on Sunday mornings the wives
in their old lighthouses always washed and dressed the children and made
them "nice" and paraded them to and fro on the platforms in front of
the doors, and the men in their new lighthouse always looked across the
Sound at their little ones through their powerful telescopes.