MANX LAND. THE SON OF LEIR. ST. PATRICK. PREHISTORIC MAN. KING ORRY AND
HIS HIGH-ROAD. THE HOUSE OF KEYS. PUBLIC PENANCE IN MANX LAND. A
FORTUNATE FILE. BREAST LAWS AND DEEMSTERS. THE LITTLE PEOPLE. A
HAUNTED CASTLE. A THOROUGH BAD DOG. CATS’ TAILS. “A SHIP IN HER
RUFF.” A CONTESTED PRIZE. THE THREE LEGS. THE LORD OF MAN
Of the Isle of Man, one chronicler tells us that its early history is
“more than ordinarily obscured in the mists of the past;” another, that
“the Isle of Man is almost the only place where there is any chance of
seeing a fairy;” a third, that “nowhere in the same area are there so
many relics of an unknown past.”
The fact that the island owns no ancient literature, its laws being
unwritten, and that it maintained scarcely any intercourse with other
nations, renders it impossible to disentangle from myth and tradition
any authentic chronicle of the little dominion which at a later period
was to come under the rule of the Stanleys.
To “begin at the beginning” of Manx history, the precise date of the
reign of Mannanen Beg Mac-y-Leir—which, being interpreted, is Little
Mannanen, the son of Leir, and who is the mythic hero of Man—is somewhat
difficult to determine, seeing that he is said to have reigned any time
between thirteen centuries before Christ and four centuries after. As
another name for him was Angus Oge, “The Immortal,” this Mannanen may
have lived to a good old age; but seventeen centuries is a far cry.
His parentage is further variously attributed to Scottish and to Irish
kings; and he was the first law-maker of the island. Also, besides being
a warrior, navigator, and trader, he was a skilful forger of weapons,
and a mighty necromancer and magician, having the power to hide his
dominions in mist at the approach of the enemy.
If Mannanen was killed by St Patrick, and his subjects were driven by
that apostle to the alternative of becoming Christians or of being
exterminated—for, saith the chronicler, “of the seed of the conjurer,
there were none but what the saint destroyed”—the founder of Man
necessarily is a comparatively modern personage of sixth-century days.
Something like an air of reality is spread over this tradition of
Mannanen and St Patrick by the traditions of St Maughold, whose name
appears in the English, Scotch, and Irish calendars, and who gives his
name to the headland near Ramsey. This Maughold or Macguil appears to
have been a wild Irish chieftain who designed to murder St Patrick. The
saint however filled Maughold with awe by exercising a miracle, and
restoring to life one of his band of ruffian followers. This deed, more
marvellous than useful, converted Maughold on the spot to the Christian
faith, and he offered to do any penance St Patrick thought fit to
impose.
The saint having considered awhile, bade the penitent to repair to the
seashore, and there, entering a little coracle, have his hands and feet
bound, and then let himself drift over the trackless waters till they
should bring him to land once more; and so he was brought to the foot of
the rocks eastward of the Isle of Man. Here he was welcomed by the
Christian missionaries whom St Patrick had left in charge of the island;
and after a long life spent in pious prayers and deeds and many
austerities, and, in his turn, miracles, he died, and was buried in the
church which afterwards bore his canonised name and stood in the midst
of the city which he had founded on that rock. After all this, it is
cruel to find that the most laborious and learned seekers into the lives
of the saints and early apostles of Christianity can discover not the
slightest evidence of this visit of St Patrick to the Isle of Man, nor
of any episcopate left there by him. The monkish compilers of the
“Chronicles of Man” give their summing-up of this tradition to the same
effect, in the fourteenth century:—
“Suffice it to say we are entirely ignorant who or what bishops
existed before the time of Goddard Crovan, Captain of William
I., because we have not found it written, nor have we learned it
by certain report of the elders.”
King Arthur is said to have conquered Man, and then, restoring it to its
vanquished possessor, enrolled him among the knights of his Round Table.
From its situation, the island was little likely to be left long in the
undisputed possession of the latest warrior who might have conceived a
desire of annexing it; and it undoubtedly changed hands many times
between the Irish and Scots, not to speak of the Welsh and English.
Finally, in the ninth century, the Scandinavians, who had made their
power felt all over Europe, gained the upper hand in the island, and
made it one of their central strongholds. To balance the discredit
thrown on the early Christian traditions of Man, stands the fact that
monumental vestiges of each race recorded to have inhabited it have been
found in it. Prehistoric remains, kist-vaens, burial-places, earthenware
urns, flint arrow-heads, not unfrequently are dug up; also circular huts
of unhewn stone of the locality. A few Roman relics have been found at
Castletown. Mediæval remains are at Peel, Castletown, and Kirk Maughold,
and many Runic and Scandinavian monuments in various parts. Querns, the
ancient handmills for grinding grain, are found now and again. Such
relics of early times all prove that if originally a desert, the Isle of
Man was peopled at a comparatively early period in the world’s history.
In the sixteenth century came the renowned Manx hero, Orry, from his
Icelandic home. The story tells that he landed on a starlight night, and
when the Manx men asked him whence he came, he pointed to the Milky Way:
and so it is that the people of Man to this day call the Milky Way _Road
Moar Ree Orree_—King Orry’s highroad. To Orry is ascribed the
establishment of a civil government, and its powers and privileges as a
separate though feudatory kingdom. It was long designated “The Kingdom
of Man and the Isles.” Its representative assembly is the oldest in
Europe, coeval with the English Parliament, and is styled the House of
Keys. Its Tynwald Court is held on the 5th of July on the Tynwald Hill,
and is a signing and proclamation of the Acts passed by the Imperial
Government during the preceding year, being proclaimed in English and in
Manx.
In former times this assembling of the legislators was attended by great
pomp and ceremony. The second Earl of Derby relinquished the title of
King of Man, being content with the appellative of Lord of the island;
but Sir John Stanley was bidden as king to meet his officers of state,
deemsters, and barons in his “royal array, as a king ought to do—and
upon the Hill of Tynwald sitt in a chaire covered with a royall cloath
and cushions and his visage unto the east”; and many more injunctions to
the king, and rules for the conduct of the great annual ceremonial,
follow. Since 1765, the Duke of Athoel, the last lord of the island,
transferred his right to the English Crown—notwithstanding, the laws of
Imperial Parliament are not valid in Man unless they are in accordance
with its ancient laws and liberties, and have been duly confirmed by the
Tynwald Court and proclaimed on the Tynwald Hill.
One or two of these laws still differ in detail from those of England. A
debtor for example, if suspected of designing to abscond in order to
defraud his creditors, is open to arrest. Public penance was performed
in Man long after that observance became obsolete in England. This
fortunate isle is not burdened with income-tax, poor-laws, or turn
pikes; neither are stamps required for receipts of property transfers. A
man, for a nominal compensation, may enter on his neighbours lands and
take thence limestone or building stone for his own needs.
The “Breast Laws” are ascribed to King Orry, and were the laws of the
island, unwritten and delivered orally by the leaders of one generation
to the next. Sir John Stanley, in the reign of Henry IV., caused these
to be written. The government of the Tynwald consists, like the English
legislature, of three estates—the Governor (Lord or “King”), Council,
and the House of Commons (House of Keys). In the Council, the two
deemsters occupy an important position. They are the supreme judges,
both for life and property.
The staple food of all ranks in the island was for many centuries its
herrings. The deemster’s oath, on his appointment to office, contains
this clause: “I will execute the laws of this isle justly betwixt our
Sovereign Lord the King, and his subjects within this isle—as
indifferently as the herring backbone doth lie in the midst of the
fish.”
Godred, the son of Orry, founded Castle Rushen, around which so many
traditional and historical associations cling.
Fairies are by no means the only mysterious sort of creatures one may
see in Man; if in the classification the light-toed, little court of
Oberon and Titania alone be included, the very air must be full of
spirits yet, if the mists which so often envelop the island were indeed
and originally the work of Angus Oge, the Immortal. As Manx grandsires
and grandams still tell, those sea-mists rose at his bidding to shroud
his dominions from his enemies when they were seen approaching. Hence
the hero was venerated as demi-god, the Irish Neptune. Under the ground,
tongue of mortal should be guarded when it speaks of the giants and
terrible beings who dwell there. The main road to their abodes lies
through the sealed and gloomy chambers and dungeons of Castle Rushen;
but the boldest spirit must quail at the bare thought of penetrating
those pitch-dark subterranean passages. Often the experience of the one
man who made the attempt is related; and though he did live to tell the
tale, it was only by the skin of his teeth that he escaped, and the
merest intervention of Providence which prompted him “to open one door
instead of another at which had he sought admission, where he would have
seen company enough, but could never have returned.”
Not only about haunted Castle Rushen, with its wishing-stone in the
chapel, but all over the island, traditions abound, and strange beings
wander at will. At Peel Castle, until recently, as soon as candles were
lighted came that gruesome dog, the “Mauthe Dhoo,” as he is called—dog
or devil as he may be; and by way of agreeable contrast, the “harmless
necessary” and exceedingly tangible cat is to be seen by the most
incredulous and unimpressionable of mortals. The creature’s deficiencies
in the matter of tail only bear out the distinctive character marking
all things Manx. Whether in prehistoric times the Mauth Dog in a fit of
canine prejudice, bit it off, or why otherwise the Manx cat boasts
nothing of a tail worth mentioning, does not seem to have been ever
satisfactorily explained. Only the fact—the stump of a tail—remains. In
all other respects the Isle of Man cat can hold its own with other
Grimalkins of the domestic feline tribe, and indeed its fur is somewhat
exceptionally fine and thick.
The old heraldic Arms of Man were a “ship in her ruff”—a ship with
furled sails—and were adopted by Hacon, King of Man, in the tenth
century. With Goddard Crovan, son of the Icelandic Harold the Black, a
new dynasty began. He slew Fingal, and allied himself with William the
Conqueror. From this time the Irish, Manx and English royal families
intermarried. The King of Man, in the reign of King John, paid the Pope
of Rome homage for his crown. Soon after, Man fell into possession of
the Kings of Scotland, but their oppressive rule drove the Manxmen to
seek the protection of Edward I., who granted the little kingdom to
Walter de Huntercomb. This knight presented it once again to John
Baliol, King of Scotland and Edward’s vassal.
The strange device of the “Three Legs” was then substituted for the old
ship in her ruff as the armorial bearings of the kingdom. The most
probable explanation of the device seems to be that the Three Legs
represent the three kingdoms of England, Ireland, and Scotland, to which
countries severally the island has in times past belonged, as now
collectively it still appertains.
Piers Gaveston, the minion favourite of Edward II., was King of Man in
his flourishing days. Later, for about fifty years, the Montacutes,
Earls of Salisbury, ruled it.
In 1393, Sir William Scroop, who was afterwards beheaded, bought it of
the Earl of Salisbury. Henry IV. gave it to Percy, Earl of
Northumberland. On his forfeiture of it in 1405, it was given to Sir
John Stanley, treasurer of the household of Henry IV.; and for three
centuries the Isle of Man has remained under the Stanleys’ rule. The
feudal service required of them for its tenure was the presentation of
two falcons at the king’s coronation. Sir John Stanley transferred a
great deal of ecclesiastical power into the hands of the deemsters, and
established other wise regulations.
Thus the Isle of Man became the brightest jewel in the possessions of
the Earls of Derby; and now, in the opening year of the English
Revolution, James, the seventh Earl, became Lord of Man. Of all that
befell there under his not altogether wise, if always well intentioned
and beneficent rule, will be seen later.
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