CHAPTER VII
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.