On landing at Peel there was great excitement, men cheering and women crying. The Manx women spotted a baby among the Norwegians, fought for it, one woman got it, and carried it off to a fire and dry clothing. It was the captain’s wife’s baby, and an hour afterwards the poor captain’s wife, like a creature distracted, was searching for it all over the town. And to heighten the scene, report says that at that tremendous moment a splendid rainbow spanned the bay from side to side. That ought to be true if it is not.
It was a brilliant rescue, but the moving part of the story is yet to tell. The Norwegian Government, touched by the splendid heroism of the Manxmen, struck medals for the lifeboat men and sent them across to the Governor. These medals were distributed last summer on the island rock within the ruins of old Peel Castle. Think of it! One thousand years before, not far from that same place, Orry the Viking came ashore from Denmark or Norway. And now his Manx sons, still bearing his very name, Orry, save from the sea the sons of the brethren he left behind, and down the milky way, whence Orry himself once came, come now to the Manxmen the thanks and the blessings of their kinsmen, Orry’s father’s children.
Such a story as this thrills one to the heart. It links Manxmen to the great past. What are a thousand years before it? Time sinks away, and the old sea-warrior seems to speak to us still through the surf of that storm at Peel.
THE STORY OF THE MANX BISHOPS
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.
THE DRUIDS
And now, just as the first chapter of our Manx civil history is lost, so the first chapter of our church history is lost. That the Druids occupied the island seems to some people to be clear from many Celtic names and some remains, such as we are accustomed to call Druidical, and certain customs still observed. Perhaps worthy of a word is the circumstance that in the parish where the Bishop now lives, and has always lived, Kirk Michael, there is a place called by a name which in the Manx signifies Chief Druid. Strangely are the faiths of the ages linked together.
CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY