But there was a fouler odour than that of smuggling. Wrecking was not unknown. The island lent itself naturally to that evil work. The mists of Little Mannanan, son of Lear, did not forsake our island when Saint Patrick swept him out of it. They continued to come up from the south, and to conspire with the rapid currents from the north to drive ships on to our rocks. Our coasts were badly lighted, or lighted not at all. An open flare stuck out from a pole at the end of a pier was often all that a dangerous headland had to keep vessels away from it. Nothing was easier than for a fishing smack to run down pole and flare together, as if by accident, on returning to harbour. But there was a worse danger than bad lights, and that was false lights. It was so easy to set them. Sometimes they were there of themselves, without evil intention of any human soul, luring sailors to their destruction. Then when ships came ashore it was so easy to juggle with one’s conscience and say it was the will of God, and no bad doings of any man’s. The poor sea-going men were at the bottom of the sea by this time, and their cargo was drifting up with the tide, so there was nothing to do but to take it. Such was the way of things. The Manxman could find his excuses. He was miserably poor, he had bad masters, smuggling was his best occupation, his coasts were indifferently lighted, ships came ashore of themselves—what was he to do? That the name of Manxman did not become a curse, an execration, and a reproach in these evil days of the Athols seems to say that behind all this wicked work there were splendid virtues doing noble duty somewhere. The real sap, the true human heart of Manxland, was somehow kept alive. Besides cut-throats in ruffles, and wreckers in homespun, there were true, sweet, simple-hearted people who would not sell their souls to fill their mouths.
Does it surprise you that some of all this comes within the memory of men still living? I am myself well within the period of middle life, and, though too young to touch these evil days, I can remember men and women who must have been in the thick of them. On the north of the island is Kirk Maughold Head, a bold, rugged headland going far out into the sea. Within this rocky foreland lie two bays, sweet coverlets of blue waters, washing a shingly shore under shelter of dark cliffs. One of these bays is called Port-y-Vullin, and just outside of it, between the mainland and the head, is a rock, known as the Carrick, a treacherous grey reef, visible at low water, and hidden at flood-tide. On the low brews of Port-y-Vullin stood two houses, the one a mill, worked by the waters coming down from the near mountain of Barrule, the other a weaver’s cottage. Three weavers lived together there, all bachelors, and all old, and never a woman or child among them—Jemmy of eighty years, Danny of seventy, and Billy of sixty something. Year in, year out, they worked at their looms, and early or late, whenever you passed on the road behind, you heard the click of them. Fishermen coming back to harbour late at night always looked for the light of their windows. “Yander’s Jemmy-Danny-Billy’s,” they would say, and steer home by that landmark. But the light which guided the native seamen misled the stranger, and many a ship in the old days was torn to pieces on the jagged teeth of that sea-lion, the Carrick. Then, hearing loud human cries above the shrieks of wind and wave, the three helpless old men would come tottering down to the beach, like three innocent witches, trembling and wailing, holding each other’s hands like little children, and never once dreaming of what bad work the candles over their looms had done.
But there were those who were not so guileless. Among them was a sad old salt, whom I shall call Hommy-Billy-mooar, Tommy, son of big Billy. Did I know him, or do I only imagine him as I have heard of him? I cannot say, but nevertheless I see him plainly. One of his eyes was gone, and the other was badly damaged. His face was of stained mahogany, one side of his mouth turned up, the other side turned down, he could laugh and cry together. He was half landsman, tilling his own croft, half seaman, going out with the boats to the herrings. In his youth he had sailed on a smuggler, running in from Whitehaven with spirits. The joy of “the trade,” as they called smuggling, was that a man could buy spirits at two shillings a gallon for sale on the island, and drink as much as he “plazed abooard for nothin’.” When Hommy married, he lived in a house near the church, the venerable St. Maughold away on the headland, with its lonely churchyard within sound of the sea.
There on tempestuous nights the old eagle looked out from his eyrie on the doings of the sea, over the back of the cottage of the old weavers to the Carrick. If anything came ashore he awakened his boys, scurried over to the bay, seized all they could carry, stole back home, hid his treasures in the thatch of the roof, or among the straw of the loft, went off to bed, and rose in the morning with an innocent look, and listened to the story of last night’s doings with a face full of surprise. They say that Hommy carried on this work for years, and though many suspected, none detected him, not even his wife, who was a good Methodist. The poor woman found him out at last, and, being troubled with a conscience, she died, and Hommy buried her in Kirk Maughold churchyard, and put a stone over her with a good inscription. Then he went on as before. But one morning there was a mighty hue and cry. A ship had been wrecked on the Carrick, and the crew who were saved had seen some rascals carrying off in the darkness certain rolls of Irish cloth which they had thrown overboard. Suspicion lit on Hommy and his boys. Hommy was quite hurt. “Wrecking was it? Lord a-massy! To think, to think!” Revenue officers were to come to-morrow to search his house. Those rolls of Irish cloth were under the thatch, above the dry gorse stored up on the “lath” in his cowhouse. That night he carried them off to the churchyard, took up the stone from over his wife’s grave, dug the grave open and put in the cloth. Next day his one eye wept a good deal while the officers of revenue made their fruitless search. “Aw well, well, did they think because a man was poor he had no feelings?” Afterwards he pretended to become a Methodist, and then he removed the cloth from his wife’s grave because he had doubts about how she could rise in the resurrection with such a weight on her coffin. Poor old Hommy, he came to a bad end. He spent his last days in jail in Castle Rushen. A one-eyed mate of his told me he saw him there. Hommy was unhappy. He said “Castle Rushen wasn’t no place for a poor man when he was gettin’ anyways ould.”
THE REVESTMENT
It is hardly a matter for much surprise that the British Government did what it could to curb the smuggling that was rife in Man in the days of the Athols. The bad work had begun in the days of the Derbys, when an Act was passed which authorised the Earl of Derby to dispose of his royalty and revenue in the island, and empowered the Lords of the Treasury to treat with him for the sale of it. The Earl would not sell, and when the Duke of Athol was asked to do so, he tried to put matters off. But the evil had by this time grown so grievously that the British Government threatened to strip the Duke without remuneration. Then he agreed to accept £70,000 as compensation for the absolute surrender of the island. He was also to have £2000 out of the Irish revenue, which, as well as the English revenue, was to benefit by the suppression of the clandestine trade. This was in exchange for some £6000 a year which was the Duke’s Manx revenue, much of it from duties and customs paid in goods which were afterwards smuggled into England, Ireland, and Scotland. So much for his Grace of Athol. Of course the Manx people got nothing. The thief was punished, the receiver was enriched; it is the way of the world.
In our history of Man, we call this sweet transaction, which occurred in 1765, “The Revestment,” meaning the revesting of the island in the crown of England. Our Manx people did not like it at all. I have heard a rugged old song on the subject sung at Manx inns:
For the babes unborn shall rue the day
When the Isle of Man was sold away;
And there’s ne’er an old wife that loves a dram
But she will lament for the Isle of Man.
Clearly drams became scarce when “the trade” was put down. But, indeed, the Manx had the most strange fears and ludicrous sorrows. The one came of their anxiety about the fate of their ancient Constitution, the other came of their foolish generosity. They dreaded that the government of the island would be merged into that of England, and they imagined that because the Duke of Athol had been compelled to surrender, he had been badly treated. Their patriotism was satisfied when the Duke of Athol was made Governor-in-Chief under the English crown, for then it was clear that they were to be left alone; but their sympathy was moved to see him come back as servant who had once been lord. They had disliked the Duke of Athol down to that hour, but they forgot their hatred in sight of his humiliation, and when he landed in his new character, they received him with acclamations. I am touched by the thought of my countrymen’s unselfish conduct in that hour; but I thank God I was not alive to witness it.
I should have shrieked with laughter. The absurdity of the situation passes the limits even of a farce. A certain Duke, who had received £6000 a year, whereof a large part came of an immoral trade, had been to London and sold his interest in it for £70,000, because if he had not taken that, he would probably have got nothing. With thirteen years’ purchase of his insecure revenue in his pocket, and £2000 a year promised, and his salary as Governor-in-Chief besides, he returns to the island where half the people are impoverished by his sale of the island, and nobody else has received a copper coin, and everybody is doomed to pay back interest on what the Duke has received! What is the picture? The Duke lands at the old jetty, and there his carriage is waiting to take him to the house, where he and his have kept swashbuckler courts, with troops of fine gentlemen debtors from London. The Manxmen forget everything except that his dignity is reduced. They unyoke his horses, get into his shafts, drag him through the streets, toss up their caps and cry hurrah! hurrah! One seems to see the Duke sitting there with his arms folded, and his head on his breast. He can’t help laughing. The thing is too ridiculous. Oh, if Swift had been there to see it, what a scorching satire we should have had!