The Little Manx Nation - 1891

Part 1

Produced by David Widger

THE LITTLE MANX NATION

By Hall Caine

Published by William Heinemann - 1891

To the REVEREND T. S. BROWN, M.A.

You see what I send you--my lectures at the Royal Institution in the Spring. In making a little book of them I have thought it best to leave them as they were delivered, with all the colloquialisms that are natural to spoken words frankly exposed to cold print. This does not help them to any particular distinction as literature, but perhaps it lends them an ease and familiarity which may partly atone to you and to all good souls for their plentiful lack of dignity. I have said so often that I am not an historian, that I ought to add that whatever history lies hidden here belongs to Train, our only accredited chronicler, and, even at the risk of bowing too low, I must needs protest, in our north-country homespun, that he shall have the pudding if he will also take the pudding-bag. You know what I mean. At some points our history--especially our early history--is still so vague, so dubious, so full of mystery. It is all the fault of little Mannanan, our ancient Manx magician, who enshrouded our island in mist. Or should I say it is to his credit, for has he not left us through all time some shadowy figures to fight about, like "rael, thrue, reg'lar" Manxmen. As for the stories, the "yarns" that lie like flies--like blue-bottles, like bees, I trust not like wasps--in the amber of the history, you will see that they are mainly my own. On second thought it occurs to me that maybe they are mainly yours. Let us say that they are both yours and mine, or perhaps, if the world finds anything good in them, any humour, any pathos, any racy touches of our rugged people, you will permit me to determine their ownership in the way of this paraphrase of Coleridge's doggerel version of the two Latin hexameters--

"They're mine and they are likewise yours, But an if that will not do, Let them be mine, good friend! for I Am the poorer of the two."

Hawthorns, Keswick, June 1891.

CONTENTS

THE STORY OF THE MANX KINGS

Islanders--Our Island--The Name of our Island--Our History--King Orry--The Tynwald--The Lost Saga--The Manx Macbeth--The Manx Glo'ster--Scotch and English Dominion--The Stanley Dynasty--Iliam Dhoan--The Athol Dynasty--Smuggling and Wrecking--The Revestment--Home Rule--Orry's Sons

THE STORY OF THE MANX BISHOPS

The Druids--Conversion to Christianity--The Early Bishops of Man--Bishops of the Welsh Dynasty--Bishops of the Norse Dynasty--Sodor and Man--The Early Bishops of the House of Stanley--Tithes in Kind--The Gambling Bishop--The Deemsters--The Bishopric Vacant--Bishop Wilson--Bishop Wilson's Censures--The Great Corn Famine--The Bishop at Court--Stories of Bishop Wilson--Quarrels of Church and State--Some Old Ordeals--The Herring Fishery--The Fishermen's Service--Some Old Laws--Katherine Kinrade--Bishop Wilson's last Days--The Athol Bishops.

THE STORY OF THE MANX PEOPLE

The Manx Language--Manx Names--Manx imagination--Manx Proverbs--Manx Ballads--Manx Carols--Decay of the Manx Language--Manx Superstitions--Manx Stories--Manx "Characters"--Manx Characteristics--Manx Types--Literary Associations--Manx Progress--Conclusion

THE LITTLE MANX NATION

THE STORY OF THE MANX KINGS

There are just two ideas which are associated in the popular imagination with the first thought of the Isle of Man. The one is that Manxmen have three legs, and the other that Manx cats have no tails. But whatever the popular conception, or misconception, of Man and its people, I shall assume that what you ask from me is that simple knowledge of simple things which has come to me by the accident of my parentage. I must confess to you at the outset that I am not much of a hand at grave history. Facts and figures I cannot expound with authority. But I know the history of the Isle of Man, can see it clear, can see it whole, and perhaps it will content you if I can show you the soul of it and make it to live before you. In attempting to traverse the history I feel like one who carries a dark lantern through ten dark centuries. I turn the bull's eye on this incident and that, take a peep here and there, a white light now, and then a blank darkness. Those ten centuries are full of lusty fights, victories, vanquishments, quarrels, peacemaking, shindies big and little, rumpus solemn and ridiculous, clouds of dust, regal dust, political dust, and religious dust--you know the way of it. But beneath it all and behind it all lies the real, true, living human heart of Manxland. I want to show it to you, if you will allow me to spare the needful time from facts and figures. It will get you close to Man and its people, and it is not to be found in the history books.

ISLANDERS

And now, first, we Manxmen are islanders. It is not everybody who lives on an island that is an islander. You know what I mean. I mean by an islander one whose daily life is affected by the constant presence of the sea. This is possible in a big island if it is far enough away from the rest of the world, Iceland, for example, but it is inevitable in a little one. The sea is always present with Manxmen. Everything they do, everything they say, gets the colour and shimmer of the sea. The sea goes into their bones, it comes out at their skin. Their talk is full of it. They buy by it, they sell by it, they quarrel by it, they fight by it, they swear by it, they pray by it. Of course they are not conscious of this. Only their degenerate son, myself to wit, a chiel among them takin' notes, knows how the sea exudes from the Manxmen. Say you ask if the Governor is at home. If he is not, what is the answer? "He's not on the island, sir." You inquire for the best hotel. "So-and-so is the best hotel on the island, sir." You go to a Manx fair and hear a farmer selling a cow. "Aw," says he, "she's a ter'ble gran' craythuer for milkin', sir, and for butter maybe there isn' the lek of her on the island, sir." Coming out of church you listen to the talk of two old Manxwomen discussing the preacher. "Well, well, ma'am, well, well! Aw, the voice at him! and the prayers! and the beautiful texes! There isn' the lek of him on the island at all, at all!" Always the island, the island, the island, or else the boats, and going out to the herrings. The sea is always present. You feel it, you hear it, you see it, you can never forget it. It dominates you. Manxmen are all sea-folk.

You will think this implies that Manxmen stick close to their island. They do more than that. I will tell you a story. Five years ago I went up into the mountains to seek an old Manx bard, last of a race of whom I shall have something to tell you in their turn. All his life he had been a poet. I did not gather that he had read any poetry except his own. Up to seventy he had been a bachelor. Then this good Boaz had lit on his Ruth and married, and had many children. I found him in a lonely glen, peopled only in story, and then by fairies. A bare hill side, not a bush in sight, a dead stretch of sea in front, rarely brightened by a sail. I had come through a blinding hail-storm. The old man was sitting in the chimney nook, a little red shawl round his head and knotted under his chin. Within this aureole his face was as strong as Savonarola's, long and gaunt, and with skin stretched over it like parchment. He was no hermit, but a farmer, and had lived on that land, man and boy, nearly ninety years. He had never been off the island, and had strange notions of the rest of the world. Talked of England, London, theatres, palaces, king's entertainments, evening parties. He saw them all through the mists of rumour, and by the light of his Bible. He had strange notions, some of them bad shots for the truth, some of them startlingly true. I dare not tell you what they were. A Royal Institution audience would be aghast. They had, as a whole, a strong smell of sulphur. But the old bard was not merely an islander, he belonged to his land more than his land belonged to him. The fishing town nearest to his farm was Peel, the great fishing centre on the west coast. It was only five miles away. I asked how long it was since he had been there? "Fifteen years," he answered. The next nearest town was the old capital, on the east coast, Castletown, the home of the Governor, of the last of the Manx lords, the place of the Castle, the Court, the prison, the garrison, the College. It was just six miles away. How long was it since he had been there? "Twenty years." The new capital, Douglas, the heart of the island, its point of touch with the world, was nine miles away. How long since he had been in Douglas? "Sixty years," said the old bard. God bless him, the sweet, dear old soul! Untaught, narrow, self-centred, bred on his byre like his bullocks, but keeping his soul alive for all that, caring not a ha'porth for the things of the world, he was a true Manxman, and I'm proud of him. One thing I have to thank him for. But for him, and the like of him, we should not be here to-day. It is not the cultured Manxman, the Manxman that goes to the ends of the earth, that makes the Manx nation valuable to study. Our race is what it is by virtue of the Manxman who has had no life outside Man, and so has kept alive our language, our customs, our laws and our patriarchal Constitution.

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