Isle of Man

“ In the present state of affairs in the Isle of Man, any thing, I should apprehend, that would have a tendency to diminish the number of hands that may be employed in extending the culture of the land, would rather operate as a check on the farther improvement of the island itself. ”

“ The prospect thus afforded is one of singular distant attractiveness, though the Isle of Man presents no such splendid group of huddled peaks as the Cumberland fells present, in their turn, as seen from the Isle of Man. Only North Barrule, indeed, towards the north end of the island, rises to a distinct and graceful cone.
The Isle of Man has suffered, if we may say so without paradox, from the excess of its own popularity. ”

“ In the middle of the Irish Sea there is, as every one knows, an island which for many ages has had its own people, with their own language and laws, their own judges and governor, their own lords and kings, their own customs and superstitions, their own proverbs and saws, their own ballads and songs. On the west coast of the Isle of Man stands the town of Peel. ”

“ They made various interesting discoveries in connection with the laws and constitution of the Isle of Man, and the manners and customs of the natives. To Allan’s delight, the Manxmen spoke of England as of a well-known adjacent island, situated at a certain distance from the central empire of the Isle of Man. It was further revealed to the two Englishmen that this happy little nation rejoiced in laws of its own, publicly proclaimed once a year by the governor and the two head judges, grouped together on the top of an ancient mound, in fancy costumes appropriate to the occasion. ”

“ The Isle of Man derives its name from the ancient British word mon, which means "isolated." Around this singular place there are many rocky islets, also isolated, and upon one of the most picturesque of these, where art and Nature have vied in adding strength to beauty, is built the castle of Peele, off the western coast, overlooking the distant shores of Ireland. ”

“ Peel—"Creg Melin," "Marine," "Peel Castle," etc.
The Isle of Man is much visited because of its mild and equable climate, its scenery, and its quaint laws and customs. The island is 30 miles long, and is mountainous in the centre. From the highest point, Snaefell, one can see four countries. Picturesque wooded glens are to be found in many parts of the island, and these having become well known as attractive resorts, a small charge is made to enter each glen. ”

“ The hunt in the Isle of Man was accounted for by the legend that in former times a fairy of uncommon beauty exerted such influence over the male population of the island that she induced them by her sweet voice to follow her footsteps, till by degrees she led them into the sea, where they perished. At last a knight-errant sprang up, who laid a plot for her destruction, which she escaped at the last moment by taking the form of a wren. ”

“ For my part I have not been trained to distinguish flat footed people, so I do not recollect noticing any in the Isle of Man; but, granting there may be a small proportion of such people in the island, does it not seem strange that they should have their importance so magnified as this superstition would seem to imply? ”

“ The Isle of Man, as belonging to the Stanleys, was pertinaciously Royalist in the great Civil War; and hither retired James, the seventh Earl of Derby, on July 30, 1644, after the crushing defeat at Marston Moor on the previous July 2 had finally shattered the cause of the King in the North. ”

“ We have also the curious fact of our outlying islands, such as the Shetland Isles, the Isle of Man, and the little Lundy Island, possessing each some peculiar forms which, certainly, do not exist on our principal island which has been so very thoroughly worked. ”

“ So this Isle, once called the Sacred Isle and also the Isle of Destiny, may find a destiny worthy of fulfilment: not to be a petty peasant republic, nor a miniature duplicate in life and aims of great material empires, but that its children out of their faith, which has never failed may realise this imemorial truth of man's inmost divinity, and in expressing it may ray the light over every land. Now, although a great literature and great thought may be part of our future, it ought not to be the essential part of our ideal. ”

“ From the Age of Stone to the civilized era of to-day, the Isle of Man has been, in succession, the home of every known [Pg 9] race and people who have flourished in Western Europe; and though subject, in turn, to the Irish Gael and to the Welsh Brython, to Northmen and to Danes, to Scots and to English, and the scene of sweeping transformations in religion, as pagan cults succeeded one another, to give way to the teaching of St. ”

“ It is enough for me to possess the Isle of Desire—the evergreen isle that "sluttish time" has never besmeared with ruin—where one may wander whithersoever the mood of the moment wills, or loll in the shade of scented trees, or thread the sunless mazes of the jungle—that region of shadow where all the leaves are dumb—listening for faint, ineffective sounds, or bask on the sand—on clean, unviolated, mica-bespangled sand—dreamily gazing over a sea of flashing reflections where fitful zephyrs, soft as the shadows of clouds, alone make blueness visible. ”

“ Islands have always exercised a peculiar fascination over Englishmen, perhaps because, accustomed as they are to a sense of security induced by the surrounding sea, they never feel more comfortable than when the sea is on all sides at a measurable distance. It has been the ambition of many an Englishman to possess an island, however small, of his own. But England is not particularly blessed in this matter, and we may look with envy at the fringe of islands, large and small, precipitous and flat, scattered along the rugged shores of the west coast of Scotland. ”

“ Early in the 13th century, when Reginald of Man did homage to King John, we hear for the first time of English intervention in the affairs of Man. But it was into the hands of Scotland that the islands were ultimately to fall. During the whole of the Scandinavian period the isles were nominally under the suzerainty of the kings of Norway, but they only occasionally asserted it with any vigour. ”

“ One of the picturesque little glens with which the island abounds. It is near Peel, on the western side.
[p. 33]
The truth indeed is this, that this central range of Man, though akin to Westmoreland and Carnarvonshire in its actual make of rock, is altogether aloof from them in all tangible characteristics. This is not to dispraise the hills of Man, but only to rescue them from the ignominy of an obvious, but quite unfair, comparison. Manx mountains, in fact, though thus composed of slate, have really much more resemblance to the limestone hills of Yorkshire. ”

“ What is it that attracts strangers from every part of the world into this distant land, and has more than compensated a remote situation and a churlish soil, and given to our own Northern Isle a splendour unknown to the regions of the sun? What is it which has brought together this mighty assemblage, and united the ardent and the generous from every part of the world, from the Ural mountains to the banks of the Mississippi, on the shores of an island in the Atlantic? ”

“ And men clepe that isle the Isle of Bragman, and some men clepe it the Land of Faith. And through that land runneth a great river that is clept Thebe. And, in general, all the men of those isles and of all the marches thereabout be more true than in any other countries thereabout, and more rightfull than others in all things. In p. 193that isle is no thief, ne murderer, ne common woman, ne poor beggar, ne never was man slain in that country. And they be so chaste, and lead so good life, as that they were religious men, and they fast all days. ”

“ It happened once, some men of Italy
Midst the Greek Islands went a sea-roving,
And much good fortune had they on the sea:
Of many a man they had the ransoming,
And many a chain they gat, and goodly thing;
And midst their voyage to an isle they came,
Whereof my story keepeth not the name. ”

“ In the eyes of those to whom the past furnishes a perspective more fascinating even than the promise of the future, the little isle adjacent, which is itself a finely marked basaltic cone, rising over a thousand feet high and well called “Holy Island,” is even more worthy of the visits of the reflecting scholar. It holds an attraction even greater, in human interest, at least, than the wonders of geology, or the numerous witnesses to antiquity in the form of upreared stones. ”

“ In what has been said we have endeavoured to treat generally of all that is really best worth seeing in Man, dwelling briefly on those topics, whether of history or topography, that seem really of most validity, and passing in silence those aspects of the island—luckily few and often temporary—that appear to the writer not in harmony with its true and permanent charms, and in some cases even repellent. ”

“ The Isle must be small, too, because since it is yours it becomes a duty to exhaustively comprehend it. Familiarity with its lines of coast and sky, its declivities and hollows, its sunny places, its deepest shades, the sources of its streams, the meagre beginning of its gullies cannot suffice. Superficial intimacy with features betrayable to the senses of any undiscriminating beholder is naught. Casual knowledge of its botany and birds counts for little. ”

“ In this relation we, from time to time, witness in the Green Isle such genuine and grateful glimpses of the better phases of human nature, that, no matter to what subsequent inconvenience and embarrassments they may tend, they, for the time being, at least, charm us into a recognition of something that is, after all, beautiful and truthful in our souls. ”

“ So he turned up landward, bewailing the miss of us, but presently, before we had seen the last of him, was cheerful again and singing.
So we went on our way; and we also, we maidens, in our turn, saw those woeful images of the Isle of Queens and the Isle of Kings; and we came to the Isle of Nothing, and abode warily by our ferry, and so came away safe, and thus, as thou wottest, home to the castle to hear evil tidings of thee. ”

“ Patrick's Island, indeed, whether viewed at close quarters from the little pier on the opposite side of the harbour—where sometimes at night one almost stumbles over piles of freshly caught fish that are left there to glimmer and glint in the moonlight—or seen from a distance from the coast to the north of Peel Bay, is probably the most striking object in the whole Kingdom of Man. ”

“ This island was the chief seat of the idolatry of the Society Islands. It was looked upon as a sacred isle by the inhabitants of the other islands of the group, and more idols existed and more human sacrifices were offered up there than in all the others. We were so completely deceived by the plausible manners of the king and queen and those who accompanied them, that the captain and I, the surgeon, and two of the mates, went on shore to visit them in return, accompanied by several of the crew, leaving the ship in charge of Mr Randolph, the first mate. ”

“ Well, they multiplied, with this encouragement, till their numbers threatened to exceed the capacities of the isle, when a considerate British Government transported them to another island, ever so far superior, and set them up in housekeeping. They flourished; but the new island was the great world, and the gentler spirits among them sighed for their worldlet once more. ”

“ The wind blew the breath out of a man’s nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge sail; and when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts dismally sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross, the wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle of Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. ”

“ The character of the nation has appeared mild and beneficent to us. Though the isle is divided into many little districts, each of which has its own master, yet there does not seem to be any civil war, or any private hatred in the isle. ”

“ At any rate, the previous notice of the ethnology of the British Isles during the Historical period, prepares us with a little light for the dark walk in the field of its earliest antiquity.
Nothing, as has just been stated, in the earliest historical records of Britain, throws any light upon the original occupation of the British Islands by man; indeed, nothing tells us that Britain, when so occupied, was an island at all. The Straits of Dover may have existed when the first human being set foot upon what is now the soil of Kent, or an isthmus may have existed instead. ”

“ The discoveries in Isle Royale throw a new light on the character of the 'Mound Builders,' giving us a totally distinct conception of them, and dignifying them with something of the prowess and spirit of adventure which we associate with the higher races. ”

“ We should also expect to find that after the partition of the Isles the Northern Islands would become comparatively deserted by the lower class of the population, the actual occupiers of the soil; and the condition of these islands at this time may be gathered from the Chronicle of Man, where it tells us that the Norwegian king Reginald ‘gave his brother Olave the island which is called Leodhus or Lewis, which though larger than any of the other isles is mountainous, rocky, and almost entirely inaccessible. ”