And the Manx come first. When the last boat of holiday-makers has steamed out of Douglas harbour back to Lancashire, about fifty-thousand Manx are left behind: the Christians, Quayles, Crellins, Kewleys, Caines, Kermodes, Clucases, Kellys, Cregeens—Manx names seem almost all to begin with C, K or Q. They are a shy, poetical people. The look of their country is Celtic. There are smallholdings and plenty of antiquities, but not much ancient architecture. The island looks like Cornwall, Wales and Ireland mixed. But Man is Norse as well as Celtic. Until 1266 it belonged to Norway. Race enthusiasts see in the long, tall Manxmen with their fair hair and blue eyes and long moustaches, the descendants of the Vikings. Man was the capital of a Viking kingdom of islands, and very well the Vikings ran it and very slowly they adopted the Christian religion of the conquered Celts. Then the Scots took it over and finally Edward III, the strong man of the time, made England overlord. In 1405 Henry IV gave it to the Stanley family. The Stanleys became not only Earls of Derby but Kings of Man. And when that line of Stanleys died out, the kingship passed to a descendant, the Duke of Atholl. Late in the eighteenth century Man was still an independent country, an unknown island of mists and cliffs and smugglers with a king who was usually non-resident. Spain and France and Portugal shipped dutiable goods to Douglas and Castletown and other Manx ports. Manx sailors would run specially designed fast ships to England. By their own laws they were doing nothing illegal.They were only breaking British laws.
The island was also a place of refuge for debtors at this time when, by the laws of England and Ireland, a person could still be imprisoned for debt. I believe that Sir William Hillary, founder of the National Lifeboat Institution, who lived at Falcon Cliff, Douglas, was one of these debtors, though he did nothing but good to the Isle of Man. On the other side of Douglas Bay the ruined rake “Buck Whaley” built himself Fort Anne, now an hotel, where, safe from his creditors, he wrote his memoirs.He died in 1800.
Assuming much moral indignation about the smugglers and debtors who had settled on Man, as well as seeing that the island might be both profitable financially and useful in times of war, the British Government bought out the last claims of the Duke of Atholl to kingship of Man in 1828 for nearly half a million pounds. This was an immense sum for the period, but the British Government gained in the long run. The only people who did not do well out of this sale were the Manx.
He who has not seen the Tynwald on Tynwald Day does not know how ancient and independent Man is. Of course the feel of another country is in the air as soon as one lands. It is an island, it has generous licensing hours, it has its own flag of three armoured legs on a red background, its own language (half Scottish, half Northern-Irish Gaelic), its own customs in both senses of that word. But the full Manxness shines on July 5th, the annual holiday of Tynwald Day. The centre of the island is St. John’s. Here most valleys meet and here surrounding mountains hide the sea. Carts from all the sheadings, tall men from Rushen in the south, small men from the white fuchsia-hidden farms of Ayre in the north, from forgotten holdings deep in the primeval forests of the Curraghs, from cottages in sycamore-shaded glens, from lonely houses on the sides of mountains, and from the narrow lanes of Peel that smell of wood-smoke and kippers, from the stately old capital of Castletown with its silver limestone castle, from the noble Welch Gothic range of King William’s College, from Ramsey with its delicate Georgian Court House, from Douglas, that Naples of the North, from forgotten hamlets like Ronague on the slopes of South Barrule, from the stricken terraces by deserted lead-mines of Foxdale, from Laxey where the greatest water-wheel in the world stands idle for ever, and from the sheltered lanes of Port St. Mary, the Manxmen come to Tynwald fair. The little railway runs extra trains. All sorts of extraordinary rolling stock, made in the ’nineties and as good as ever, is drawn by little engines past creamy meadowsweet and brown mountain streams to the curious junction of St. John’s. And there not far from the station is Tynwald Hill itself, an artificial mound of grass, eighty feet high with four circular terraces around it.
On July 5th, a cream canopy tops the mound to shelter the Governor of Man who will represent the King, and down the straight avenue that leads to the church white masts fly alternately the flags of Britain and of Man. St. John’s Chapel is a golden granite spired building in that dashing and original style of romantic Gothic invented by John Welch which characterises almost all Manx established churches and which is Georgian in origin, though often Victorian in execution.The path to the church is strewn with rushes, offerings to a pagan sea god older than the Viking Tynwald mound. As eleven strikes, the sun streams down, a hymn from A. and M. is relayed from the church; the chief people in the island are assembled for public worship. The Coroners, the Captains of the Parishes, the Clergy in their robes, the Chairmen of the Town Commissioners of Peel, Ramsey and Castletown in frock coats, the Mayor of Douglas all in red and ermine; they step out into the sunlight from the west door. And so do the Vicar-General, the Archdeacon, the High Bailiff—all these legal-clerical-looking men—the Members of the House of Keys, their Chaplain and their Speaker, the Government Secretary, the Members of the
