HTML Transcription © F.Coakley, 2011
[From Isle of Man, Cumming 1848]
Castletown Bay.-The Scraans.-The race-course.-Sir Isaac Newtou.-Measures of time and space.-The measure of a man.-The former extent of the drift-gravel.-Time occupied in its erosion and in the formation of the Irish Sea.-Consideration of time arising from the composition of a gravel bed.-The circuit of Langness. -Trap-dykes, Bosses, Natural arches.-Round tower.-Porphyry.-St. Michael's Isle.-Ruined oratory.-The old fort.
ON the eastern side of Hango Hill is a grassy recess opening to the south, and affording a pleasing view of Castletown and its extensive horse-shoe bay. The town is well relieved against the dark mass of the Mull Hills which rise over the bold cliffs of Spanish Head; St. Mary's Chapel, the Castle and the five-sailed windmill standing prominently forth with the two quays and the shipping in front, and the whole picture falls again upon the eye reversed in the watery mirror at our feet.
A series of marine residences occupy the shore to the south of the town terminating with Scarlet House, thence the coast-line sweeps gently south-eastward; and where the limestone rises on a series of undulations against the outburst of igneous rock, forming at its extremity the basaltic pile called the Stack of Scarlet, a group of limekilns, with their front seaward, may easily be mistaken for a battery guarding the entrance to the bay.
The opposite horn of the bay is formed by the southern point of the peninsula of Langness, or as it is written in the old map of the island before alluded to, "the poynt Langnouse." It is a mass of clay-schist tilted and contorted between two hard greenstone dykes, which here run out into the sea S. 70° W. magnetic, nearly in a line with the Eye of the Calf, and form the Scraans, an awkward reef on which the tide sets with great force from the Calf of Man. In the hollow of Langness, leaning up against the schist, and just at the angle bending over it in a saddle, is the Old Red conglomerate and sandstone which forms the entire eastern coast-line of the bay till we reach the isthmus of Derbyhaven. The isthmus itself is formed by a long bank of gravel and sand, which I believe to belong to the drift period, though it has the general character of the sand dunes which are found on coasts liable to periodic winds1.
This bank extends all along the head of the bay to Hango Hill, and is clothed with a short and sweet herbage and crowded with wild flowers. The purple thyme creeps along upon the ground, mixing with the yellow flowers of trefoil and galium, and the vernal squill with its pale blue petals rears its graceful head in spite of the stormy southwesters that sweep across the bay; the sea-holly (Eryngium maritimum) has sent down its long taper roots into the sand, and flourishes even amongst the shingle which has been driven by the tides high and dry on the shore. As the bank dries up almost immediately after a shower, and commands very beautiful views, it is a favourite promenade of the neighbourhood, and is known familiarly by the name of the Race, from the circumstance of its having been used as a race-ground some few years ago. The fishermen spread forth their nets here on the Saturday's eve at the close of the herring season, when the shoal has come down to the bays in the south of the island, and the little children amuse themselves afterwards in picking up the bits of coarse coral and the star-fish and sea urchins which have been entangled in them and dragged ashore.
The saying of the great and yet humble-minded Newton, towards the close of that bright career of physical discovery which has placed his name high upon the list of those illustrious philosophers of whom Great Britain justly boasts, will often occur to us in our sea-side rambles " I seem to myself but as a child who has been permitted to gather a few bright pebbles on the shore, whilst the vast ocean of eternal truth has lain before me wholly unexplored."
The works and the monuments of man we may easily measure by our own finite standards of time and space, by days, months and years, by inches, feet and miles; but our scales are all too large or too small when we attempt to apply them to the measurement of the works of Him from whom the Monad and the Archangel are alike infinitely removed, and to whom they are still alike most intimately known; of Him "who inhabiteth eternity, and is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever."
What an astounding idea of time is presented by the scene which we are now contemplating! The age of the ruin on the cliff above us we may talk about, the years also of the venerable Castle, which still rears its head unscathed over the western margin of the bay, are all numbered: these are the works of man, and come within the measure of a man. But what dare we say of the age of that bed of gravel which runs like a fringe all round the bay, capping all the rocks which are twenty feet above high water mark? Let us pass over this raised sea-beach on which we are sitting, which is not more than eight or ten feet above the present high water sea level; for since it contains shells not apparently differing at all from those now inhabiting the neigbbouring sea, it may be considered geologically recent, though the very gradual rise by which it seems to have been laid dry, may have been going on long antecedent to the period which we call historical.
It is very readily seen how this drift-gravel bed was at one time at the bottom of the sea, and that it was spread out pretty evenly on all sides, filling up every depression, and thus of course filling up the bay of Castletown; so that on the elevation of the sea-bottom there would be a tolerably plane surface of boulder clay, drift-gravel and sand extending across from Langness to the Castletown side of the bay, at the same general level as the terrace of drift which now only circles it around.
In few words, then, there was at one time a line of cliff extending from the Stack of Scarlet to the point of Langness, similar to that which is now seen three miles inland from those points at the Head of Castletown Bay. Let us suppose that here the sea began its eroding work upon the drift-gravel platform, and how many thousand years has it been in eating its way up to Hango Hill? We have said that in 1662 (O. S.), when William Dhone was here shot to death, the cliff was probably removed from thirty to forty feet from the building. Let us reckon the work of destruction to have been sixty feet in the last 200 years (and the old maps of the island, and the situation of Castletown Harbour itself forbid us to allow much more), and we have one yard in ten years, that is, at this rate of waste it requires more than 50,000 years for the excavation of Castletown Bay.
When the sea cliff was more exposed no doubt its destruction would be much more rapid, and we therefore may very well make a considerable reduction on the above period. But when we have even halved and quartered it, there are years enough remaining to make one start back in amazement at the conclusion at which we have arrived.
Yet we have not done with the question of the drift-gravel platform, and the ages consumed in its destruction. Relics of this platform remain on the coasts of all the countries surrounding the Isle of Man, on the coasts of England,, Wales, Ireland and Scotland; and there is every evidence we can desire for showing that by it were these countries connected together, and that at the same time and in the same manner England was connected with the continent of Europe2. This drift-gravel, then, occupied the whole area of the present Irish Sea; and the cliff which we have spoken of as extending from the Stack of Scarlet to Langness Point, we may on the same considerations remove in ages long before to a line across the mouth of St. George's Channel. Now bid the Ocean do its work, and then calculate the ages it would be occupied in making its cutting and removing the excavated materials between St. David's Head and the Head of Castletown Bay.
In speaking of the destruction of this great gravel platform, nothing has as yet been said of the time taken up in its formation. We have not spoken of the years during which the different pebbles, of which it is in great part composed, were being rolled about and rounded into their present shape, after they were broken off from their parent rock and exposed to the action of the tides upon the coast. We have hardly yet alluded to the fact that many of them existed in the shape of pebbles in an older formation (the boulder clay), out of which they were washed and sifted and sorted ere they were distributed in layers in the more recent drift. Nor have we touched upon the consideration that the rock itself, from which they were originally broken off, was once a bank of sand or mud, which had been formed by quiet deposit of layer upon layer at the bottom of the sea before it was consolidated, and then heaved up to become a coast-line, and again exposed to the breakers. Still would there be the consideration of the wave upon wave which broke upon that first granitic mass which appeared above the primæval ocean, and so wore it away particle after particle to form the first sedimentary deposit. We can measure our own age, and the age of our most lasting works, by the grains of sand which run through our hour-glasses; but to measure the age of those very sands, we must apply cycles made up of the revolutions of the sun itself about the far-off centre of our sidereal system.
From Hango Hill we may start on a short excursion round Langness, which, as may be seen by reference to the geological map, will bring us into acquaintance with three distinct Palaeozoic formations within small compassthe Schist, the Old Red Conglomerate and the Limestone, being the representatives of the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous periods. The Old Red cropping out from under the limestone on the eastern side of the bay, and reclining upon the schist, we can walk across the bassetedge, and within a very short space get an insight into the order of deposition and the character of the rocks.
As we pass along the shore at. the head of the bay in an easterly direction when the tide is out, we can break up with our hammer one bed after another of the lower limestone series, consisting of dark-coloured limestones and shales; and without much trouble can gather together a fair collection of the characteristic fossils; Gigantic Turbinolia, specimens of Productus hemisphæricus, Orthis Sharpei, Leptæna papilionacea, Bellerophon apertus, and Cirrus rotundatus meet the eye.
The limestone rocks in the north-eastern corner of the bay, just before we come upon the old red conglomerate, are of a brown arenaceous character, and highly crystalline in texture. I believe they have been much altered by the escape of heated gases, containing acids, through the cracks formed at the period of the intrusion of the trap of this neighbourhood amongst the subjacent beds of the old red conglomerate. We very soon come upon a narrow trapdyke, running at first southward down the axis of the saddle, into which it has thrown the old red conglomerate, till it reaches the great dyke, which, intersecting the peninsula of Langness, crosses Castletown Bay, and is observed again in the harbour between the old and new piers. It requires a practised eye to distinguish the trap here amongst the sea-weed and pools of muddy water which the higher tides only just reach.
This corner of the bay is a place of great resort for wildfowl, ducks and geese, which " dulcibus in stagnis rimantur;" and here too the long-legged solitary heron may ofttimes be seen lazily flapping his wings and drying himself in the sun.
It is also interesting to mark on the shore a series of large boulders of porphyritic greenstone, placed in a line nearly due east and west magnetic towards the limekilns which are on the opposite side of the bay, near the Stack of Scarlet, and to connect with them the fact that close by those limekilns is a large boulder of the same rock, and that there is an outburst of apparently this same rock at the northern extremity of Langness, at a point which is just eastward of these blocks which we see on the shore. We shall find also that the groovings and scratches on the limestone under the boulder clay, near the Stack of Scarlet, have all this same direction, which we may therefore rea sonably believe to have been the direction of the current which drifted away the blocks from the northern end of Langness, and also the direction of the general drifting current of that period.
Close by the gate which leads up to Langness Farmhouse we catch sight of the schist, which has been brought up by the fault which elevated the Langness Peninsula. It is highly ferruginous and claret-coloured, as is generally the case immediately under the old red conglomerate. We soon lose sight of it under the drift-gravel.
As we procoed southward we cannot help noticing the old coast-line prior to the last elevation ; it seems more distinctly preserved here than at any other point. The low ground along the margin of the bay, made up chiefly of shingle, and covered with a scanty vegetation, was at that time between high and low wafer, it is now elevated from eight to ten feet above the highest tides. On the opposite side of the bay, near to Scarlet House ; and Seaview, we have at the same level beds of shells of a recent date, such as Littorina rudis, Littorina littorea, Purpura lapillus, Patella vungata, and Buccinum undatum.
Just at the point where the road ascends from this lower beach to the higher terrace of the drift-gravel, we have another trap-dyke having the same general direction as that before noticed to the northward, but more distinctly exhibiting ramifications amongst the beds of the old red conglomerate3. The ground-plan of it is well-worthy of a minute study, and the contrast of colour of the two rocks (the green or olive-coloured trap and the red conglomerate) renders the phænomena distinctly visible to even an ungeological eye. The trap seems to shoot out in one strong body from the schist to the eastward, and may be seen as a dyke of the breadth of forty-five feet, where it runs out to sea on the eastern side of the Peninsula; but as soon as it enters upon the old red conglomerate, which overlies the schist, we find it separating into branches, and twisting about amongst the pebbles and boulders of that formation in a most singular manner. Some of these branches taper off to an extreme thinness; we can trace them by the colour till they are scarcely the thickness of a wafer. Now on the opposite side of the bay, at Knockrushen, we see this dyke4, where it cuts through the limestone in the same solid and compact form which it has where it cuts through the schist. There are there, to be sure, two or three straight cracks in the limestone, which have been filled up by the fluid trap injected from this dyke ; but the general fact which we must observe is this, that in the schist and tough limestone the trap-dyke is compact ; in the old red conglomerate it is spread out and branching. And thus we come to the conclusion that the fluid trap was forced upwards with enormous force through the schist ; that when on its ascent it reached the more permeable and separable beds of the old red conglomerate, tied down as they are by the tougher masses of limestone, it spread itself out, and ultimately raising the limestone in a boss or saddle, produced a crack, or series of cracks, and so forced its way through the opening to the surface. And I believe we must in this manner account for the great number of undulations and bosses on the surface of the limestone, which we meet with in this area wherever the removal of the tertiary formations by the denuding action of the sea enables us to examine any extensive portion of the surface.
All the rocks in contact with the trap are more or less altered, and from the minute crevices into which it has evidently insinuated itself, there is every reason to conclude that it was in a molten condition when it rose to the surface. At the same time it appears probable that it was accompanied by a discharge of gases containing acids,which were forced into more minute cracks and between the bedding of the limestone, and hence the altered and crystalline condition of these limestones, even at a considerable distance from the trap-dykes, or at any rate where the trap does not appear at the surface.
In passing further down the coast to the south-westward, we may trace one of the branches of this great dyke winding itself about in a very remarkable mairoer, till at length it intersects a large bed of greenstone at a point where the schist comes out more distinctly from under the drift, and presents a cliff to the westward. Unfortunately a mass of debris prevents our examination of the circumstances of this intersection, and the drift-gravel also hinders 'our tracing this branch dyke any further to the south when it has crossed the greenstone5.
Parallel with_ this greenstone bed we meet with three others within a hundred yards in passing along the cliff; if we must consider them as dykes, we must observe that they do not penetrate the old red sandstone; but as they lie in the plane of the schists, or nearly so, and have the same strike, viz. N. 85° W., the probability is that the greenstone was either poured out upon the bed of the sea at intervals during the deposition of these schists, or accumulated there in the form of volcanic ash, as we shall see was the case afterwards in the carboniferous period, when we examine the trap tuff at Scarlet Head and in Poolvash Bay.
The lovers of pic-nics and rustic parties have found a spot every way suited to their innocent festivities, at the caves and natural arches which he a little further south along shore. The fault, on the south-eastern side of which the peninsula of Langness has been lifted, as we have hitherto traced it, runs nearly due west magnetic ; it seems however just at this point to make a sudden turn, or rather there is a cross fracture meeting the other at an angle of 70°, and the direction it takes hence is about 10° west of south. The action of the sea when at a higher relative level with the lard, dashing against the beds of the old red conglomerate thus shattered by the cross fracture, has carved out a series of sea-side grottoes, romantic arches and grotesque pillars, and pinnacles of rock. The strata being of different degrees of hardness, and dipping at a low angle towards the centre of Castletown Bay, have suffered unequally from the destructive beat of the waves; and the erosion has been much greater upon some of the beds of the conglomerate than on others, and hence the strange variety of outline presented to our view. Uncouth faces, outvieing the poppy-heads of mediaeval architecture, seem to be grinning down upon you from every nook and cranny. Gigantic noses, gaping mouths fashioned out of the boulders, and white quartz pebbles, which protrude from the red mass of the conglomerate, topped with rude wigs of hoary lichen moss and saxifrage, startle you on every side. There is one isolated mass which has oft reminded me of the dons of our ancient English universities on commemoration days in cap, wig and scarlet robes; in fact, there is hardly an animal or figure which does not meet with its caricature amongst these romantic rocks. And the peep out through the archways, the cracks and the chasms in the rock upon the bay, and the country which backs it, is particularly pleasing.
I remember well the autumnal eve when in a sea-side ramble I first came upon the unexpected beauties of this spot. It was quite a discovery, for not a rumour of it had reaehed my ear, though I had been in the neighbourhood several weeks. Not a breath crimpled the azure sheet of water spread before me. A few fleecy clouds were cresting South Barrule and Irey-na-Lhaa, which cast their long shadows athwart the landscape, and from the many whitewashed cottages which stud the mountain's side, were rising steadily on high wreaths of smoke, doubtless redolent of turf and herrings. A gleam of sunlight shot through that singular aperture at the southern extremity of the Calf Islet called the Eye, and came streaming along in a glorious ruddy pencil over the calm surface of the deep. Here and there a sail was flapping to and fro in lazy mood, whilst the hull attached to it was drifting along on the tide and currents which sweep by the coast. Directly across the bay, the dark basaltic pile of Scarlet Stack was casting a still darker patch of shadow upon the waters. At the point where I was sitting, just under the archway, Castletown itself was hid by a mass of rock directly in front; but the voice of the bells of the chapel of St. Mary summoning to the Wednesday evening service, and the steady beat of oars in the rowlocks of some boat which was making its way into the harbour, came floating to my ear upon the dewy wing of eve. The College formed a distinct object through an opening to the north, with the picturesque ruin on Hango Hill in advance of it6. On ascending the cliff I was suddenly struck with what I took for a star of extraordinary brightness, just visible on the outline of the Calf; I watched it a few seconds, it grew fainter and fainter, and at length disappeared; presently it shot forth again with increasing splendour: it was the lower of the revolving Calf lights.
There is in this southern area of the Isle of Man no example of the unconformity of the old red conglomerate with the subjacent schist more distinct than that presented to the eye of the geologist at these caves, and there is none affording amore useful lesson for the tyro in such studies. The abutments of the arch last-mentioned consist of claret coloured schist somewhat contorted, but having a general dip 55° W. magnetic at an angle of 50°. The different layers of the schist are rendered distinct by their varying tints. The crown of the arch consists of the old red conglomerate, the coarseness of which and the size of some of the boulders cannot but cause surprise. It looks extremely like a consolidated ancient boulder clay formation, only there is more approach to distinct bedding, more regularity of stratification, as in the drift-gravel deposits. Was it accumulated under similar conditions of climate and in a sea of like character ? Were .there periods of excessive disturbance of the ocean bed, storm periods, so to speak ? Had the extraordinarily bony character of the fishes of the old red sandstone (the Osteolepis or bony-scale, for instance) anything to do with such a condition of the element in which they lived ? Was it so that those strange trilobitic-looking fishes of that æra (the Coccosteus, Pterichthys and Cephalaspis) had to endure the buffeting of icy waves and to struggle amidst the wreck of ice-floes and the crush of bergs? These are questions which we may perhaps venture to ask, but which we dare not hope to have solved till we know something more than at present we know of the history of the boulder clay formation itself.
We might spend much time upon the southern extremity of Langness, if time were at our disposal, most usefully and agreeably. It is intersected by trap-dykes, and forming angles with these are two parallel greenstone dykes7, which seem to have originated the ridge running out in a westerly direction and terminated by the Scraans. The schists, as before observed, are remarkably contorted between these dykes8. From this locality we may distinctly mark how the old red conglomerate and limestone, which were once continuous over the whole peninsula of Langness, have been denuded and remain only in depressions on the western side where protected by the greenstones and schists. We have thus some evidence of the direction of the denuding currents.
Even the capping of drift-gravel has its interest, and the scenery around is of the finest description; it affords us the most magnificent land-view we can get of the entire mountain range of the island, and ought not to be missed by any one who wishes to get a just idea of the structure of this side of it. For this purpose we may ascend the building erected on one of the highest points, which I cannot learn has ever been used for any other purpose than a land-mark, but which possesses all the characteristics of the round towers of Ireland.
There are some exquisitely picturesque chasms all the way up the eastern side of Langness, and a reference to the geological map will show that the schist is extremely well-developed, and a good insight afforded into the manner of intrusion of the igneous rocks and the nature of the intersection of those of different age, as for instance, the mass of greenstone to the north of the land-mark running in a direction S. 70° W. magnetic, with the more southerly of two large trap-dykes which intersect the peninsula.
At the northern extremity, the great development of porphyritic greenstone may be well studied; and also the appearance of gravel terraces, though the plough has too much disturbed them for any accurate observations on their different levels, if there have ever really existed more than the two marked ones of the before often alluded to drift-gravel platform and the terrace of the last raised sea beach.
The little isle of St. Michael9 (commonly called Fort Island), on which stands the fort and ruined church, is connected with Langness at its northern point by a narrow causeway. The causeway is built across two not very wide trap-dykes, which are nearly parallel with a general direction magnetic N. 18° W. They appear again at low water, crossing the ridge on which stands the Derbyhaven breakwater. The greenstone also appears in some force at the northern extremity of this causeway, and is protruded in bosses amongst the schist. It is observed at low water in several places along the eastern shore of Derbyhaven 10. This diminutive islet seems to have had considerable importance attached to it in ancient days. Perhaps our posterity may discover that in this respect our ancestors were wiser than we are. Camden will have it 11 that this was the ancient Sodor, and that in it Pope Gregory IV. founded a bishopric which he named Sodorensis, and which had jurisdiction in times past over all the western islands. Whence he got his story is uncertain, but it is certainly incorrect.
There can be no doubt of the great antiquity of the little chapel or oratory at the west end of it. Two centuries ago, as figured in Chaloner's 'Description,' it was a ruin. It reminds us strongly in its architecture and general details of the interesting church of Peranzabuloe in Cornwall, described by Mr. Collins in 'The Lost Church Found.' It differs however in the number of windows. The church of Peranzabuloe was lighted by but one, this has four, an east and a west window, and a north and south placed very near the east end. The west, north and south windows are square-headed, the two latter being only twelve inches wide outside, but with a wide splay to two feet ten inches inside. The east window is one long single light, with a semicircular head and only ten inches in breadth outside, but largely splayed.
This little chapel is of but one compartment, whose length is thirty-one feet and breadth fourteen. The thickness of the walls is three feet. At the west end is a simple bell-turret. The chapel was entered by one door on the south side nine feet from the west end, the height of which is six feet, and the width two feet four inches. This door, like the east window, has a semicircular heading, formed of small pieces of the schist of this neighbourhood set edgeways round the arch, whilst the door-jambs are of rough blocks of limestone. There is no appearance of a tool on any part of it, if we except. the coping-stones on the west gable.
We may mark the foundation of a stone altar under the cast window, and at the same end in the north corner, three stone steps which may have served as an ambo or pulpit. The height of the side walls of the building is only ten feet. The length of its graveyard is 192 feet and the breadth ninety-eight, and as yet it is untouched by the plough this is more than we can say of many other similar chapels scattered up and down the isle. Witness St. Catherine's Chapel in Christ's Rushen parish, which is inserted in the old maps of the island. .
It has been stated by some writers that the chapel was dedicated in honour of St. Mary; it seems more probable, from the name of the little islet on which it stands, that St. Michael was the patron. The orientation of the building is E. by N., and singularly enough falls directly in a line with the little chapel in Castle Rushen before mentioned, and, if I mistake not, with the ruined chapel at Port-St.Mary. If we dare place it along with the church of Peranzabuloe in Cornwall in the same century as the oldest recorded stone church in Great Britain, viz. that of Candida Casa or Whithern, i. e. Whitchurch in Galloway, which is said to have been erected about 448 by St. Ninian, it may be well to bear in mind the close connection of Whithern with the See of Man in ancient times. The priory of Whithern was endowed with lands in this isle, for which the Prior was wont to do fealty to the lord112.
How much of Manx church history might be found to hang upon the history of this little oratory! How much of private history too may be attached to it ! How many a mariner, owing his safety to the light streaming from yonder eastern window at the hour of evening prayer, or to the sound of the vesper bell swinging in that humble turret on a dark and stormy night, may have come to offer up his thanksgivings within the lowly roof with a fervour no less, but with a faith more pure, than those whose dripping garments and votive offerings were wont in still more ancient days to be suspended in the splendid marble temples of the Pagan sea-god13
And what a testimony do these roofless walls, overspread with fern, and this holy area grown over with moss and nettles, bear to the decay of primitive piety, which reared even in wild districts so many houses of prayer 14 whence also the waters of life gushed forth and refreshed from time to time the thirsty land! When may we hope for the restoration of spots once hallowed by such uses ? Such restorations would be both the evidences of new life in the church and the cherishers of it.
At the northern extremity of this little islet of St. Michael is a circular embattled fort, which, according to Chaloner15, was raised by James, the illustrious seventh Earl of Derby, as a protection to the harbour of Ronaldsway. Over the doorway is an oblong stone with an earl's coronet in relief, and the date 1650, as I read it; but the third and fourth figures are very indistinct, and have had different values given to them by different parties16. If the date be 1603, as stated by Train, and the building is to be attributed to the prudence of Queen Elizabeth when holding the island, as before noticed, we still have the difficulty of the coronet and the statement of a contemporary, Chaloner.
The thickness of the walls is eight feet, but they are not solid throughout. Thirty years ago it was furnished with four iron cannons. A turret has been raised upon the wall on the eastern side as a lighthouse, in which, during the herring season, a light is kept burning from sunset to sunrise.
1 A cutting made for a drain last summer shows alternating layers of pebbles, sand and loam.
2 See Professor E. Forbes' papers in the Appendix.
3 See Plate VIL, section 4, and Plates II. and 111.
4 See Plate 1I.
5 See Plate III.
6 See view of the Caves on Langness.
7 See Plate II. and Plate L, section across the island.
8 In a specimen now in the museum of the Geological Society of London, there are three contortions as acute as a ridge-tile within the length of a single foot.
9 In the old map of the island, Plate IV., it is called St. Mighil's Island.
10 See Plates II. and III.
11" Their chief town they count Russin, situate on the south side, which of a castle wherein lieth a garrison, is commonly called Castletown, where within a little island Pope Gregory IV. instituted an Episcopal See, the bishop whereof, named Sodorensis (of this very island as it is thought), had jurisdiction in times past over all the islands."-Camden's Britannia, folio, page 204, Scotland.
12At the Tynwald Court, held A.D.1422, called by Sir John Stanley as Lord of the Isle, we find the Prior of Whithern in Galloway, the Abbot of Bangor, the Abbot of Sabol, and the Prior of St. Bede in Copeland, were called in but came not, therefore they were deemed by the Deemsters that they should come in their proper persons within forty days, and if they came not then all their temporalities to be seized into the Lord's hands.- Sacheverell's Account, p. 84.
13" Me tabula sacer Votiva paries indicat uvida Suspendisse potenti Vestimenta maris Deo." Horace, Od. 1. 5.
14 In the old Manx ballad of the early part of the sixteenth century, there is a traditional statement that the oratories or quarterland chapels (in Manx treen caballyn) were built by St. German, but that afterwards St. Maughold, by throwing several quarterlands into one division, formed the seventeen regular parishes which we now have.
15 Chaloner's Description of the Isle of Man, p. 31.
16 Feltham reads the date 1667, which would bring the erection of the building to a period after the great rebellion. But Chaloner, writing in 1653, speaks of it as built by the late Earl of Derby. Feltham's reading is thus plainly incorrect.
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