[From A Manx Scrapbook]

CHAPTER IV

THE PARISH of MALEW.

Malew has the pride of a lost Government and a lasting Castle, a dead Abbey and a living School, a beautiful town and the largest and not least beautiful of Manx villages. Seaward of her visible hills she hides a dead volcano, and landward of her empty Castle of granite by the water she keeps an unseen Castle in the air of her loftiest summit, full of a more abiding sovereignty. Her lowlands, with Santon, suffered the first and the strongest English influences both of Crown and Crozier, yet the clearest memory of an earlier age is hers. Next in size after Lezayre and the most conspicuous of all in history, she ranks prime among the parishes.

First come a few coastal places, some of which are named on the Ordnance map and some are not, beginning with the oldest haven,
Ronaldsway, the port of the Island's Norse and English rulers, " Reginald's Ford," since it is regularly Rognaldswath in old documents. The ford must have been through the now diminished and divided water of the Ronaldsburn, wherever that may formerly have entered the sea. The treen name here, Conessary, may also perpetuate the memory of Norse rulership—erg, pasture-land, preceded by konungs, king's, or by a personal name. The application of erg, from Gaelic airigh, was not limited to high ground.

A field here, which has a pool in it and a footpath through it, has been known to refuse egress to sober persons at night, even in bright moonlight. The cause of the trouble seems to be an occasional and unnatural mist which is strictly confined to this field and may be accounted for by a number of ancient interments. It is not the only place in the Island where wayfarers have been attacked by this soil-engendered mental confusion, but it may be taken as typical. The Irish variety of the same perplexing experience is described by Miss Somerville in speaking of a notorious eminence called Mount Gabriel : " It is the sort of place where the Fodheen Mara might come on at any moment. The Fodheen Mara is a sudden loss of your bearings, and a bewilderment as to where you are, that prevails, like a miasma, in certain spots." As I recall it, the name is, primarily, descriptive of the places where such disasters are likely to occur, fodheen meaning grassy sod-land-turf, in the English use of the word.

Raunanes is a name inserted at Ronaldsway in an old engraving in Douglas Library. If not a. corruption of an otherwise unknown " Ronaldsness " or a blunder for Ronaldsway (which has assumed various queer shapes on Manx and English tongues), " Raunanes " may mean " Seal Point."

The Broogh (O.S. map), " The Bank," a conspicuous elevation in the flatness of Ronaldsway farm, though cultivated is not without the remains of a reputation for uncanniness at night, which suggests that it was formerly used as a burial-place.

Loch Skillicore (O.S. map), North of Ronaldsway, deserves mention as Man's only sea-loch, though it is now composed of bedrock only, denuded by tidal action, and does not enter the land. Apparently, however, it was once important enough to name the treen of Logh to which it belongs. The long straight stretch of beach behind it, distinguished by an interment-site, is known as Traie Skillicore. The name is probably referable to Skellig-wooar, " Big Sea-rock."

Lanquet Point is the name of the site of the Fort and Chapel on St. Michael's Isle, according to Chaloner in 1656. It is a spot crowded with fading legends. The Chapel ruins were haunted by the ghost of a priest who was murdered by a band of pirates "in the smuggling days," because he refused to yield up to them the treasure hidden in the Chapel. The weight of his dying curse sank their ship immediately they got under way, and drowned them and their booty. At midnight the groans of the priest and the jingling of the money are still to be heard by those sufficiently interested. This story is drastically abridged from a small paper-backed volume published a good many years ago under the title of Manx Tales, but vague allusions to spectral inhabitants of the islet still turn up in conversation with the right kind of people. A ghostly sailor is seen, for example, coming up from the shore there about the hour of sunset-perhaps the sole survivor from a crew of ghosts. In Chronicon Manniae at 1250 A.D. an account is given of the slaying and drowning at this place of a number of the adherents of a pretender to the Insular kingship, an event which would be sufficient to populate the islet and the opposite beach with spectres for centuries afterwards. The murky atmosphere which hangs about St. Michael's Isle is probably due in some measure also to its former use by wreckers and smugglers.

Langness, " Long Cape," often called " Langlish " and even " Lamlash," commemorates many shipwrecks in the place-names which bristle from its saw-toothed Eastern edge in the large-scale map. Some of these will follow. On the opposite side, off the low sandy shore between Langness and Hango Hill, lies a city buried beneath the water. Roofs and towers have been seen below the quiet surface, and bells heard ringing on certain Sundays, just as in other drowned cities in other seas. On the slender isthmus, said-on what grounds I know not-to have been cut by a canal to enable the Stanleys to reach their castle without encountering the perils of Castletown Bay, stood a second " city," or more probably a collection of fishermen's cabins, which was destroyed either by fire or plague, or by both-accounts differ. Possibly this disaster was an echo from 17th-century London ; but the following is strictly indigenous : " There was a sort of spectre came out of a big hole in Langlish towards the South end, and walked along the shore to Ronaldsway, and then back across Derbyhaven to Langlish. People used to be very feared of it."

Scoltian, " Clefts," on the East side of Langness, is the " Scottean " of the Ordnance map and of Moore's Manx Names.

Martha Gullet takes its name from the ship " Martha " which was wrecked here.-(O.S. Name Books.)

The Ghoayr, " The Goat," is " a peaked portion of schist, at low water mark, somewhat resembling a goat's head."-(O.S. Name Books.)

Spire Gullet, derives its name from a landmark near. -(O.S. Name Books.)

Grave Gullet, from the grave of two shipwrecked sailors.-(O.S. Name Books.)

Ellan Vretyn, " Wales Island," is a small rock immediately South of Tobacco Gullet, which is surrounded by water at high Spring tides. It is said to be " the nearest land to the opposite shore of Wales."-(O.S. Name Books.)

Hango Hill, near Castletown. The vicinity of this historic remnant and former place of execution is haunted by a headless black dog, or something resembling one, called in this case the Mollagh Wooar ; it is seen chiefly by other dogs, and not admired by them. If its name, as may be supposed, means the Big Bladder, its lack of shape is as clearly defined thereby as the data permit. No doubt it is the same creature as that captured by Roeder from Notes and Queries, v., 341, 1852-a black dog which kept howling and screaming, and chased people round the town as far as the Gallows-post [i.e., Hango] but did not dare to go beyond.

The O.S. Name Books state that the ruins on the mound of Hango are said to have been Lord Derby's summer-house ; hence, perhaps, arose a former name, " Mount Strange." Although malefactors have been hanged here from time to time the name has nothing to do with capital punishment, but derives from the Norse hengi, jutting, overhanging. It occurs again in
Hango Broogh at the North end of Langness about a mile away.

Creg Raun, a limestone rock in Castletown Bay, is the " Seal Rock" of the Ordnance map, which translates it.

Lheeah-Rio, the map-form of the name of another large rock, has a Gaelic look as written ; but the universal pronunciation rhymes with " cheeroh," except that the stress falls on the latter part of the word. This rather suggests the meaning " Tern Isle "-Norse liri plus oe. In Mackenzie's 18th-century chart it is " Leroe."

Boiley Gowan, " Heifer Fold," as in Bwoailley Gowan Fayle, Rushen (Roeder), is a part of the farm of Knockrushen, according to Isle of Man Charities.

Thie Scarroo, " Scarffe's House," near the Stack of Scarlett, is " a fishing-place," Roeder says, but it must have taken its name from a mark on shore. Scarffe was formerly a South-side surname, and a " Scarffe's Croft" is included in tile; Lord's Composition Book for Malew, 1703.

Cromwell's Walk at Scarlett Point is " a low ridge of rock on the summit of which is a crevice about three feet deep and about the breadth of an ordinary garden walk. How it came to bear the name is unknown in the locality."-(O.S. Name Books.) The name is probably that of a local, rather than the historical, family, since there were a Cromwell's Croft and a Cromwell's Tanhouse in the parish in 1703. Both stood on land belonging to the Abbey.

Gob ny Cleigh, " Point of the Hedge," Scarlett, bears a name which is commoner inland ; there is one on Shen Whallian, for instance.

Balladouly. Chaloner, page 8, has this form for Balladoole. The grounds of Balladoole were haunted by a White Lady and a Black Dog (Moddhey Dhoo), but not in collaboration, fortunately.

Ballakeigan, the next farm, was haunted, in effective contrast, by two Black Ladies, whom one may suspect to have been nuns. These, as well as their weird sisters of Balladoole, could make their presence felt without letting themselves be seen, and though confined to the grounds were able to strike terror into the souls of wayfarers passing the main gates of the house.-(Manx Tales, page 33.)

INLAND NAMES.

South Barrule mountain is the peg from which hang the parishes of Malew and Arbory, whose skirts are the Southern coast-line, and though a little of Malew lies behind it, it makes a good starting-point for the interior of the parish. " Barrule Rushen " as Kennish called it, on which the Southern third of the Island culminates and from which it rolls seaward to South and East, is the most legendary of all the Manx hills. The more familiar stories, and certain others, of the many which cling to it may stand over to be considered at the same time as the central figure which animates them. Of the mere name it is difficult to accept the explanation of the late Sir John Rhys, in his foreword to Moore's Manx Names, as entirely satisfying. He derives it, by a series of phonetic changes which are not impossible, from the Norse name of the mountain, Voydfjall, " Beacon Hill." But his theory does not take into account the existence of another Barrule mountain in the North, of which there is no reason to believe that it was ever a watch-hill, or that it had an enclosure Norse vardha-on its summit. Nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why either mountain should have been named after the other. Independent repetition of place-names is frequent ; among hills alone there are two Cronk Fedjags, two or more Slieu Reas, several Cronk Rees, Slieu Loshts, and so on. Bayr, the Gaelic term for top, summit, provides the first element in many mountain names in Galloway and Ireland, the former especially. It probably occurs in the Isle of Man in other names than Barrule, but the difficulty is to distinguish between it and bayr, road, when they are compounded with other words. Barrule, then, should be applicable as regards its meaning to both the Northern and the Southern hill ; and this is the only objection I can see to explaining the name as Bariruadhail, with the signification of a hill having reddish tracts of ground. This would fit South Barrule with its bell-heather, but not the grassy Northern mountain. The second term is probably to be found also in Ghaw Rule and Cronk Rule.

If Vordfjall and Barrule were ever identical, they had become wholly differentiated by 1643, when the seventh Earl of Derby, writing to his son, speaks of "the mount you call Baroull." Whether or not this implies that he and his courtiers called it Wardfell or something similar, the latter, a natural English adaptation of Vordfjall, has with close variants been the official name since its appearance at 1316 in the Chronicon Manniae. The Norse form of the name of the mountain now called Sartal is supposed, with every likelihood, to have been Svartfjall, " Dark Hill," like Sartfield in Jurby. If so, it offers an almost exact analogy to Vordfjall, but it has not followed, on Manx tongues, the course of changes suggested for the latter. On the contrary, it has preserved its " t " in both cases, and the stress on its first syllable. That it is not a restored form is shown by the spelling " Sertfield " in 1662, in the depositions at Castletown concerning William " Dhone " Christian.

The elusive well near the summit of South Barrule has already been touched upon under its proper heading. The earth-walled area on the crown of the hill, called " The Camp," has a Manx name, Rhullick y Dhoon, " Cemetery of the Fort, or Enclosure." " Three feet of Finn's feet from the wall of Rhullick y Dhoon lies all the treasure of the Isle of Man" is a proverbial saying which has the flavour of a translation ; it is popularly supposed to have been uttered by one who was a prophetess and much more—the Caillagh ny Ghueshag or Old Woman of the Spell—in prediction of the richness of Foxdale mines, in which case it must date.a long way back. If that be the true reading of her riddle, the length of the hero's feet corresponded to one half of the Statute Mile.

Two 17th-century woodcuts reposing in the obscurity of Douglas Public Library show the summit of Barrule crowned with a tower. It is quite possible that it bore some kind of a shelter and storehouse of timber or roughly-assembled stones for the convenience of the men doing Watch-and-Ward duty there; an elevated platform or cage to display the signal fires would also fit the circumstances. By daylight, smoke-enemy approaching the coast ; by night, fires-enemy landing ; both signals passed from the seaboard along the heights and down to the garrisons at Peel and Castletown. The Night-watch was enforced equally with the Day-watch, and the civilians did not easily escape duty. The statutory regulations and the penalties for remissness have been quoted sufficiently often. But in the fragmentary allusions to the practice which still float about the base of the Southern hills the watchmen are always " the soldiers." So far as South Barrule enters into the matter, the conspicuous rock below the summit on the South-West side, Creg yn Arran, is popularly explained to be the " Rock of the Bread " because the country people used to leave bread on it for the soldiers, when these were living at the top of the mountain at a date unspecified. At an earlier stage of its history this rock (which is outcrop) was hurled through the air to its present site by a giant who lived on Cronk yn Irree Lhaa, about two miles away as the rock flies.

Anterior to its historic period, which began late, the Isle of Man must have supported a fairly dense population of giants and giantesses, and no part of it was richer in fauna of this and other species than South Barrule and the district of which it is the hub. Train's " Wolf of Barrule " and his " last of the Purrs," and Quiggin's black, rubber-like, and cave-worming Buggane Mooar, all made their earthly home under the shelter of this mountain, which shows up in the annals of supernatural history like the Cave (or burial-place ?) of Cruachan, the doorway to Ireland's Lower Regions ; that, likewise, vomited destructive swine, as well as a drove of unaccountable three-headed creatures which Man has been spared. Waldron's "Devil's Den" containing both an enchanted prince and a horrible dragon (doubtless a disguise of the magician responsible for the prince's enchantment) cannot, by his own vague location of it, be credited to anywhere within four or five miles of Barrule, though a similar legend of a sleeping monarch is still attached to a spot at the foot of the mountain--see under Croit y Kenna below. But Waldron has several passages on the giants of this parish, from which, notwithstanding their familiarity to some of my readers, I should like to quote, for the sake of touching upon the subject of Manx giants in general. " These new Conquerors," he says (who had defeated the fairies and turned them out of Castle Rushen), " maintained their Ground for some time, but were at length beaten out by a race of Giants." The Giants continued in possession of Castle Rushen " till the Days of Merlin, who by the Force of Magic dislodged the greatest Part of them, and bound the rest in Spells, which they [the Manxmen] believe will be indissoluble to the End of the World." That they entered the Island at Castletown may mean no more than that Waldron learned what he knew about Manx giants in the vicinity of the capital. But it must be admitted that he had information also of a subterranean or submarine headquarters of the race reached by passing underneath the Castle, a thing of which no memory has survived at the other ports to which their first landing has been ascribed ; moreover, he has left us a circumstantial account of its exploration by a r7thcentury spelaeologist. The big fellows may therefore have been in charge of the submerged volcano off the coast at that point, and thus have been responsible for the contorted state of the Southern coastal rocks, so attractive to the men with the little hammers. Isolated boulders, too, the usual missiles of giants, are commoner in the South than in the North. Nevertheless, giants are said to have come ashore at Northern ports as well --at Laxey, at Port Cornaa, at the Lhane Mooar, and perhaps at Peel. The vestiges of " pit-dwellings " on the Laxey side of Snaefell are dimly associated in the minds of some of the people with their gigantic predecessors. A fresher legend than is now obtainable seems to have been made use of by Kelly in his Sketches of the Isle of Man, 1844, though he calls his picture " imaginative." He depicts King Orry and the giants under his command as landing in Laxey Bay and marching up the valley to the castle of the king on the Eastern slope of Snaefell, four miles above Laxey. Giants and their consorts are, in fact, to be found in almost every parish of the Island, mostly either throwing stones at each other or resting quietly in their graves. They may be called Finn MacCowl, or Jiarg, or Samson, or the Devil, or even King Orry or St. Patrick; but as a general thing they are nameless. Needing plenty of room to move about in while they lived and quarrelled, and to lie down in when they were buried, they dwelt for choice among the bare hills, and chiefly on the summits of these ; or did the next incomers drive them thither ? There is no report of any fighting ; they appear to have given no trouble to the ancestors of the present population who succeeded them. Their aggressiveness was exercised upon each other only, and upon occasional interlopers of their own breed who ventured across from Scotland or Ireland. Though at least half human themselves, to ordinary members of the human race they were harmless so far as legend bears witness, and though they came up out of the sea and their collective name was foaze;yr, they cannot, in fairness to themselves, be equated with the Irish Fomorians.

It is but natural that we should wish to have some idea of the aspect of these prehistoric Manxmen, these post-glacial Castletonians and Laxenians, and we are fortunate in having them carefully depicted for us in the Irish saga of " Dá Derg's Hostel," which, Dr. Douglas Hyde says, " probably took definite shape on parchment in the sixth or seventh century," though some of its features may belong to the second or third. At any rate, we are on safe ground in saying it deals with events in the reign of a king who flourished shortly before the Incarnation. At the section headed, in Whitley Stokes's translation, " The Room of the Manx Giants," the interlocutors are describing and discussing the inmates of the Bruden or Hostel. The following is Dr. W. K. Sullivan's version, with a few slight emendations from Stokes :-

" ' I see a couch there, and three men on it, three great, large, manly, brave men. No one can look on them, so hideous are they, with three ugly, ill-shaped faces. Those who look on them are terror-stricken on seeing them. They have a thick covering of coarse hair over their whole bodies ; their beards are curled ; their eyes are most terrific. They have three fierce Finnu Ferb, and are without clothes ; they are covered with hair all the way down to their heels. They have three great wonderful flowing heads of hair reaching down to their hips. They are furious warriors ; they ply hard-smiting swords against enemies ; they strike furiously with three iron flails, having seven chains on them, with cross-pins through their eyes, and head-balls of iron, one on the end of each chain ; each ball of them heavier than a good house-fed hog. They are three great brown men, having great black flowing polls of hair on them reaching to their two heels -, two thongs, each one-third of an ox-hide, on the middle of each, and each quadrangular clasp that closes them is thicker than a man's thigh. The clothes they have on them is the fur which grows through them. Each man holds a tress of the long hair of his poll, and a club of iron, long and stout as the yoke of a plough, in his hand, and an iron chain at the head of each club, and an iron pin, long and stout as the middle of a yoke, in the head of each chain. They are terrors in the house, and it is disgusting to behold them; there is not one in the house who is not in dread of them. Identify these, O Fer Rogan ! '

" Fer Rogan paused. ' I can identify them. I know not of living men who they are, unless they are the giants whom Cuchulaind saved in the Forbas Fer Falga ; they killed fifty heroes when being captured ; and Cuchulaind did not allow them to be killed, on account of their wondrousness. Three hundred men shall fall by them in their first combat, and they shall surpass in prowess every three in the Hostel. If they come forth on ye, the powdered fragments of your bodies will be fit to pass through the sieve of a corn-kiln, from the manner in which they will pound you with those iron flails."'

Whitley Stokes's rendering of this vivid picture makes one obscure phrase a little clearer : " the raiment around them is dress that grows through them " he explains as hair. Their names were " Srubdaire son of Dordbrufge, Conchenn son of Cen Maige, and Fiad sceme son of Scipe ; Conaire bought them from Cuchulainn." As regards their nationality, Fer Falgae is glossed fer Manant (men of Mannan) in the Rawlinson MS. quoted in volume ii. of the Irish Texts Society, page 142, and a sanguine critic might identify the scene of the siege in which they were captured with the Rock of Peel. A phlegmatic one would perhaps be more inclined to class the story as a localized myth, but none the less interesting for that. One archaeological fact of importance stands out from the Bruden Dá Derga description of the Manxmen's weapons ; they had by that time forsaken the practice of hurling rocks and had adopted the arms of civilized warfare. It may be that the Iron Age in Man began with them ; the fairies who preceded them are wellknown to have been stone-users, though on a much smaller scale than the giants.

Struan ny Grenya, " Stream of the Gravel, or Pebbles," is, I am told, the name of the top fork of the little Struan Barrule which rises on Barrule Veg, the Eastern extension of Barrule proper. Below its source runs the main road, bordered on its East side by the stony desolation of the Granite Mountain (O.S. map). This inexpressibly dispiriting tract of boulder-strewn, boggy moorland has passed under various aliases in time past, of which " Granite Mountain " is, doubtless, the most recent, and due to the quarry at its Northern extremity. Others I have noted are Slieu Clagh or Slieu ny Glogh, and its rendering into English of " Stony Mountain " ; " the Windy Mountain "-if this is a translation the Manx original does not seem to have survived ; the Norse name Rozefell in the 13th or 14th century Abbeylands Boundaries, which there relates to its Southern portion ; and Dun How, which appears to duplicate the idea of "hill" in Celtic and Scandinavian, as do Cronk How in Rushen, otherwise the Fairy Hill, and Cronk Skibberigh in Malew.

Back of, or Behind, The Moon is a small locality on the East side of the Granite Mountain. The name is, perhaps, an erroneous or facetious rendering of Cooil Rea, a croft thereabouts. Re is certainly one of the Manx words for the moon, but here the meaning is " Level Corner or Nook."

The City was the name given to a small collection of dwellings by the road below Barrule farm; only the vestiges of them now remain. There are many " Cities " in the Isle of Man, and the use of the word in toponomy deserves separate consideration. (See p. 182.)

Break o' Day Hill, evidently once the public clock of the locality, is on the West side of the Castletown road, opposite Barrule farm. Is this to be considered as a translated addition to the several hills called Cronk yn Irree Lhaa ? For other horological placenames, see Glen Aldyn, Lezayre parish.

The Mameenachth (as pronounced, with stress on the second syllable) is a name given to land lying East of the Castletown road, between Barrule farm and the Granite Mountain, but thought to have belonged formerly to both sides of the road. The pronunciation makes " Middle Field " - Magher Meanagh--a doubtful interpretation ; Maam Eanaght would be equivalent to " Pass of the Fair " in Irish Gaelic. The place is certainly a pass between the two hill-sides, but I know of no other instance in Man of the use of aonach for a fair, or of any record of one having been held at this spot. It was in this region particularly that the red, or red and white, Fairy Lamb used to appear among the flocks ; it was a visitant which brought luck to their owner, and even to its chance beholder. Personally, though I have never been fortunate enough to see it, I take it to be a variant of the Arkan Sonney or Lucky Pig, which will show itself to us in the parish of Patrick.

The Salt-Box is a small ruinous building hidden among the trees on the West side of the Castletown road. It is said to have been used as a church, and is at least important enough to have given its name to this section of the highway.

Lough y Waltagh or Woltagh (as pronounced), " Lake of the Walled-place," lies between the Castletown road and the Windy Mountain. It is now reduced to a tract of marshy ground whence the two streams called Struan Barrule and Awin Ruy flow in opposite directions. With the epithet, uncommon in the Isle of Man, may be compared the name Killvaltagh near Ballymena, Antrim.

Glion Fank, " Sheep-pasture Glen," is part of the valley of the Awin Reash at Ballanank.

Ballacroak, St. Mark's. (O.S. map.) Of the tumuli here the Ordnance Survey Books, 1868, give the following description: "About 20 chains South East of St. Mark's . . . two distinct methods of inhumation. Mounds opened in January last and examined by Dr. Oliver shortly afterwards. Stone chamber in the smaller one contained the skeleton of a very large man. . . . Dr. Oliver pronounced the skull Celtic, and a Christian burial, a person of note, of the 10th century, when the Norse were still using the ancient modes of burial. Cist erected East and West. No ornaments or weapons. The skeleton lay on its back, head to East and limbs arranged as at present day. Cist constructed of slabs of mountain schist-internal measurement 6' long, 2' 6" broad, 2' high. The larger tumulus similar, but more conical and twice the size. Abundant signs of cremation. Stone Celt and hammer found outside. Cist constructed of slabs of freestone, covered by massive granite slab weighing upwards of two tons, crevices of joinings carefully filled in with stiff, tenacious clay. Head of Cist to North West. Cavity measured 4' 10" long, 2' broad, 2' 4" high. Nearly filled with calcined human bones, white and hard as ivory . . . resting on a flooring of hard, dry clay. At head of chamber were a spear-head of flint, stone hammer, and remains of a bone necklace."

Returning now to the summit of South Barrule and descending in a South-Westerly direction, an inconspicuous but important landmark is
The Round Table, one of three places to which the name has been given ; for the others see the parishes of Arbory and Michael. It is a low, flattish tumulus, only a few yards in diameter, with a slight depression at its centre and a trace of a trench or ditch around it. Its most remarkable feature is its position. It is the meeting-point of three parishes and of the two sheadings to which they belong, as well as of the old Northern and Southern divisions of the Island, and was evidently adopted as a landmark at an early period of civil history, unless we are to believe that it was thrown up for such a purpose. Its site is equally noteworthy in regard to the configuration of the landscape. It lies at the highest point of the lowest and shortest way across the pass between Barrule and Cronk yn Irree Lhaa, which is, after that through Foxdale, the chief route connecting the West with the South; the present road, in fact, at the point where the boundary is marked by a large white stone on top of the wall, almost touches the hillock. It lies but a few yards North of a straight line drawn from the summit of Barrule to that of the Cronk, and falls exactly on one drawn from the latter point to the highest point of Barrule Veg, a line which continues to Barrule farm ; but this may be merely accidental. It is within sight of the sea, both towards Dalby and towards Derbyhaven ; but experiment reveals that an equal number of paces to the North-West or the South-East at right angles, that is, to the axis of the mountains, the old diagonal civil division-will shut out the sea from view in either direction. Thus the site was evidently selected with great care, whatever may have been its original use. It has never been excavated ; when this comes to be done archaeologists will need to bear in mind that this tumulus was at first square, but " the soldiers who were up on Barrule fell out about who should sit at the head of it when they were eating their dinner, so they agreed to make it round." The rest of its history has, unfortunately, not reached me, with the exception of a tradition mentioned under The Whallag. But I gather from Waldron's story of the Fairy Cup of Kirk Malew that that vanished vessel of romance came out of the Round Table ; for the Little People from whom the man obtained it— honestly, according to his own account of the affair—were sitting round a table in a large common at the top of a mountain, " eating and drinking in a very jovial manner," bless their hearts. Barrule is now associated more with " soldiers " than with fairies, and memories of them hang persistently about the skirts of the whole Southern range of hills ; is it possible that they have absorbed some of the fairy mythus, and is the tradition of the leaving of food for them in various places a re-embodiment of the immemorial custom of leaving food - offerings for the fairies ? Whether or not, it may be remarked in passing that this practice, which reaches out so far into the surrounding darkness of the past, has persisted until to-day in a gradually contracting circle. First, the offerings in wild and remote spots, which may not always have been remote from human life ; then offerings nearer the house ; on the " street " or farm-yard ; on the step or in the porch; in the kitchen -(these latter at night before retiring) ; then the deliberate spilling of a little milk or ale on the floor before drinking ; then the leaving there what was accidentally spilt; finally, the sacrifice of a morsel on the plate or a few drops at the bottom of the cup ; which last vestige of a once universal religious rite may still be noticed occasionally as a personal characteristic.

In another direction, has the soldier-legend, founded probably on fact, attracted to itself and assimilated some of the lost saga of " Finn MacCowl and all his company " ? The sole trace of Finn on South Barrule is an allusion in a proverb ; but it is the only place, except the Sound, with which his name is associated at all, and a very likely scene for his huntings and carousings. For though in Ireland he has been completely humanized and even a little Arthurized, he is still Son of Cumhal -the sky, according to Rhys-and in old Scandinavia he was a giant of the mountain-tops and a lord of wind and weather.

The name " Round Table " was also applied to the high moorland lying to the South of the tumulus. Where the road to Ballasalla branches from the road to Rushen begins
The Cluggid, " the Gully," occasionally slurred to " Cloadh " in a manner which will hardly be comprehensible to those who have not listened to the Manxman suppressing his intervocalic consonants ; but sound and meaning are for once in happy accord, since cluggit (sluggit) means, literally, " swallowed." This miniature ravine formed the course of a streamlet which is now carried underground to the reservoir below. Lower down it broadens into the glen named after the Whallag farm. Here is said by the country people to be the site of " an old church and a churchyard," above the long-deserted croft of
Croit y Kenna, probably " Kenna's Croft," though the article is unusual before a personal name qualifying a term in topography. The fields of the holding, once cultivated but now relapsed into " garey," are still traceable between Cringle and the river, which is the young Silverburn. The alleged rhullick or burial-ground adjacent is said to contain the sacred bones of the ancient Kings of Man, the last of whom is waiting to be roused from his sleep to rule again over his kingdom ; which approximates in sentiment to Waldron's report of the spellbound prince. " About a league and a half from Barool," he says, but perhaps his distances are not to be accepted literally.

Among matters of a less enduring quality, a local farmer tells me that
The Whallag (O.S. map) was the last place where he saw a spinning-wheel in regular use ; that was fully a generation ago, and may well have been its farewell appearance in the Isle of Man, except on the amateur stage for charity, or for the benefit of the postcard photographer. To the house on a different site which preceded (probably by a couple of centuries) the one inhabited till recently, belonged a tradition resembling that of Creg yn Arran mentioned above, and other places in the adjoining parish of Rushen ; namely, that its occupants had the office of supplying food to " the soldiers at the top of Barrule." It was left for them in a but or some kind of small building at the Round Table, whither they came down from the summit to fetch it. There was then a road from the Whallag right up to the top of the mountain, passing the Round Table. This tradition was taken from the lips of the last tenant of the Whallag, since deceased. She had it from her grandfather, who had it from his grandfather ; but it is not otherwise unknown, and with it goes a less substantial belief that the summit of Barrule was, a long time ago, shaped in a series of terraces like those of the present Tynwald Hill (though of course on a much larger scale) and used in a similar manner. The normally careful Jenkinson, at page 179 of his Guide, states that Shen Curn in Michael had a Tynwald-like mound on its summit. But in the places where Tynwald Courts are known to have been held in former times there are no traces of such mounds. The legends of a terraced Barrule may rather be a vestige of the magic palace surrounded with piazzas, etc., among the mountains, which is the subject of one of Waldron's anecdotes.

Glion ny Vear converges from the East with the main glen above the last Whallag farmhouse, now in ruin. A road crosses the head of this ling-clad gully, and the name, orally received, should perhaps be spelt Glion ny Veyr- ' Glen of the Road."

From the Whallag ford and footbridge the narrow road to Ronnag climbs Northward by
Curragh Vreesha, either " Bridson's Marsh " from an owner, or " Bride's Marsh " from St. Bride's Chapel, now a mere foundation, on the South-West side of it. Until about fifty years ago the practicable driving-road ended at the haunted ford, and even since then travellers have occasionally been stopped at the little footbridge ; not by the overflowing of the river, but by an unseen force or presence which was opposed to their continuing the journey up the hill. And notwithstanding that the road Northward is modern, the ford is further haunted in a way which implies the passage through it of wheeled traffic, the source of which is to be found by following the same road for a mile and a half Eastward past Cronk ny Geay (where it becomes " Solomon's Road ") to
Solomon's Corner, or simply " Solomon's," a well-known spot at the highest point of the St. John's and Castletown high road. Here about a century ago dwelt " Solomon " Mylchreest, so nicknamed not for his worldly magnificence or his domestic circumstances, but, it is said, because of his surpassing wisdom, of which, unfortunately, no specimens seem to have been handed down for our instruction. Here dwelt likewise another " character," Robin y Keggan, who died about forty years ago but is not quite forgotten, so tenacious of personalities is the popular memory.

The Solomon neighbourhood has a thoroughly bad reputation for uncanniness which several occurrences during the last few years have helped to uphold. From or near the cross-roads the " Death Coach " used to begin its journey on dark nights, piloted by its headless driver and drawn by a pair of coal-black horses along Solomon's Road ; and it was an evil thing to meet. One account of it says it turned over at Corlea Corner with a crash, but this may be an echo of some fatal accident there ; more usually it is believed to have haunted the road as far as Cronk ny Geay. Still farther along the same road, at the ford below the Whallag is sometimes heard at night a crunching and swishing sound as of wheels passing through the water. Roeder has reported (Manx Notes and Queries, page 58) a Death Coach which was repeatedly seen passing down the main street of Port St. Mary; if Ronnag and Colby could supply similar experiences, as very likely they can, a course would then be traceable from the Windy Common district down to the sea.

A Death Coach has also been seen coming down between the Mountain Pillars on the road from the Round Table to Dalby ; in the particular instance which came to my notice the percipients were two women who were sitting on the grass by the roadside one summer night. It was something like a funeral coach with waving plumes, " with a moving body of blackness waving along behind it, like a lot of people at a funeral." Perhaps "wavering" was the word intended ; at any rate, it was hardly distinguishable from the dimness of the night. The women were very frightened, and shrank back to let it pass. Lying down is the approved method of seeking safety. Similarly in Norway, when the Wild Hunt is abroad, which is chiefly at Christmastide, if he who hears it does not throw himself face downward while it is passing, his soul will be carried away.

As at the Whallag ford, so at Glencrutchery Bridge was often heard in the night-time the sound of the wheels and the horses of the Phantom Coach or Death Coach, on its way from Kirk Conchan towards Kirk Braddan. " Old Phil Skillicorn, who lived in a small thatched cottage on the breast of the hill on the road from Conchan Church, said he heard it too, but in his earlier days the passing had been more frequent and more terrible," a declension which may have been attributable to the deafness of age, to the gradual weakening of supernatural manifestations in general during the 19th century, or to the cessation of smuggling. The Coach was, in his opinion, a ghostly replica of the funeral of one Finloe Oates who had lived just over the gill at Bibaloe in the smuggling days. He was a profligate and a heavy drinker, and on his rejection by Barbara Moore he cursed her categorically and fell dead at her feet. Thus, but in more elevated language, says one of William Harrison's manuscripts.

It has been suggested of similar abnormal vehicles and processions in Sussex and Galloway that smugglers sometimes took advantage of an old superstition to transport their goods without unwelcome interference from persons not friendly to the trade. A roomy wagon, padded hoofs, and a party of well-muffled men, would readily be misconstrued on a dark night by those not in the secret, and the smugglers would not contradict the terrifying stories of which they were the cause. Perhaps this is why the belief in the Death Coach has retained its vividness. And it will be noticed that in the Isle of Man, at least, where the smuggling was mostly outward, the direction of the cortëge was towards the sea. But if this explanation holds good for the Island, it can only relate to the early struggles of the industry ; in its palmy days it was everybody's secret, and the many benefited by the labours of the few. As for the Revenue men, that they would treat a stealthy band of nocturnal wayfarers with superstitious respect is improbable.

Robin y Gate, " Robin of the Road," is the name -doubtless that of the occupant originally, though no dwelling stands there now-of a field on the right of the main road near Ballamodda, on Ballaglea quarterland. Like the Clagh Ur close by, it is a place with an unhallowed reputation. An ordinary moddey dhoo haunted this part of the road, but there was something worse, something too dreadful, seemingly, to bear description. Even in England there is an old proverb which explains the consequence of speaking of the Devil. A less unspeakable mystery was a midnight procession of figures in white, carrying bright lights in their hands, which issued from somewhere behind Barrule or the Windy Mountain and passed along an old track now concealed by the Barrule Plantations (probably that which is known to have been the former highway), to its junction with Solomon's Road at Corlea (where the Death Coach is said by some to crash), and so down to a terminal point at Robin y Gate. " They used to be wearing something strange on their heads," thereby conforming with the fashion prevailing among certain other Manx apparitions, on which I have commented in connexion with Tantaloo, Lezayre.

It seems, at first glance, to be a coincidence with a meaning that the Ballamodda district should be haunted by a moddey dhoo, but the quarterland name is probably better explained as Bally ny mBodach, the farm of the graziers, hinds, or low-class labourers, or whatever was the exact shade of definition borne by the word when the name was given.

Between Ballamodda and the Whallag lies the extensive and well-watered region of Glen Cam and the Moainey Mooar. It is said to contain the site of an old church, which is not known to archaeology; also, with greater likelihood, to have been a home of the Fenoderree. South of the Whallag the Silverburn forms Ballagilbert Glen, alternatively though now infrequently called
Kinlye's Glen. Kinlye was an old man who is still remembered for his eccentric character and lived with a companion like himself, one Tommy Vell (Bell) near the top of the Glen. The stress laid on the second syllable of Kinlye, in " the old way of saying it," suggests that the surname usually pronounced " Kinley " had one source at least in the Gaelic Mac an Loich, " Son of the Champion."

This wide, green, shallow valley, always pleasant in summer with flowing waters and unpleasant with standing waters in winter, secluded and now nearly depopulated, has retained a few place - names and scraps of lore attaching to them which deserve to be rescued. In the lane leading to Ballagilbert farmhouse on the East side of the Glen lurked a moddey dhoo, headless like that at Hango. Near the top of the valley is a small depression called
Caillagh ny Groamagh, " Old Woman of the Gloominess," into which cavity she fell--or which she scooped out by falling-when trying to step from the top of Barrule to the top of Cronk yn Irree Lhaa. The impression of her heels and her thoin are said to be distinctly visible in the soil. A similar anecdote is told of the more serious fall, resulting in a broken neck and burial, of a Caillagh or Hag who came from the North to perform a series of jumps from height to height among the Lough Crew hills in Meath. Apart from this mishap to the Manx Caillagh, she is wellknown for her influence over the weather, as related in Folk-lore of I.O.M. and elsewhere; in Scotland she is the actual personification of bad weather. As accounts of the Caillagh my Groamagh vary somewhat, I will include here what I have learned of her in Patrick, which at least contains one detail I believe to be fresh and is certainly striking. First, however, it should be said that her alternative name, " Fai'ag," is merely a pronunciation of Faihtag-the exact spelling is optional, as with so many Manx words-meaning prediction or prophecy. Another Hag or Witch, the Caillagh ny Gueshag, is, in so far as these shadowy abstractions can be classified, much the same personage. Taken as one, they seem to combine the characteristics of the Scottish Caillagh ny Bheur, familiar to students of Highland, and especially Argyllshire, folk-lore, and the Irish Cailleach Bera or Bheartha, who, it may be surmised, are sisters of the Teutonic goddess-giantess Berchta or Bertha and entered Britain with the Norse via Scotland. As inghin Ghuillinn, daughter of Cuillin, she was related to the Celtic equivalent of Volundr or Weyland the Smith, who is also known in Man, and she had a house of stone on Slieve Gullion in Co. Armagh and other places. What she was like in her Scottish haunts is well depicted in the following passage from Leslie's Early Races of Scotland, i., 142 " The exemplification of the power of the female deity Cailleach Vear occupied at the end of the last century [18th]-possibly still occupies-a conspicuous place among the marvellous legends of the Western Highlands of Scotland. Her residence is believed to be on the highest mountains, and a great stone in a remarkable and elevated position on the high hills which separate Strathlachlan from Glendaruel still preserves the name of Cailleach Vear or Vera. To her is attributed, among other wonders, the formation of Loch Eck in Cowal and Lochan in Lorn, the waters of which now cover what tradition affirms to have been extensive valleys and fertile plains." A story, ascribed in its Irish versions to various other mythical females, is told of the aged Scottish Bera's neglect to cover a well at which she watered her favourite cow on the top of Ben Cruachan ; it was her duty to close it with a stone every evening before the last rays of the sun left the mountain-peak, but her forgetfulness on one occasion allowed it to overflow all night and form Loch Awe by daybreak. Campbell, in his Superstitions of the Scottish Highlanders, has yet another Cailleach, her of Beinne Bhric. Like the Manx Ben Veg Carraghan, this woman of the mountain has dwindled sadly through the ages. " She was last seen twenty years ago in Lochaber. Instead of being ' broad and tall,' she had become no bigger than a teapot. She wore a little grey plaid or shawl about her shoulders." High antiquity, expressed or implied, is ever a quality of the caillaghs-or the Caillagh. Kuno Meyer has reported an Irish saying : " The three great ages, the age of the yew, the age of the eagle, and the age of the Caillaghh Bera." In Mull she renewed her youth once every hundred years by bathing in Loch Bå. When a girl in the same island she had grazed her herds of deer on land which is now far below the sea. The name of Bera occurs in other legendary circumstances in Ireland, but it has not, so far as I know, been current in Man, unless we have it in Berrey Dhone, the legendary witch of Cornaa. The Caillagh of Wales is called Gwrach y Rhibin ; she is described in detail in Bedd Gelert, by D. E. Jenkins (Portmadoc, 1899), page 80. In addition to her immense size, her attractions included a curved nose reaching almost to her chin, and two or three teeth like the spikes of a harrow. Her sudden appearance at cross-roads or sharp turnings foretold misfortune, often death. It is not stated that she influenced or prognosticated the weather.

Well now, Laa'l Vreeshey, or Laa'l Vreeshey Bane (St. Bride's Day, the first day of February and of the Manx spring) is the day when the Caillagh ny Fai'ag comes out, if the weather is fine, to gather sticks to keep her fire going for the rest of the year, but if the weather is wet and stormy she stays in, because the sticks would be wet. By this it is known what the rest of the season will be like, but bun-yy-s'kin, contrariwise ; for if the day is fine the summer will be wet, because she won't need to come out again, but if the day is bad she will see to it that fine weather follows for her own sake. " There's ones that have seen her flying over in the shape of a big bird, carrying the sticks in her mouth." The particular kind of bird, if any, was not known to the narrator ; but Cronk yn Irree Lhaa was thought to be the Caillagh's customary habitation.

A curious humanizing of the Caillagh ny Fai'ag as a weather-controller is seen in a note in Folk-lore for March, 1891, page 133. Here we find her transformed into a Danish vicar's lady. The contributor of the note adds a German saying, " Women rule the weather in February."

So much, at present, for the venerable Caillagh, except to add that Gob ny Callie (O.S. map) on the coast of Maughold may be a name due to some forgotten legend of her, as is Calliach Point in Mull. The " Kallow Point " of the maps, near Port St. Mary, is commonly pronounced " Callie."

Ballaconnell. In a small glen leading into the main valley dwelt the buggane called Dooiney Hoie or Nightman-he who shouted " Hoa, hoa ! " appallingly through the stormy winter nights. This is also a Norse cattlecall, and further is not unlike the " Hoalth, hoalth ! " and " Hoa, hoa ! " intoned by the Manxman to the same end. The Dooinney Hoie is now but a wandering voice, and the coincidence may be merely accidental that a strange and nameless figure was often seen in the same vicinity, clothed not only in a long dark grey coat or cloak with large shining buttons, but wearing also a low-crowned, wide-brimmed hat. A hat is not customary among Gaelic apparitions, if we except ordinary human ghosts and doubles ; but the Breton Yann-an-Od, John of the Dunes, who shouts " Tou, tou ! " along the coast before a storm in friendly warning to sailors and benighted landsmen, wears a broad-brimmed hat above his voluminous cloak, much resembling the ordinary Breton head - dress. In Cornwall he is called the Whooper or Hooter.-(Hunt, page 367.) The Manx Man-of-the-Night was, I think, more often a frequenter of the cliffs and shores than of inland districts like Ballagilbert Glen, though indeed it would not be a serious exaggeration to say that the Isle of Man is all coast ; there are, at any rate, from Waldron's day downward, many stories of this useful precursor of the barometer, who called his " Hoa, hoa ! " or his " Howlaa, howlaa ! " along the seaboard in a voice like the moan of the rising wind.

Near the entrance of the Awin Vitchell into the Silverburn is a pool out of which the Glashtin used to issue upon the neighbourhood, more or less in the shape of a small horse. In a meadow by the side of the same river lived an equally unpopular resident, the Buggane Mooar of Ballaconnell. Not far away, a tall slate slab on Ballaconnell was haunted by a mysterious presence of a bewildering and terrifying nature which is ascribed not to the stone itself (which would have been more interesting) but to an unaccountable murder which happened there long ago. Also on Ballaconnell is
Magher y Gronaghan, " Field of the Little Mounds, where stood two tumuli now demolished ; one of them is said to have been surrounded by a stone circle, some of the stones of which remain in the hedge-anglicé, stone wall. In the round green meadow by the river known as the Lheeaney Rhunt the Fenoderree used often to disport himself. It is noticeable that Fenoderrees had a particular liking for Round Meadows (which owe their name, I think, to their being partly bounded by the curve of a stream) and have thereby got themselves confused with the Glashtins, notably at a spot on the Ballachrink river in Arbory. Watery places belong of right to the fairies, and to amphibious bulls and horses ; but the Fenoderree was not a fairy, or even, it seems to me, a supernatural being. He was just a half-wild man, typifying earlier inhabitants, though not necessarily any who had existed in the Isle of Man. The aged local resident who told me about him here would not confess to having, himself, ever caught a glimpse of the hairy one ; but I thought I could detect a reminiscent ring in his chuckling denials.

Across the river between Ballagilbert and the opposite side lie
Claghan ny Keillagh, " Stepping - stones of the Churchyard," over which funeral and wedding parties used to pass on their way to Kirk Arbory from the Ballagilbert side of the glen. A descendant of one of the families concerned tells me " they would always keep exactly to the same path. A girl of the Taggarts married Paarick C-- from Glen Rushen ; she had to walk right through the standing corn on the track to make sure of good luck ; then down across the river by the Claghan ny Keillagh and up over Ballacrickart. Funerals always took the same way." These are the words of a local preserver of traditions. I have noticed the same custom in the parish of Patrick in recent years, and believe it is still respected in other out-of-the-way districts, when the conditions require it. Even though an easy modern road is available, a rough mountain track is taken in preference. Presumably the track existed before what is now a better route ; but in addition to the respect for a time-honoured way of doing a thing, there is also a desire to avoid turning the back on, or going away from, the church, which a more convenient modern road may necessitate. " A corpse should never be carried to church by a new road; and should a hearse stop on its way to the churchyard there will soon be another death in the house." - (Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore, page 168.) The latter part of the Cornish belief is not shared by the Manx, for it was their custom to halt the procession at the wayside crosses.

Though Ballagilbert is in the civil parish of Malew, it falls, together with the adjoining farm of Ballarobin, within the ecclesiastical boundary of Arbory ; hence, presumably, the crossing of the river, which forms here the civil boundary-line, followed by the long journey to Kirk Arbory.

The neighbourhood of Ballagilbert is haunted by less widely distributed apparitions than the Fenoderree and the Big Buggane. A man (name given) was going down the river-side path, and when he came to where it bends to the left he saw another man " like in an oilskin coat, all shiny," about 30 yards in front of him. He tried to attract the figure's attention by shouting, and then by splashing his foot in the water, but without effect. Farther down, where there was no cover (no hedges on the left as there are now) the figure suddenly vanished. Other people had a similar experience in the same place. The splashing of the foot in the water does not appear to have been a likely way to attract the attention of a- man 30 yards off, and I fancy it was rather an attempt to counteract any spell which might have been in operation.

At the " turn to the left " mentioned above a boulder called the
Clagh Vedn, " White Stone," is mounted on the sod hedge on the East side of the valley, near the entrance of the Awin Vitchell from the Ronnag side. Though it is the most eye-catching object to be seen from the path, nothing is told of it ; but I think much must have been forgotten.

At the bottom of the Ballagilbert Glen lies
Grenaby, where the valley narrows and squeezes its river under Grenaby Bridge into the upper part of Silverburn Glen. Just below here comes in the Awin Reash from the Moainey Mooar and a brooklet from Ballalonna, and in bygone days Grenaby was thronged with old-fashioned inhabitants, as became a meetingplace of many waters. A humble member of the fraternity was the unnaturally large black cat with flaming eyes nearly as big as saucers, which used to be seen in a field here. There was also the water-monster of bovine appearance which occasionally haunted one of the riverside meadows. The tall man without a head, and the " something dark like a big chest or box " which moved about the road, have been identified by one of my informants, rightly or wrongly, with a much more unusual phenomenon called " Jimmy Squarefoot."

Broadly speaking, Jimmy Squarefoot was a man with a pig's head and face, " and he had two great tusks like a boar." He haunted all round the Grenaby district. In a purely porcine shape he had belonged to the giant living on Cronk yn Irree Lhaa, who, in the course of an altercation with his wife on South Barrule pelted her unsubmissive head with rocks of which one is now the Creg yn Arran and another-distinctly a wide-{dropped at Cloughur to the South. This giant, whose name is regrettably forgotten, rode Jimmy in his pig-form about the country and over the sea, for " he could stramp the waves as easy as he could the ling." After their quarrel the giant and his wife (who, it occurs to me, may have been the Caillagh my Groamagh) both disappeared, leaving their pet behind, whereupon he came down to the Grenaby district and has infested it ever since in his various modifications. If he has ever left it, it was to show himself between Ballagawne and Ballacurrey in Rushen, where a buggane was often seen, Roeder says, which alternated between the shapes of a man and a black pig. But in his own neighbourhood he was more of a simultaneous mixture of both. Whether it is due to his friendly name or not, there is something engaging about Jimmy, fearsome goblin though he has been in his time, when he used to charge out at wayfarers with gleaming tusks and gnashing fangs. How he got the sobriquet of " Squarefoot " I have never been able to learn. Has he despoiled some human ghost of its rightful name, or is it that his spoor has been detected in the moist soil of his favourite haunts ? For he seems to have an affinity with water, and though I have not tracked him to his lair with any degree of certainty, I incline to suspect a certain collection of large stones, now diminished in number and much overgrown, forming a sort of den in a fieldcorner high above the Awin Reash, near its convergence with the Silverburn. In that case he would resemble the Purr Mooar of Cosh ny Hushtaghyn in Druidale. There is a word in Cregeen's Manx Dictionary, mucawin, which is there given the meaning to which it is wrested in the translation of the Old Testament, " a bear " ; but in its literal sense, that of " river-pig," it may originally have denoted some such amphibious creatures as these.* At any rate, Jimmy is conspicuous among the many fragments of the great Manx Pig Legend, which needs piecing together and comparing with that of other countries. *Kelly, however, says it is a blunder for the Irish mathghamhuin.

That is not to be done in a day, but one or two disconnected links may come in useful. One is the worship of Vishnu as a Boar Vishnu, God of the watery element, who is depicted as having three legs and fabled to have covered enormous distances by land and sea in three strides, like Poseidon in the Iliad and Manannan Beg in Irish tales and Manx folk-lore. Ar invocation of an Indian Goddess with the face of a wild swine describes her as " black and propitious " , the phrase reveals the " aboriginal " view of the colour-question, and probably Vishnu, together with other zoomorphic deities, was adopted from a non-Aryan source. Coming nearer home, the Boar is an ethnological pointer, for the Boar-people, worshippers of and sacrificers to the sacred Boar, to whom the animal was something in the nature of a totem, dwelt along the marshy coast of the North Sea, from Boulogne to beyond the Rhine ; and it was from a section of this tract that the Menapii emigrated to the British Isles and eventually gave the Isle of Man its present name. In Ireland the word " pig " seems in certain instances to have implied a veiled reference to the invading Firbolg peoples, the Belgi of history, from the aforesaid coast. If a boar-cult or legend were transplanted from Ireland to Man, it must have been strongly reinforced by that of the Norsemen, whose legendary animal is perpetuated in Manx cross-carvings. The relations in either direction are Teutonic rather than Celtic ; in Ireland and Scotland dealings with the boar are mainly restricted to Finn MacCumhal and his merry men.

Pooylsallagh, " Foul Pool," is in the Silverburn about a third of a mile below Grenaby, in Glion Mwyllin ny Cartee, " Carding-mill Glen." In spite of its name, or perhaps before the name became applicable, it was a place beloved of the fairies and the glashtyn, and should have been romantic enough for the most fastidious of them.

Due East of here is Ballalonna Bridge, a spot which will demand a special chapter when the Manx supplement to the Invisible Commonwealth comes to be written. I have nothing fresh to report of it at present, and the improvements which it has suffered of late years have probably extirpated its former inhabitants.But in the history of
The Fairy Hill, a tumulus two fields East of Orrisdale, occurs an incident both tragic and ironic, and no less actual, which would bear expansion into a tale of the Tchekov type. The hillock was much respected by the local people, and in the usual way ; to tamper with it was to ensure disaster; and when one B-, a Malew farmer of Scottish blood, wished to level it to facilitate his farming operations, he was unable for a long time to find anyone venturesome enough to do the work for him. At last, by dint of persuasion and an offer of handsome wages, he got two men, either more reckless or more needy than their fellows, to begin the job. He promised them, as an additional encouragement, as much rum as they could drink, to keep up their courage. Through his unwisdom or a servant's mistake, the keg of rum was sent to the spot before the work was fairly started, and one of the men in his enthusiasm drank so freely from it that he had to be carried home on a hurdle forthwith, and died either on the way or soon after he arrived. His companion was so scared that for a long while afterwards he would not so much as go near the mound, which at the time I heard the story was still unlevelled, and I trust remains so. Thus were the prophets justified. My informant, an elderly farmer, was personally acquainted with the circumstances, and had seen the man on the hurdle being carried past his house-or rather his parents' house, for he was a youth at the time.

Turkeyland is the name given to a small and imperfectly defined district South of Ballawoods. Moore and others have derived the name from the Villa Thorkill, Thorkill's Farm, occurring on the Abbey-lands Boundary. This seems plausible, but would necessitate its having passed directly from Scandinavian into English, otherwise the initial T would have disappeared by aspiration, as in Eairy Horkell and other names. The name of a monolith here, " the Turkey Stone," also enters into the question. The isolated earthen terrace near it, unmarked on the map and apparently nameless, may perhaps have been an archery-butt or a rifle-range.

Cronk y Chuill, " Hill of the Corner," on Ballawoods, is a timbered height overlooking the valley of the Santon burn.

Ballawiggan, " Quiggin's Farm," is the older form of the present " Wigan " ; it is thus written so late as the Malew Parish Register, for, I think, 1795-my note of it has suffered a mishap.

Ballachott, " Cot Farm," is the older spelling of Ballahot- ' the Cot," presumably, of the Abbey Demesnes. A Lhiannan-shee enticed a traveller into this house or the one which preceded it, but the details have unfortunately faded. The story may have been the same as that attached to Ballahick= ' Fick's Farm "-a mile or so to the East, and related by Roeder (Manx Notes and Queries, page 55), with a fair amount of detail. Ballahick is a place which once enjoyed a reputation for uncanniness, and I expected to have more to say about it than my notes and memory reveal. The default is mine, I feel sure.

Ballasalla is a name of special interest on two counts because of the presence of the Abbey in the village, and because of the conflicting opinions which have been expressed upon the meaning and applicability of the name. Having regard to the position of the village on the Silverburn, the first element may have been beeal-aah, denoting the entrance to a ford ; the earliest recorded form does not show any trace of this, but it is not too early for the transformation to have been completed. Whether Ballasalla was at first a ford-name, a farm-name (of which there is no record), or the name of a settlement, as Ballaugh was, it either did not exist in 1134 or was not important enough to be mentioned in the entry in the Chronicle concerning a grant of land for building a monastery " in a place which is called Russin." Throughout the continuance of the community and in the papers relating to its dissolution, the word Rushen was conserved in its title. The earliest spelling, in the definition of the Abbeylands Boundaries attached to the Chroncon Manniae, is " Balasalazc," which passed through " Balysaly " into the present spelling. It is noteworthy that the name is given in its Manx form in the Latin text, instead of the usual villa, farm, being substituted for Balla ; from this it may at least be gathered that the second element was not a personal name. From a single local source I have received the following traditional names for the village : (i) Pooyl-ny-Hannick, " the oldest name for Ballasalla " ; (ii) Bal-ny-Hoilshey ; (iii) Bal-ny-Hollach. Taking these at their face values, the first would mean" Pool of the Marsh, or miry place," as being the aspirated form of eanach or tannach, virtually the same Gaelic word for a quagmire. In the second, hoilshey is equivalent to " light " or "brightness"; the usage was perhaps that explained, for example, in Irish Names of Places, i., 209, by the custom of setting up a light at a ford as a guide for travellers, and Joyce gives a large number of instances of names formed on solas, soillse and soillsean, of which the Manx equivalents are sollys and soilshey. (The differences are merely a matter of spelling. In the Lord's Composition Book, 1703, there is a Santon intack written Ballyhollas.) As the soil on which Ballasalla stands is chiefly river gravel, the name may possibly be ascribable to the natural lights emanating from marsh-gas ; there is even to-day a more or less superstitious feeling in the village about a moving light (ignis fatuus) which is sometimes seen, or has been seen, taking a certain course between the river and the higher ground. The third name, Bal-ny-Hollach, appears to contain sallagh, or sallagh, " dirt, foulness," as in Loughan Sollaugh, Bride (Lord's Book, as before), and Pooyl Sallagh in both Malew and Patrick, besides the other Ballasalla in Jurby. It will be noticed that hannich, hollach and hoilshey approach one another in sound. The tendency of Manx pronunciation, especially since the disuse of the language, to slurring and substitution of consonants, makes one hesitate to say that, for instance, hoilshey might not be a perversion of hollaghey (=sollaghey), " defiling," or hollach a perversion of honnagh (=tonnagh), " .marsh."

As regards the recognized name, Ballasalla, there does not seem to be room for doubt that its second term means " foul " in some sense or other ; Bal-ny-Hollach supports this, and Pooyl-ny-Hannick suggests a possible reason for the epithet, viz. the marshy ground which must formerly have extended far from the riverbank.

Slochel (as near as it can be rendered, with a long vowel approximating to that of the Scottish " bauchle ") is the name given to the quarries, or a part of them, just North of the Cross-Four-Ways. Though they are now being extended, the older portion of them was abandoned many years ago and is picturesquely overgrown. In bygone days a considerable export trade in the stone was done via Castletown, which may account for the surprising extent of these excavations. They were worked in prehistoric times, even in the age of the giants, and a Castle Rushen was built out of them. So I have heard in the neighbourhood; in the Ordnance Survey Name Books I read that " in the South Quarry urns containing human remains were discovered when baring the surface for rock." The present operations might therefore reward attention. The name seems to be related to slogh, a pit, a mine.

Cronk Skibberigh is the usual designation of the " Skybright Hill" of the maps. In the list of the Demesne Lands of Rushen Abbey, 1539, it figures as " one close called Skiprig, 20 acres." The Manx cronk duplicates the Norse hrigg-total result, " Ship-hill Hill " ; i.e., a burial hill. The stone at the top with the small one superimposed, both of them kept carefully whitewashed, no doubt mark the place of the interment. The epithet indicates that, as is known to have been the case, such burials were originally made in an actual ship or boat of which the dead man had been the master ; in later times, earth was heaped up in the shape of a boat. Finally, perhaps, only the name remained. In any event, when the tomb was that of a man of importance, the tumulus was the scene of periodic assemblies and sacrifices to his ghost. We may therefore feel sure that the locality of Cronk Skibberigh has been haunted, even if its spectral tenant is no longer in possession. According to Cumming, Isle of Man, 1848, page 54, there was a stone circle on the summit ; if that were so, the existing monolith was probably the central stone.

In Kirk Malew stood formerly a large white boulder known as " the Alabaster Stone," referred to in the Parish Register four times between 1674 and 1699, when persons of importance were buried under it ; after being banished to the churchyard, it disappeared piecemeal. It may be surmised to have come from the hill-top immediately above. In England also the presence of such pagan memorials in churches is not unknown, and was part of the general policy of Christianizing what was already consecrated in the minds of the people. Walter Johnson in a chapter on Churches on Pagan Sites in his Byways in British Archaeology, speaks of the occurrence of unshaped masses of stone in or near the fabric of the edifice. " At Bolsterstone, near Deepcar, Yorkshire, two large stones lie in the village churchyard . . . on the high ground above the church is a cairn known as Walderslow, and it is believed that the churchyard stones may have had connection with the monument."

Quayle's Folly is now a garden on the Castletown and Ballasalla road. This spot was haunted at midday by an invisible and panic-inspiring presence. Though in the hot summers of Southern Europe noon-tide is the hour most sacred to Pan, it is an unusual time for supernatural manifestations in the North, where terrors fly thickest by night. From a large barn which stood at the same place two passers-by heard such marvellous music that one of them could not forbear entering. The other, being a missionary, continued steadfastly on his way; but finding that his companion did not follow, turned back a short distance and shouted to him. Getting no reply to his calls, he prudently hastened on to Ballasalla and persuaded the villagers to make a search. But the music was no longer to be heard, nor was the missing man ever seen again. These strange happenings are related at greater length in the Manx Tales referred to above ; as the little book is probably hard to come by, I have ventured to include some of its wonders in my collection. Its " Various Authors " are anonymous or pseudonymous, except that Mr. Roeder contributed a couple of pages.

An account of the Isle of Man Charities, published in Liverpool in 1831, mentions in its extracts from 18th-century wills the following places in the neighbourhood of Castletown, the names of which seem to have passed out of currency during the intervening period : Ballamuck (" Pig Farm "), " near Castletown." Harrison's Gate. " The ground on which the house bequeathed by John Crellin formerly stood, opposite
Harrison's Gate, is unenclosed, and produces nothing."

Flat Soalte (" Barn Flat "), " lands in Malew."