[From Mona Miscellany second series Manx Soc vol 21]

THE GOB NY SCUIT BOAGANE.

One Boagane has, at all events, been quietly laid and ceased to disquiet the minds of wanderers in the neighbourhood of North Barrule. The "Gob-ny-Scuit," in Kirk Maughold, had long been a terror to Manx folks by his wailings when the wind was at a particular point, and was considered as some disquiet spirit who had long ago come to some untimely end, no one knew how, and had baffled the art of the great Ballawhane himself, who was considered to have power over the birds of the air as well as over beasts of the field.

Mr. William Kinnish (author of Mona’s Isle and other Poems, 1844), a native of Maughold, was determined, if possible, to ascertain the cause of these periodical wailings that had so often disquieted the minds of the neighbouring people when they had occasion to pass by the place in the night. He persevered day after day in examining the rick, until at last he found out the Boagane. It was a natural curiosity, a cleft in the rock, of considerable depth in the face of the precipice. It had the music of an Aeolian Harp, caused by the wind entering into the bottom of the thin fissure, and coming out at the top a little below the surface. Owing to its upper orifice being lower than the surface of the ground above, no water was admitted, and being thus hidden from observation, the cause of the sounds could not be discovered. The cascade had nothing to do with it, as was supposed by some, but nevertheless it is a very interesting and natural source of music. Thus has one of Mona’s "Boaganes" been banished to the Red Sea!

[see Mannin vol 5 p296]