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ISLE OF MAN is delightful spot lies in the Irish sea, or St. George's Channel, and is generally reckoned to belong to Cumberland, it being the nearest to that county, from whence it is distant 30 miles. Cæsar called it MONA, Ptolemy, MONOEDA, or MONEITHA; Pliny, MONABIA, and from modern historians it has received various appellations. It is about 30 miles long, and about nine broad, divided into north and south, containing 17 parishes and four chapels. Its bishop is stiled bishop of Sodor and Man, but, though formerly a baron, has no seate in the English House of Peers. Its language is peculiar to itself, and termed Manks, a mixture of Erse, Greek, Latin, Welch, and English originals. The Sovereignty of the island, before 1765, was possessed by the earls, of Derby, but the duke of Athol, its then possessor, for a valuable consideration, relinquished that dignity to the crown, to prevent the pernicious practice of smuggling carried on there, when a free trade with England was permitted. On it are the remains of several very old buildings, and the remains of Druidical superstition.
MANNIN BEG MAC Y LEAGHER was the first ruler of Man. He was a mild ruler; the tribute that he exa(fted from his followers was a bart of leagher glass, green sedge. Most writers have confounded the leagher with the rush, but there is quite a difference; they are not the same plant. The word leagher is in the Manx dictionary for a person deserving reward, to reward. Mannin acquired the name on account of being a person who deserved to be rewarded, also the sedge for the reason that it was the reward has maintained until this day the name of leagher. Mannin protected the Island by a mist. If, however, his enemies succeeded in approaching the Manx coast in spite of it, he threw chips into the water, which became ships. His stronghold was Peel Castle, on the battlements of which he was able to make one man appear a thousand. So he defended the Island and routed his enemies. "Mannin" is the spelling of the word in Cashen's Notes, and he always pronounced the word thus, and not Manannan.
YN DOOINNEY TROOR CASSAGH, the Three-Legged Man, and all his people, who were likewise three-legged, travelled about like a wheel, turning round and round. Another tradition speaks of him as YN MANNINAGH, the Manxman who was the first man in Mann.
When St. Patrick, first came to the Isle of Man, he came across on horseback. The Island was under a dense mist, and all the powers of darkness were arrayed against him, and, being hard pressed by a sea-monster of great size that was following to devour him, he put the horse up the steepest place in Peel Hill, and where the horse stood still on the top on firm ground, a beautiful spring of pure water sprang out of the ground, whereby the saint and the horse were both refreshed. The well is called the Holy Well unto this day. The Holy Well is said to be the first well, or water, where the first Christian was baptized in the Island, and was for ages resorted to as a healing well, and latterly it was called the Silver Well on account of the small silver coins that were left there by persons seeking to be cured of some disease.
Ecclesiastically, the Isle of Man was divided into seventeen parishes, and each of these parishes had a patron saint from whom it derived its name. The older names of Jurby and Ballaugh were Kirk Patrick of Jurby and Kirk Mary of Ballaugh. There are two words in Manx representing the English word ‘parish,’ skyll and skeerey. The first is merely t!ie Gaelic cill, Mx. keeill, with s prefixed, which may be due to Norse influence. On the coast of Kirk Lonan there is a rocky cliff called Yn Screg ganagh, which simply means ‘the rocky place.’ The bailey, Ir. baile, ‘a homestead,’ later known as the treen, was the family unit.
In our earliest Manorial Roll (1511-15) these were simply called lands.’ In the course of time the treen was sub-divided into quarterlands (kerroo or kerroo-verlley), and the term bailey having been replaced by treen, the former in time came to be regarded as a quarterland, and we thus find balla as the commonest prefix attached to Manx place-names.
B. C. 54 Caesar Mona. A. D. 23 Pliny Monapia, Mevanja for Menavia Annals of Wahes, c. 125 Eumonia A. D. 139 Ptolemy Monaœda. A. D. 416 Orosius Mevania. A. D. 858 Nennius Eubonia. A. D. 1084-1496 Irish Annals Manann, Manand. A. D. 1240 Scand. Sagas Mon, Maon
Some say that Cæsar meant the Isle of Man when he spoke of Mona; others say he meant Anglesea. Early in the sixth century Man became subject to the kings and princes of Wales, who ruled from Anglesea. We know next to nothing about them but their names. Then came the Vikings. The present name is modern. Still, nobody has ever told us how Orry and the Celts under stood one another, speaking different tongues. Let us not ask. King Orry had come to stay, and sea-warriors do not usually bring their women over tempestuous seas. So the Norsemen married the Celtic women, and from that union came the Manx people. Thus the Manxman to begin with was half Norse, half Celt. As the Norseman settled in Cumberland as well as in Man the race is not seriously affected either way. So is Ellan Vannin, its Manx equivalent. In the Icelandic Sagas the island is called Mon. It falls into three periods, first, a period of Celtic rule, second of Norse rule, third of English dominion. Manx history is the history of surrounding nations. We have no Sagas of our own heroes. The Sagas are all of our conquerors. Save for our first three hundred recorded years we have never been masters in our own house.
The Isle of Man was known to the ancients by various names. Caesar distinguishes it by that of Mona. Ptolemy calls it Moneoda, or the more remote Mona; Pliny Monabia, and others Eubonia. Buchanan stiles it Mana, the natives Manning, and the English Man; which appellation, Bishop Wilson derives from the Saxon word Mang; this Island being literally among the neighbouring kingdoms.
The original inhabitants most probably migrated from Britain; and as their chief employment was hunting, they lived in tribes, and their primitive government was patriarchal. To this form succeeded the civil and religious institutions of the Druids; a race of sacred and venerable legislators, who, after the general massacre of their brethren in Anglesea, reigned over the affections of the natives of Mona, till the close of the fourth century; when the light of Christianity penetrating the gloom of their umbrageous oaks, their admirable fabric of religion and morality gradually yielded to a system, which,in some of its most important doctrines, resembled, yet infinitely surpassed, their own.
The most interesting of the simple names is that of the Island itself; for it must be remembered that ISLE OF MAN, or its Manx original, ELLAN VANNIN, is comparatively a late form, and that the early designation was a single word. Cæsar called it MONA, Orosius MEVANIA, Pliny MONAPIA, Ptolemy MONAOIDA or MONARINA, and Gildas EUBONIA or EUMONIA. In the Welsh records it was called MANAW (the Irish genitive being MANANN), and in the Icelandic Sagas MÖN, which form is correctly transliterated MAUN on the Malbricti-Gaut Cross at Kirk Michael.
MANANNAN, the mythical God of the Sea, merchant and pilot, gave his name in its earliest form to the Isle of Man, and then, in his turn, derived his own extant name of MANANNAN from that of the Island. From this form MONA, MONAPIA (or MANAVIA, as Stokes, ‘ Celtic Declension,’ p. 18, doubtfully reads it), and the later more contracted forms naturally follow. It is not necessary to go into the disputed question of whether the correct spelling is MAN or MANN. Both forms are used in the Records between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, but at the earlier dates MAN is rather more common than MANN.
When the Norsemen settled in Man, the Gaelic language was replaced by a Scandinavian dialect; the runic monuments conclusively prove this. The earlier Gaelic population was either wiped out or absorbed, but the Gaelic personal names on the ancient monuments ( v. Kermode’s ‘Manx Crosses’) show that the later immigrants from Norway resorted to peaceful penetration rather than the ruthless massacre practised by their immediate ancestors. The Old Irish form would be Mana or Mann, genitive Manann, dative Manainn, hence the modern Manx name Mannin is the old dative. The Scandinavian Mon had a genitive Manar. The later Latin name was Mannia with a genitive Manniæ.
It has been surmised by some that the Island took its name from a tribe called the Menapii, who inhabited a tract of land on the east coast of Ireland in Ptolemy’s time. Monadh is therefore Pictish rather than Gaelic, and indicates that the Isle of Man was in early times, like Scotland.
The accepted opinion is that Christianity was established in Man by St. Patrick about the middle of the fifth century. The story goes that the Saint of Ireland was on a voyage thither from England, when a storm cast him ashore on a little islet on the western coast. of Man. This islet was afterwards called St. Patrick's Isle. St. Patrick built his church on it. The church was rebuilt eight centuries later within the walls of a castle which rose on the same rocky site. It became the cathedral church of the island. When the Norwegians came they renamed the islet Holm Isle. Tradition says that St. Patrick's coming was in the time of Mannanan, the magician, our little Manx Prospero. It also says that St. Patrick drove Mannanan away, and that St. Patrick's successor, St. Germain, followed up the good work of exterminating evil spirits by driving out of the island all venomous creatures whatever. We sometimes bless the memory of St. Germain, and wish he would come again.
Ballure Chapel stands within the "Treen" of Ballure, on the site of one of those earlier structures known as Keeills, which were in existence before our present parishes were formed. In Maughold there are remains or sites of fifteen. The Keeills were built by the Culdees, or "Servants of God," who never married but lived alone, teaching and ministering to the people. It consisted of the southern islands of Scotland, extending from the Hebrides to Arran, and Man, and it was then placed under the Archbishop of Drontheim in Norway.
Sodor is derived from two Norse words meaning "southern isles," so that Sodor and Man means "The Southern Isles and Man"; it is, in fact, the Ecclesiastical name for the Kingdom which was then called "Man and the Isles" . The connection of the Kingdom of Man with the Isles, or Sodor, came to an end in 1266, but the Diocese still bears the title of "Sodor and Man." When the lands in the Isle of Man were divided into "Treens," one of these "Keeills" seems to have been kept in repair in each division, and in several instances more than one. A "Reader" had been appointed to Ballure, whose duty it was to read Prayers and sometimes a Homily. The reader was also Master of the Ramsey School. It would seem that "school was kept" in the Chapel.
