Balley, Balla (M), ‘ a town, an estate, a farm, a village.’ As in BALLAGLASS, Green Farm. The Anglo-Norman Balla is the modern form, balley or bally being almost universal before the seventeenth century. It receives the gloss locus in Cormac’s glossary and the Book of Armagh. Cormac also gives baile as the equivalent ofrath, and it is frequently found in this sense in the Irish annals. Its primary meaning seems to have been an enclosure, a place fenced round, where it is identical with the Irish and Gaelic balla, and the Manx boayl. All these words are possibly derived from the late Latin ballivum. When St. Mochna founded his monastery, in the seventh century, he is said to have enclosed it with a balla.
There are some 600 'Balla's on the Island - Balla is the most common prefix for a placename and derives from Balley (Irish Baile) 'a homestead'. It would appear that these family units were once synonomous with Treens - in the earliest Manorial rolls they are described as Lands. However with increased population, subdivison and reclamation of waste land these treens were divided into quarterlands and the term Balla tended to refer to these quarterlands. These quarterlands may now contain more than one farm - which may themselves be called 'Balla...' though usually referred to as part of the containing quarterland.
At the highest points from the valley, forest area covered and homesteads were sited along the tops of the hills, this is a feature of Celtic times. The Anglo-Saxons cultivated valley land for drainage and the words for homesteads became complacent with their describing. Another Anglo Saxon word is Cot thus FATTACOTT, HESCOTT or HERSCOTE in 1160, NATCOTT or NOTTYCOTT in 1500.
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—probably owing to the reclamation of waste lands and also family expansion—the treen was sub-divided into quarterlands (kerroo or kerroo-verlley), and the term bailey having been replaced by treen, the former in time came to be regarded as a quarterland, and we thus find balla as the commonest prefix attached to Manx placenames. There has been much discussion as to the signification of the word treen, but there is one point we can be quite certain about, that it is of late introduction into Man, and replaced the earlier balla, but it is never found as a prefix to place-names.
Cratilinth, coming to the Crown in the yeare 277, made it one of his first works to purge the kingdom of heathenish superstition, and expulse the Druids, a sort of priests, held in those days in great reputation. Their manner was to celebrate sacrifice, and perform their other rites, in groves, with leaves and branches of oak, and thence, saith Pliny, they were called Druids, which both signify an oak. No connection can be traced between these Culdee built Keeils, and they are supposed to have been a kind of patriarchal or domestic chapels, erected according to the primitive custom of the first Christians of the country; and tradition hints that they were occasionally supplied by the Monks itinerating from the monasteries.
In the Diocletian persecution, from 303 to 310, British Christians had sought refuge in Cornwall, in Wales, and in the northern parts near the Solway, almost inaccessible to the Roman power. It is thus that the Celtic, and not the Roman, Christianity marks the early ages in the British Islands. It was a power of resistance to the monks of Augustine. It sent forth from the Irish Bangor, for example, missionaries to Cornwall, in the early evangelisation, who, in passing down the Irish Sea within sight of Man, would not forget their kinsmen on the little island. St. Bees, also, was not far off, on the edge of Cumberland; near Whithorne, at the Mull of Galloway. Canon Bright relates that, in 597, St. Augustine found the ruins of British churches which had been destroyed by the invading Anglo-Saxons. Before 597, Rome had no church position in these lands. St. Alban, St. Patrick, Columba, Kentigern, Columbanus, and many other great names, belonged to another fellowship.
The last, with his helpers from Iona, led on the mission to France, south and east; and so, from and after 612, was Christian truth disseminated in Germany, in Switzerland, and across the Alps into Lombardy. There is evidence that the Irish Bangor held its theology free from Roman interference in the seventh century. The successor of Augustine complained that the Irish Bishop would not eat with a Bishop from Rome, as is recorded by the Venerable Bede. Not only from Ireland, and places already named, was there near Christian light; but perhaps, not the least from the Mull of Galloway where Ninian was a monk of Celtic Gaul, in 370, had his school of training for young evangelists who, as they rose early in the winter for their studies, as tradition says, could see the lights of the early risers on the opposite shore. Apart from Bede's mention of St. Martin, a connection of Ninian with Martin may not be wholly legendary. Martin (d.397) was active in missions among the Celtic tribes in the diocese of Tours. The outer ecclesiastical Baronies, with their independent jurisdiction and powers in the legislature, may have grown out of the simple relations of missions to the Manx people in the earlier ages.
The position of Bangor and Sabal in this circle of Christian zeal was conspicuous in other directions also. Under Columba, the Irish evangelist in the sixth century (born 521), and who had Iona as his centre, the men trained for Christian service were sent to labour among the Picts and Scots, from about the yeare 563. From Iona, Aidan, himself Irish, was sent to be Bishop of Lindisfarne, with the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria as his diocese. It was a warm stream issuing at first from the coast of Erin round to Northumbria by the line of Iona, and had relations to Man as well. The circumstances of British Christianity from the fourth to the seventh centuries coincide with the theory of an early Christianity in Man during the same interval. The records of the Middle Ages make no mention of these Treen Chapels. It belonged to the ages before 1172. To that interval the Christianity of Man belonged also.
After the Isle of Man was made the seate of the Norwegian race, the Bishoprics were united with the titles of Sodor and Man, and so continued till conquered by the English, since which the Bishop of Man keeps his claim, and the Scotch Bishop styles himself Bishop of the Isles, anciently Episcopus Insularum Sodorensium. They were, in some cases perhaps, treen churches of the Norse period; but they were mainly of older date, viz. , were of the old Celtic period. To them the Norse or Manx-Norse race came. In them the Manx-Norse saw the Christian worship, and learnt the Christian faith. There was a time " when the churches were built," a time long before that, centuries before that, perhaps eight centuries before that, when the "upper parts of the parish were ' mountain," when the population was thin on the coast-that early time when Celtic or British missionaries, whether followers of Ninian or of Patrick, or of Columba, or of Kentigern, landed on the Island in such landing places as Peel, Ramsey, or Port Mooar in Maughold, at Groudle, Santon Burn, and Derbyhaven. Norse-Celtic, probably early 12th Century prior to establishment of insular parishes.