ST. BRIDGET OF KILDARE, FIRST OF IRISH FEMALE Saints, is said to have received the Veil from St. Patrick when only 14 years old. She was born at Fochard, County Louth, about A.D. 453, but lived usually at Kildare, where in 484 she founded a Nunnery. Tradition has it that she founded the Manx Nunnery early in the following century, that she was buried there, and that her remains were afterwards transferred to Downpatrick, to rest with St. Patrick and Saint Columba. It is at least certain that she was a favourite Saint, as there are Churches dedicated to her, not only in Ireland and Scotland, but in England, France and Germany; and in this Island a Parish Church and four of the so-called Treen Chapels are named after her. . The prioress of her Nunnery at Douglas was a baroness of the Isle, and held her own Courts temporal and spiritual.
Various conjectures as to the origin of the Tynwald Mound and others of a similar character have been made by different writers, some carrying their origin to the time of Moses, who received the laws from God from the summit of Mount Sinai, and thus delivered them to the assembled multitude, the custom being followed by numerous eastern tribes, and still continued in many districts by their chiefs or rulers in addressing their followers or giving judicial judgments. Others ascribe them to the venerable Druids, who were wont to give the law in the face of the open day from similar eminences. There is little doubt these ancient lawgivers found a refuge in the Isle of Man after their expulsion from Gaul, having to this day left traces of their habitation in the names of places in the island.
The Druids were the most venerable of human characters. As priests, they were deemed sacred; as legislators, politic; and as philosophers, enlightened and humane while the nation cheerfully paid them the veneration due to the ministers of God, and the magistrates of the people. There is little doubt these ancient lawgivers found a refuge in the Isle of Man after their expulsion from Gaul, having to this day left traces of their habitation in the names of places in the island. Their government was truly patriarchal. They were the sacred fathers of the country. Amid their umbrageous oaks they sacrificed at the altar; and from the throne of justice gave laws to the nation. They decided all public and private controversies. No laws were instituted by the princes or assemblies without their advice and approbation; no person was punished with bonds or death without their passing sentence; no plunder taken in war was used by the captor until the Druids determined what part they should seclude for themselves. Their power, as it sprung from virtue and genius, was not hereditary, but conferred on those whose merit might sanction the choice.
The Druids gave their laws in the open air, generally surrounded by groves of trees, and met once a yeare to judge the people. They worshipped God in the West as Abraham did in the East, and built altars in the open ground, thus continuing the mode of worship from the time of the Eastern Patriarchs.
The Welsh conquered the Isle of Man from the Scots early in the sixth century, having been led by Maelgwyn (A.D. 525), a relative of the renowned King Arthur, and one of his Knights of the Round Table; they held it for about four centuries, and engrafted many of their customs on the country. The last king of this line was Anarawd ap Roderic, who died A.D. 913. After the Welsh line of kings had so long held dominion over the island, the Norwegians, through their Vikings and Orreys, took possession, and ruled over it for some three centuries and a half, and during that time were mainly instrumental in settling the forms of government and enacting laws and regulations, which must have been formed on a firm basis, for they have been perpetuated to the present day.
In the midst of the British dominions, are found the last remains of the old Scandinavian Thing, which was held in the open air, and is memorable in Manx history as being the place where the Manx Parliament assemble for the promulgation of their laws down to the present day, and "whose origin is lost in the mists of remote antiquity, but whose establishment is usually ascribed to the Danish King Orrey (or Erik), who settled in the Island in the beginning of the tenth century. To him is ascribed the origin of the House of Keys, the division of the island into six sheadings, and the meeting in Tynwald (Thing-völlr), a court which, according to old Scandinavian custom, possesses both the judicial and the legislative power. Thingvalla, situated on a sterile plain of eight miles broad in Iceland, was some 800 years ago the place which the founders of the Icelandic constitution chose for the meetings of their Thing, or parliament, held in the open air, which, from its isolated situation and difficult access, must have rendered it peculiarly secure from interruption.
Harald, the son of Olave, left Loglen, his kinsman, in charge of Mann, during his absence in the Isles, 1237, and sent over the three sons of Nel — Dufgal, Thorkel, and Molmore — with his friend Joseph, to Mann, where they landed at St. Patrick's Isle. If the stone monuments in the Isle of Man are not remarkable for their dimensions or their state of preservation, they have at least an interest wanting in similar remains in Wales, Cornwall, or other districts where these monuments are not uncommon. Generally speaking, such monuments are supposed to be, and probably are, the relics of a certain race, or divisions of it, whether Celtic or of an earlier unknown people.
On the Continent, as in the northwestern districts of France, the Northmen appear to have ransacked every grave that promised such booty; but in many instances they have left behind them, as of little value, articles of great importance to the archaeologist of the present day. If the same spoliation was practised by the Scandinavians in Man, they carried on the work so effectually as to leave little hopes to the Manx explorer.
The hill above Malew church, still retains two or three similar masses of white quartz, which the author of the Vestigia seems to describe as having formed a circle of about ten yards in dianieter, although no traces of it are now to be detected. He speaks of two of the stones as portal stones, and of a third within the area, which of course must be the altar stone in the eyes of those, who still consider these circles connected with Druidic or Bardic mysteries, but which is more likely to be merely one of the stones of the circle out of place.
The plecename of Ballabrew has now passed almost totally out of currency, following the abandonment of the farmhouse and the omission of the name from modern maps. But the name, in its uncorrupted form of Ballalbrew, formerly applied to the Treen stretching from the bridge at West Baldwin village northwards to the reservoir on the west side of the River Glass. For the first 300 years for which records survive, Ballabrew was occupied by a Kelly family.