CHAPTER III

TYNWALD HILL AND THE NORTHERN PARTS OF THE ISLAND

Pedestrians who wish to go north-eastward from Peel to Ramsey have a choice of two very different kinds of way. The first of these is the great highroad, which, after the first two miles or so, runs side by side with the little narrow-gauge railway, and passes in succession the villages of Kirkmichael, Ballaugh, and Sulby. The second is to follow the highway to Douglas to a point past St. John's, where a lane turns up to the left in the direction of Greeba Mill; and thence, climbing on to the moor, to follow the long line of hill-tops over the summits of Greeba Mountain, Slieau Ruy, Lhargey Ruy, Colden, Beinn-y-Phott, Snaefell, Clagh Ouyre, and North Barrule, till we drop again to sea-level at the quays of Ramsey Harbour. To those who love hills, and scrambling over hills, this is probably by far the best walk in the island; but the writer, to be honest, has never had the luck to take it, though he has viewed the chief Manx summits at more or less close quarters. A little beyond the point where one quits the road to Peel, Greeba Castle is conspicuous on the green hill slope, with the lately repaired ruin of St. Trinian's Chapel, lonely in the fields, on the left just beyond it. This last is now treasured as a public possession; for Man has displayed a solicitude for the protection of its old monuments that England would do well were it tardily to copy. Unhappily it has been found necessary to cut down the graceful ash trees that are said formerly to have sheltered its ruined walls. Greeba Castle, as is well known, is the Manx home of the novelist, Mr. Hall Caine, whose _Deemster_ and _Manxman_ have done so much to popularize Man in the public imagination. Those who ignore the fells, and cling to the highroad, may make one or two good deviations. The first of these is to follow the Douglas road as far as Tynwald Hill, and thence turn north towards Kirkmichael by the side of the little River Neb, which flows from the recesses of Glen Helen. This last is one of the best known and most favourite glens in the island, and is really very pretty--more one can hardly claim for it--always provided that we have luck enough to visit it at a time when it is not overrun by hordes of Douglas "trippers." The writer has only been in February, when there was not even a custodian to exact the usual fee that is demanded for admission. It is said to get its name from the daughter of a former owner, who built what is called the Swiss Cottage--always a name of disastrous omen--and planted a million trees. Many of these last were burnt down some twenty years ago or more; and others had been devastated by a tremendous storm that took place not long before the writer's visit. It is still, however, a charming woodland walk to follow up the dell to the Rhenass Fall towards its head, where the stream descends over mossy crags in a theatre of deep seclusion. This is the end of the orthodox glen; but by climbing above the fall on the open hillside and penetrating the upland valley that lies between Colden (1,599 feet) and Sart Fell (l,560 feet), we soon begin to get among the mountains. Possibly, however, this digression involves some trespassing; and trespass in Manx law--I write in utter ignorance--may perhaps be invested with pains and penalties that do not surround it in England! Another good digression from the main highroad may be made by quitting it at Ballaugh, and proceeding through the Curraghs by way of Jurby and Andreas. The Curraghs is the flattest part of the island, and is formed of alluvial deposits. Ballaugh old church at any rate is picturesque outside; and two other churches in this dull corner of the island--Andreas and Bride--have each at least a brace of ancient crosses. Of these old Manx crosses we hope soon to say something more, when treating of the grand collection on the south side of the graveyard at St. Maughold. Of Manx ecclesiology there is nothing to be said: it is patently without interest or value. Peel Cathedral, we have seen, has a little genuine thirteenth-century work, and Braddon old church, like Jurby, is pleasant enough to look on. Moreover, a skilled eye will doubtless detect traces of mediaevalism in many a featureless edifice that might seem at first the uncomely product of the soulless eighteenth century. But not even the best of the seventeen old parish churches--and that, perhaps, is St. Maughold--is likely to hold the archaeologist long, or help to fill his note-book. Even the pre-Conquest chapel at Peel can hardly be called an exception; it is simply a matter of four bare walls, quite without instructiveness or feature.

But whether the visitor proceed from Peel to Ramsey by highroad, with or without digressions, or resolve to make a day of it by boldly crossing the fells, he ought not to fail, in any event, before quitting the neighbourhood of Peel, to pay a visit to the famous Tynwald Hill, of which notice has already been shortly taken in passing. This lies to the left of the main road from Peel to Douglas, from which it is plainly visible, just before entering the village of St. John's. In itself it is quite inconspicuous--merely like a flattened round barrow, with a second, smaller round barrow, also flattened, on the top of it; but the spot is one of immense suggestiveness, as well as of great existing political interest. Every new Manx law that has passed the House of Keys, and received the royal assent, is here promulgated in the open air on July 5 in each year. The ceremony begins with a service in the adjoining church; and everyone then adjourns to the famous hillock--the Governor (who is now Lord Raglan), the House of Keys, the Deemsters, the Bishop, and the people. This rite is a genuine antiquity that has come down uninterruptedly from old time, not a mere artificial attempt at archaeological revival, like the Dunmow Flitch, in Essex--to compare small things with great. Here, in short, as its very name implies, is perhaps the last survival in Europe of out-of-door mass legislation--the living representative of a now almost vanished order that has left its traces in place-names over much of Scandinavian Great Britain. Dingwall, in Ross, which is virtually the same word; Thwing, high up on the Yorkshire Wolds; Laughten-en-le-Morthen (Laughten-in-the-Moor-Thing), in the extreme south of the same county; Thingwald, in the Cheshire Wirral; Tinwald Hill, near Dumfries--all point indisputably to the same phonetic origin--the Norse _tinga_ (to speak)--and all indicate alike the former place of meeting of some more or less important kind of tribal assembly. In Norway, Canon Isaac Taylor reminds us, to the present day, the Parliament is called the Storthing, or Great Council. As to the constituents of this vastly old assembly, readers of Mr. Hall Caine will not need to be reminded that the two Deemsters are the chief judges of the island. The House of Keys, which corresponds with the English House of Commons, consists of twenty-four members, elected by a franchise that includes female suffrage. Man, however, still retains the equivalent of the English House of Lords; though its "Council" is not hereditary in character, but consists of such officials as the Bishop, the Archdeacon, the Deemsters, the Attorney-General, and others. The presence in this body of ecclesiastical dignitaries reminds one of the constitution of the States of Jersey and Guernsey, in both of which the rectors of the historic parishes of the Channel Islands sit as of right at the seat of legislation. Indeed, the constitutions of all three countries--free States within a State--and their peculiar relation to England, are worthy of curious scrutiny and close comparative study.

On the present occasion we propose to make our way from Peel to Ramsey by neither of the two alternatives that have briefly been sketched above. We propose, on the contrary, to take a composite route--partly through the lowland, but mostly over hill--which will introduce us alike to Kirkmichael, and Bishop's Court beyond it, and carry us over the top of Snaefell--provided always that it be autumn, spring, or winter, and that the electric tramway is not running.

From Peel to Kirkmichael we either follow the highroad, which is never very far from the sea, or else take the roundabout route by Tynwald Hill and Glen Helen. Kirkmichael itself is a hard-featured little village stretching in a single, long street along the main road to Ramsey, and distant half a mile from the sea. Luckily, so far, it has escaped the blight of "development," and has plenty of character and local Manx colour. The church was rebuilt in 1835--no need to state in what style--but a fragment of its predecessor remains on the east of the graveyard. Near this is the tomb of Bishop Thomas Wilson (d. 1755), with an inscription by his son, "Who in obedience to the express Commands of his worthy Father, Declines giving him the Character He so justly Deserved. Let this island speak the Rest." There is a portrait of Bishop Wilson--no doubt sufficiently fanciful--in Mr. Hall Caine's _Deemster_, where he appears as the good native Bishop. Wilson, however, was really a Cheshireman, having been born at Burton-in-Wirral in 1663; and was educated as a sizar at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was a contemporary of the saturnine Jonathan Swift. In 1692 he was appointed domestic chaplain to the ninth Earl of Derby, and tutor to his son, which determined the whole after course of his life. The Stanleys at this time were no longer "Kings of Man," but they still possessed authority almost regal. "In the year 1393 the Earl of Salisbury sold to Sir William le Scroop, afterwards Earl of Wiltshire, the Isle of Man, with the title of King, and the right of being crowned with a golden crown." In 1406, after some intermediate dealings with which we need not here concern ourselves, the island (still carrying with it, no doubt, the right to "the golden round") passed to Sir John Stanley, who died in 1414; and with the Stanleys it continued till it passed by the marriage of an heiress to the Atholl Murrays in 1736. The regal title, however, had been dropped by the second Earl of Derby (d. 1521), "as he preferred being a great lord to being a petty King." The famous island arms (Gules three legs in armour embossed and conjoined at the thighs proper, spurred and garnished, or) still figure among the many quarterings of the house of Stanley. They may also be found on old work in connection with buildings with which the Stanleys had presumably something to do--on the west front, for example, of the fifteenth-century tower of Bidstone Church in Cheshire, and on a misericorde in Manchester Cathedral.

Among the many other prerogatives that the ninth Earl of Derby still retained as Lord of Man was the strange one of appointing its Bishop. The last Bishop, Baptist Levinz, had died in 1693, and for some strange reason no successor had been appointed. It is said that at last William III. threatened to take the appointment into his own hand, and the Earl was thus compelled to make his tardy election. It fell on Thomas Wilson, who was consecrated at the Savoy in 1698. Wilson from the first set his face against corruption, and administered his diocese with firmness and good-nature. He seems, in fact, in his remote island diocese, to have played a part in some ways not dissimilar to that which was played by the "admirable Walker" in the Furness parish of Seathwaite. "He soon became 'a very energetic planter' of fruit and forest trees, turning 'the bare slopes' into 'a richly-wooded glen.' He was an equally zealous farmer and miller, doing much by his example to develop the resources of the island. For some time he was 'the only physician in the island'; he set up a drug-shop, giving advice and medicine gratis to the poor. Against the then besetting sin of pluralism Wilson turned a face of steel; twice he refused the offer of the rich living of Badsworth, in the West Riding, which twice his patron offered him, because he disapproved of non-resident incumbents. His deep practical piety is manifest from his two posthumous books, _Maxims of Piety and Christianity_ and _Sacra Privata_. But perhaps the best-known episode in his long episcopate of more than fifty-seven years--he died at the patriarchal age of ninety-three--was his imprisonment in Castle Rushen for refusal to pay a fine. In 1722 he had suspended the Governor's chaplain for administering the Communion to the Governor's wife, she being then in some sense excommunicate, and for sanctioning false doctrine. Mulcted for this interference in a sum of £50, Wilson and his two Vicars-General elected to go to prison rather than submit to the tyranny of an authority that they held to be usurped. Wilson, indeed, seems to have endeavoured to maintain in the Isle of Man a system of moral discipline similar to that the decay of which is deplored in the Commination Service. His practice, however, was tolerant; the Quakers are said to have 'loved and respected him'; Roman Catholics not infrequently attended his services; whilst Dissenters, since permitted to stand, or sit, at the Communion, were content to kneel at the altar-rails like ordinary church-folk. To burial inside the walls of a church he exhibited strong abhorrence; and provision was expressly inserted in his will that his own body should be interred in the graveyard." A similar repulsion was entertained by Dr. Wynne, a former resident of Mold, in Flintshire, whose sentiments have found public expression, if I recollect rightly, in his epitaph, composed by himself. In this case, unfortunately, by a curious irony of fate, a subsequent extension of the chancel to the east has since brought his grave within the compass of the church.

In the lych-gate on the east side of Kirkmichael Churchyard are preserved several of those fine old crosses, though more or less in fragments, that form the chief archaeological glory of Man, and are now tended with such laudable care. Something of these is said on a later page. The Bishop's Palace at Bishop's Court, a long mile to the north from the end of the village, has been the residence of the Bishop from at least the thirteenth century, and probably for very much longer. The bishopric of Sodor and Man was founded, according to tradition, as early as the fourth century, when Amphibalus is reported Bishop in 360; but all its early history is difficult and obscure. Originally it comprised, not merely Man, but also the Scottish Hebrides (Southern Isles, or Sudreys, as opposed to the Northern Islands, _i.e._, the Shetlands and Orkneys); but the latter were necessarily severed when the island was wrested from the Scots in the reign of Edward III. Thomas (d. 1348), or William Russel (d. 1374), may approximately be considered as the first solely Manx Bishop; but the ancient title of Sodor still forms part of their official title, just as the Kings of England still continued to quarter the _fleur-de-lys_ of France long after Mary had lost Calais.

Bishop's Court, however, is a little out of the way for those who wish to cross the hills from Kirkmichael to Ramsey. Nor does the place indeed exhibit any interest for the archaeologist, though the Bishop's private chapel is at present used as a kind of pro-cathedral for the diocese. From Kirkmichael Village there is a track--that for part of the distance is no track--almost directly due east, which passes between Slieau Dhoo (1,139 feet), on the north, and Slieau Fraoghane (1,602 feet), on the south, and ultimately drops into the head of Sulby Glen at the bottom of the western slopes of Snaefell.

Or the visitor may retrace his steps toward Glen Helen as far as the chapel at Baregarrow, passing on the left the Hill of Reneuriling, sometimes called Cronk Urleigh, or Eagle Mount, which is said to have been the original Tynwald Hill of the island. At Baregarrow a lane turns away to the left, and winds up along the southern slopes of Sart Fell (1,560 feet). Whichever route be taken, as we penetrate the hills we realize more and more the real nature of Manx mountains. The central chain of hills extends for about twenty miles from Bradda Head, a sea-cliff (766 feet), in the south-west, to North Barrule (1,842 feet), in the north-east, thus forming a true axis to the island. The range is interrupted, not exactly in the middle, but more towards the south, by the great lateral valley that pierces it completely from sea to sea, and through which run road and rail between Peel and Douglas. South of this great glen the highest summit is South Barrule (1,565 feet); but north of it comes a cluster of much higher hills, the culminating point of which is Snaefell (2,034 feet). These hills are built of slate, like the hills of Cumberland and North Wales, but there all analogy ceases. Snowdon and Scafell Pike are convulsed masses of broken rock, whose black nakedness is not always scantily clothed with a coverlet of bracken, or wiry grass, or sloppy bog-moss. From the foot of the sheer crags extend long acres of scree-shoot, and the hills are further torn in every direction by the deeply furrowed channels of the torrents. In Man the hill slopes are everywhere smooth, and modelled in regular contours; they are clad, no doubt, with moor, and sodden in places with wet, but crag, and scree, and rock, are almost wholly absent. They have even less ferocity than Skiddaw; and Skiddaw, in addition, boasts a splendid "double-front," and a bold black top that excited the enthusiasm of even the town-loving "Elia." What little rock they exhibit is confined chiefly to the sides of one or two glens--Sulby Glen, for instance, which is quite the finest in the island--and to the beds of mountain streams; but none of this is terrific.

The truth indeed is this, that this central range of Man, though akin to Westmoreland and Carnarvonshire in its actual make of rock, is altogether aloof from them in all tangible characteristics. This is not to dispraise the hills of Man, but only to rescue them from the ignominy of an obvious, but quite unfair, comparison. Manx mountains, in fact, though thus composed of slate, have really much more resemblance to the limestone hills of Yorkshire. They have no pretensions to rank with the best; but, judged by themselves, they are quite satisfactorily noble. We are likely, indeed, to appreciate them all the better, just because we do not approach them in a mood of too exalted expectation. On the whole they are less dull than the Cheviots; and even the Cheviots are full of all kinds of delightful surprises.

Moreover, as we win higher among the moorlands by the lane that climbs from Baregarrow, we realize more and more that charm of all-round seascape that distinguishes these hills above all compeers, and gives them their imperishable charm. The wonderful extent of the view from Snaefell was noted down as long ago as the "spacious times of great Elizabeth." Thus, Camden says quite truly: "In medio montibus densius attolitur, e quibus aeditissimus Sceafell, unde sudo coelo Scotia, Anglia, and Hibernia prospici possit"--that is, England, Scotland, and Ireland--and Wales must be added--can all be seen from the top on a clear day. Drayton, in his _Polyolbion_ (Canto xxvii.), has just the same remark translated into poetical diction:

Her midst with mountains set, of which, from Sceafel's height, A clear and perfect eye, the weather being bright (Be Neptune's visage ne'er so terrible and stern), The Scotch, the Irish shores, and th' English may discern.

"In clear weather," says Mr. Baddeley, "not only is the 'tight little island' itself mapped out beneath the eye, with the exception of a strip of the coast here and there, but Scotland is plainly visible, from the Mull of Kintyre to beyond Dumfries; Ireland is represented by the Mourne Mountains; England by the giants of the Lake District; and even Wales shows up, with the Peak of Snowdon, the 'Carnedds'--Dafydd and Llewelyn--and the range extending thence, Penmaenmawr to the Great Orme, with, maybe, the Clwydian range, in cloud-like outline, far away in the south-east. The nearest point of England to Snaefell is St. Bees Head, 38 miles distant; of Scotland the Whithorn Promontory, 30 miles; of Ireland the entrance to Strangford Lough, 36 miles; and of Wales the northern coast of Anglesey, 56 miles; Scafell is 50 miles away; Merrick, the highest Scottish mountain south of Edinburgh and Glasgow, 60; Slieve Donard, the highest in the North of Ireland, 60; and Snowdon, 80."

The lane by which we are now travelling, though sufficiently rough-and-tumble, is one over which it is possible to push a bicycle; the writer himself has done it. It is not, in fact, the least strange feature of these Manx hills that they are thus traversed by high-level roads--not actually, indeed, climbing to the tops of the mountains, but winding in and out among them not far below their summits. One of these, between Douglas and Ramsey, and immediately under the shadow of Snaefell itself, has been engineered, I fancy, of quite recent years. One is reminded a little of the many new upland roads that the French are now constructing in Auvergne among the mountains of Mont Dore. Climbing along the south breast of Sart Fell, with the Rhenass stream below us on the right (which flows ultimately down Glen Helen), we come presently to the slight _col_ between the valleys of the Rhenass and the Sulby, just before surmounting which the heavy, dome-like top of Snaefell starts suddenly up through the nick of the pass, with its castellated hotel on its summit. The electric rail from Laxey--a hideous double line--almost completely encircles the bare, flattened cone of the hill as it winds round it in gradual ascent, exactly in the fashion in which the line from Clermont-Ferrand (though this is served by an ugly monster that vomits out volumes of smoke) winds up the Puy de Dôme, almost like the peel of an orange. It must be pleaded, however, in excuse of the tram-road up Snaefell--if any plea may be heard to extenuate its bare existence--that at least it has not scarred harsh lines round the hill, as is the case with its central French rival--lines that are plainly visible, on a reasonably clear day, eighteen miles away, or thereabouts, from the top of the Puy de Sancy. The view now opens on the left into the head of Sulby Glen--more properly Glen Mooar, the Big Glen--the strength of which lies further to the north, where it deepens beyond the inn at Tholt-y-Wilt. This is usually reckoned the finest in the island, and has certainly best pretensions to recognized mountain grandeur--if any spot, indeed, in the whole of the Isle of Man may properly be styled either mountainous or grand. Hereabouts, in succession, two rough roads turn down, to the south, to Injebreck, deep in the green valley between Colden and Carraghan (1,520 feet), and the terminus of a good driving-road from Douglas. Neither can be ridden on a bicycle, and one at least, when we descended it--but we speak of now two years ago--was rapidly being swept away by the fury of mountain torrents. Thus Injebreck is practically a _cul-de-sac_, secluded in the greenest of dale-heads; and those who are lucky enough to drop down into it, as the writer dropped down, just towards sunset on a mild February evening, with nearly a score of croaking ravens circling above his head, will reckon it perhaps the most beautiful spot in the island, and one that still remains entirely unspoilt, serene in the possession of its pleasant rustic graces.

Injebreck, however, on our present route, must be kept for another day: for the moment we keep the level, round the north face of Beinn-y-Phott (1,772 feet), till we fall into the great high-level route already referred to as running from Douglas to Ramsey. This, at the point of junction, is crossed by a gate the closing of which is enforced by the threat of legal penalties--a timely reminder that the law of Man is not always co-extensive with the law of England. Beinn-y-Phott itself is a prominent summit that perhaps displays more character than most of its sister peaks. After all, it may be true that the names of Manx mountains present greater interest than Manx mountains themselves. Snaefell, of course, is the "hill of snow"--exactly the equivalent of familiar Snowdon (there are said to be two Snaefells in Iceland). Cronk-ny-Irey-Lhaa, on the other hand, which drops so splendidly into the sea between Glen Maye and Port Erin (there is a second hill of the same title in the north division of the island), is said to mean the "Hill of the Rising Sun," and bears witness to conditions and an altitude less rigorous.

From the point where our rough cart-track joins the great high-level road between Douglas and Ramsey we turn north-eastward along this latter, between Snaefell and Clagh Ouyre (1,808 feet). Snaefell itself is easily climbed, if the conditions be really propitious, by diverging to the left up the gentle hill-slope at almost any point we like after crossing the electric tramway. Hereabouts, on our right, we look down into the deep glen, disfigured by a lead-mine, which ends on the sea at Laxey. A little beyond this, when Snaefell is now behind us, and growing smaller in the distance, the eye begins to measure the profound and solemn depths of green and pastoral Glen Auldyn. The elevation is maintained till quite near Ramsey, when we plunge down suddenly from our mountain heights by a drop of unexpected and startling abruptness. Of Ramsey I have little to say: there seems little to say about it. It is said to look charming when approached from the sea, but the charm must soon vanish on landing. Down by its quays it is just a little harbour, with the usual local colour of a place that lives by shipping and fishing. Of the parts of the town that live by visitors there is little to be said for good or for evil.