he had read any poetry except his own. Up
to seventy he had been a bachelor. Then this good Boaz had lit on his
Ruth and married, and had many children. I found him in a lonely glen,
peopled only in story, and then by fairies. A bare hill side, not a bush
in sight, a dead stretch of sea in front, rarely brightened by a sail. I
had come through a blinding hail-storm. The old man was sitting in the
chimney nook, a little red shawl round his head and knotted under his
chin. Within this aureole his face was as strong as Savonarola's, long
and gaunt, and with skin stretched over it like parchment. He was no
hermit, but a farmer, and had lived on that land, man and boy, nearly
ninety years. He had never been off the island, and had strange notions
of the rest of the world. Talked of England, London, theatres, palaces,
king's entertainments, evening parties. He saw them all through the
mists of rumour, and by the light of his Bible. He had strange notions,
some of them bad shots for the truth, some of them startlingly true. I
dare not tell you what they were. A Royal Institution audience would
be aghast. They had, as a whole, a strong smell of sulphur. But the old
bard was not merely an islander, he belonged to his land more than his
land belonged to him. The fishing town nearest to his farm was Peel, the
great fishing centre on the west coast. It was only five miles away.
I asked how long it was since he had been there? "Fifteen years," he
answered. The next nearest town was the old capital, on the east coast,
Castletown, the home of the Governor, of the last of the Manx lords, the
place of the Castle, the Court, the prison, the garrison, the College.
It was just six miles away. How long was it since he had been there?
"Twenty years." The new capital, Douglas, the heart of the island, its
point of touch with the world, was nine miles away. How long since he
had been in Douglas? "Sixty years," said the old bard. God bless him,
the sweet, dear old soul! Untaught, narrow, self-centred, bred on his
byre like his bullocks, but keeping his soul alive for all that, caring
not a ha'porth for the things of the world, he was a true Manxman, and
I'm proud of him. One thing I have to thank him for. But for him, and
the like of him, we should not be here to-day. It is not the cultured
Manxman, the Manxman that goes to the ends of the earth, that makes the
Manx nation valuable to study. Our race is what it is by virtue of
the Manxman who has