Section 2 of 'The Isle of Man in the 1860s'

Eighty years ago the Manx people were making very good use of the waters of the rivers I remember that in my time there were no less than seven mills of one sort or another working on the Silverburn which, from source to sea is not more than five miles long. On the river Neb which flows through Peel there were thirteen mills. Twenty in all on these two little rivers, they had an average fall of about ten or twelve feet or 200 feet in all. What people anywhere in the world showed more energy and enterprise in using the recources of their own land.

A few of these mills were used for thrashing corn which meant that the corn had to be carted to the mill and the straw and grain carted away, some farms in remote places had threshing mills of their own driven by water power (as at Eary Cushlan)-or by horse power-as at Eary Mooar, where the mill was inside the barn and the the power outside, the horses walking round in a circle attached to the ends of a long pole fastened to cogged wheels and a shaft passing through the wall of the barn and driving the mill inside.

These mills whether water or horse power are now gone their places being taken by steam mills which travel by their own power to any farm and in a few hours converts the corn stacks into straw stacks.

The labour which used to make the farm hum with busy life is now transferred to the engineering works in some remote big town and to the coal pit where the power is dug out of the earth, the fertilisers which used to be produced from the farm midden are now brought from over seas.

The machines, the power and the fertilisers and even the food and feeding stuff for cattle has to be imported and paid for to workers abroad. Yet fewer people work on the land and the land does not produce more. A disturbance of balance which may prove dangerous if carried too far.

When I was a boy people took far more interest in religion than now. The great flare up of Methodism still glowed with a steady light. People went to church and chapel regularly. It was no unusal thing for families to go to church both morning and afternoon on Sundays and to the chapel at night. Prayer meetings and class meetings were usual and common and sometimes revivals "broke out". Emotion and faith, which might be called credulity, rather than judgment and common sense, sermed to be the motive power behind any religious zeal. Perhaps too fashion had a great deal to do with it, it was the fashion to go to church and chapel as it was the fashion to wear top hats. A class of men went all over the country called revivalists, they usually had the mesmeric eye and the actors power to influence, similar to the people whom the Americans call a spell binder.

Strange to say there was contemporary with this religion a great deal of drunkeness and bad language, other faults were also more pronounced if not more frequent than they are today, the term bye-child was in common use and thefts and assaults were more frequent, as interest in religion has decreased so the conduct of the people has improved, the extremes in both directions have worn off and the people are more on a level in speech in book learning in dress and in food. Conditions of life are more even and we are rapidly becoming "merged in the empires' mass".

In those days with its fewer interests the energy of life broke out of its narrow bounds in religion and its opposite, now so many new interests draw our attention and give relief so that religion and its opposite are no longer so exciting.

Looking back along the road of one life it is quite surprising to observe the changes which have taken place in families clearly observable in this narrow island field. Some, which eighty years ago were proud of their wealth and social standing with children to carry on the name and farms in which to settle them, have disappeared like last years snow. Other families which were poor and humble have risen to affluence and good repute. I cannot call to mind more than two or three families who now live and own the place in which their fathers lived seventy or eighty years ago so quick and general have been the changes.

The life of the country boy at that time would perhaps now be considered slow and dull, there were no cinemas, no busses, or trains, no pocket money for there were no shops. We had never seen a bicycle, a motor car, a train, or an aeroplane,or heard wireless, there were no toys and few books other than Sunday School prizes. Only a weekly newspaper. What on earth did we do, well we knew nearly all the birds in the district and where they nested. We could tell all the birds by their flight. We knew nearly all the kinds of trees and where they lived. We caught trout and eels. We played marbles and kamas ,stinkers and cap ball. We could drive or ride a horse or a donkey. We kept rabbits. We could make bows and arrows and slings we could trap birds and snare trout. We could make bands in the harvest fields and sugganes in the barns.

We made our own kamags and balls and our own fishing rods and lines. We heard all the stories of fairies and bugganes from the Taura Ushta to the Mautha Dhoo. We leaped through the fire of burning gorse at Beltane. We paced the long and lonley roads in the dark, we went errands and did odd jobs and were generaly unprofitable servants. But we won through all right.

Before christmas we brought in bundles of fir,hibbin and holly and helped to put them up on the pictures and walls for the fairies to shelter in during the cold weather. We watched the maid place little pieces of dough when baking, or butter after churning, up on the jamb of the back door just as in old times, portions of food were left outside for the phynodree (or for the unfortunate who were in hidlands or outlawed) those who must not be seen and whom it might be dangerous to help. This method of helping the outcast and not letting the right hand know what the left hand was doing was a beautiful action. These old practices which are now put down to superstition are in fact survivals of realities in the past, just as many religious practices which now "lagg superflous on the stage" have lost their true meaning in the mists of ignorance or perversion.

To return to our games, we had two main games of marbles and four kinds of marbles to play them, clay, glass, marble and ironstone. The games were a mixture of skill and gambling, to begin we formed a pool with great bargainin as to the relative value of the marbles contributed by each to the pool the boy who had few or none was set up by loans to be paid from his winnings or lost altogether. In the first game a circle about nine inches in diameter was marked on the bare ground anywhere or on the floor. Inside it was placed all the marbles in the pool. Outside this was drawn a circle four or five feet in diameter, from which (very strictly "knuckle down" we shot at the marbles in the pool, trying to drive them outside the outer circle, all driven outside were kept. If your marble did not come out it also remained in the pool even if it was one inch inside the outer ring and became an easy prey to the mext man.

The other game the pool was in a straight line and the firing line about three or four feet from it also in a straight line, in this game the marble only had to be knocked off the line to become the property of the lucky shot. Great excitement and sometimes fights occured over this game, knuckle down and no throwing was the strict rule.

In kamag (the equivalent of the irish shinty,)we cut our own sticks and made our own balls, starting with a cinder,or a cork ,we bagged an old stocking and unravellied it, winding the thread round and round the cork until it got about as large as a tennis ball. Then it was stitched through and through until it could stand any amount of hardwear.

Of kamag sticks we had two, one with a long handle and thick head like a golf club. It was used to strike off at the start, or after a foul, the other stick was short and lighter it reached to the knee and was used to get the ball along among the feet and behind the backs of the opposite side who then would be at off side. Thee highway was our field bounded by the hedges and the goals miles away or until we got tired.

Every boy had a sling in his pocket it took up less room than a catapult which came later. It was made from a piece of strong soft leather about four inches long and an inch and a half wide it had a hole the size of a threepenny piece in the centre and a very little hole at each end through which a string was tied. The strings were eighteen inches to two feet long one end had a loop to go round the first finger and the end of the other had a large knot to hold between the finger and thumb. A stone was placed in the leather and it is slung round the head quicker and quicker the body leaning back until it is launched foward at the mark,the knotted end being let go. By practice we could throw long distances but never reached the skill of David as to accuracy.

Snaring trout was a most delicate game, you take three long hairs from a horses tail preferably two black and one white. You knot these together at each end. One end you pin to the top of your cap and let it hang down holding the other knotted end in your left hand; then you spin the cap round until there is a good twist on the thread. You then with the right hand thumb and finger grasp the twisted hair in the middle and bring down the knotted end held in the left hand to the end fastened to the cap and let go the centre the hair then twists on itself double. You release the pin and put a knot on the twisted hair where the two knots already are. You have then a twist hair with a little loop at one end. If you now put the knotted end through this little loop you have a strong snare. You have then to get a long rod one of hazel preferred. Tie your snare at the end of it and you are ready, for business. Go to the river as slow as a tortoise, and as quiet as a red indian. Watch for a trout lying under a stone with his head showing, very slowly put the end of the rod with its loop in the water higher up stream than the place where the trout is lying, and let it drift slowly down guiding it so that the loop will go over the head of the trout. See that the loop is large enough, when the loop is over the head and behind the gills. Give a quick pull towards you and you have th trout in the loop.

I have caught dozens of trout in this way, we were however able to catch far more with our hands groping delicately and slowly under the banks and stones. I was very fond of this and I suppose was fairly good at it, with sleeves and trousers rolled up many a happy day I had, bringing home on a stalk of bracken a dozen or two nice trout. The river in spite of this swarmed with fish in those days.

Sunday trouting was strictly forbidden more I think because of our sunday clothes on rather than the character of the day. One sunday afternoon walking by the river I saw a "whopper" lying in mid stream under a stone. I looked and looked, was tempted and fell. I took off my coat, rolled up my shirt sleeves, took off shoes and stockings and rolled up my trousers to the thighs and stole slowly round to the back of the stone, leaning over as far as I could I was able to bring my hand slowly up stream until I felt his tail. Then gently and slowly my hand crept up and around him until i sripped him round the shoulders, then i trird to get up but it needed two hands or I would fall in. I solved this problem by putting the tail of the trout in my mouth and biting, this freed my hand but the trout dashed himself all over my face. I bit harder and presently the trout fell in the river leaving the tail in my mouth, then I fell in and got wet but the trout without his tail could not swim so I caught him again and I also caught a whipping.

I would strongly advise any boy faced with a like predicimate to put the head of the trout and not its tail in his mouth.

A very common toy in those days was the hoop. It was made of strong iron by the local blacksmith. it was rolled by an iron rod with a hook at its end the hopp could be trundled to school in about half the time it would take to walk for it rushed us past the many temptations to dawdle on the way. Tops were also very common, they were used with a string and not with a whip we competed in making them spin inside a little circle and if possible land ow top of one already spinning. We had the best tops in the school for they were made by my father out of beech wood turned on a little lathe, the peg was a screw and filed to a sharp point.

Cap ball was another game, the caps were placed side by side at the foot of the fairfield wall, the owners stood in a row about three yards away. One boy had the ball which he tossed into one of the hats, the boy into whose cap the ball fell rushed to it, when he touched the ball he called stop and everyone had to stand still, then he threw the ball, to hit one of them, the one hit then took his turn to throw the ball into the hats.

Another game was "stinkers" a straight line wag drawn across the field a stone was placed midway dividing the line into two parts. Two boys would choose sides which they placed on the line (a) team on one side (b) team on the other side of the stone. The best runners were placed nearest the central stone, in front of this line with its two teams and about twenty yards from it was placed two stones or"stinkers" they were about twenty yards apart. When ready a boy from one team would run out to touch the opposite stinker a boy from the other team would run out to touch him and if he did so the first boy would be anchored to the stinker and could only be released by one of his side coming out to touch his outstretched hand and so rescue him. Soon the field would be covered with runners pursuing or escaping and perhaps running round in wide circuits, the more boys on a stinker with linked and outstretched hands,the easier to rescue them, when the whole of one side was on a stinker,the game ended.

In those days neither football or cricket were played on the island except at King Williams College, where I afterwards went.

Eighty years ago the native industries were rapidly disappearing from the island, I remember the tailor and his apprentice coming to our house and sitting cross legged (like the indians) on the kitchen table to make our clothes All the material even the thread had to be ready bought for him. The cloth might be from the wool of our own sheep which had been sent to Moores mill to be spun, dyed and woven into cloth, which could stand up against the ill usage which country boys gave to their clothes.

The local shoe makers could then make shoes from start to finish, he justified his name, there was then a tannery at Douglas where very good leather was made from Manx hides,so shoe making was a wholly native industry.

On holidays perhaps to secure a little peace at home we would sometimes be sent to the shoemaker to get our shoes mended which was done while we waited in his workshop we waited in our stocking feet, watching him work, making wax ends with a stiff bristle to guide the thread through the little hole made by his awl, while he held the leather in a big wooden tweezers held between his knees. The sole leather soaked in water to make it soft was then put on a lapstone on his lap and well beaten wi!h a flat faced hammer before it was stitched in place and then the little nails hammered in all round the edge. When these were finished and on our feet we felt masters of the world and kicked everything kickable on our way home.

These native craftsmen did not confined their activities to their trade they perhaps owned a small farm or croft, they might have a share or two in a boat and "go to the herrings" for a season or two. Or help a neighbour with his farm work, they were in no way servile or thought themselves inferior to anyone, had definite opinions and was not afraid to express them. The wages then were very low compared with present day charges, a highly skilled mason charged three shillings a day and his apprentice one shilling a day. A labourer got about twelve shillings a week, but food was cheap, a good fowl a shilling, eggs twenty for a shilling,herrings were forty to sixty for a shilling, a big cod could be had for a shilling mutton and beef fourpence to sixpence a pound.

The home had not so many frills as now they could afford to have more than one child in the family.

All over the Island there were expert workmen. blacksmiths, joiners, masons, shoemakers, weavers, millwrights and farmers who grew good crops without the aid of artificial manures imported from abroad.

I was just too late to see the tail end of the island flax industry, my grandfather like all the Manx farmers had grown flax on his land to make the family linen. It was a beautiful crop, the stalks were not cut, but pulled tied up in little bundles and soaked in a "dub" or pool to rot the outer shiny coat, then it was spread out on the grass to dry and bleach in the sun after that it was taken to the flax mill to be "skutched" that is the loose outer shell beaten off to leave the fine yellow fibres ready to be taken home to be spun into thread by the "spinsters" the women of the house. When spun into thread it was sent to the weaver to be woven into linen of the particular pattern desired, for some of the old families had a family pattern (like the scotch tartans) only not so glaring in colours. When cotton and the Lancashire mills with their cheap labour came in it undersold the linen, also when steam came in linen sails were no longer needed, so the spinsters retired and joined the milk maids in ease and elegance. the farmers ceased to grow flax, the flax mills went out of business and a phase of Manx life slid quietly into the past and the silence.