Cormac mac Cuilennáin, king-bishop of Cashel, compiled a glossary around the year 900. It is the earliest dictionary in any non-classical European language. In it, Cormac describes Manannán as "a celebrated merchant who was in the Isle of Man. He was the best pilot that was in the west of Europe. He used to know by studying the heavens the period which would be fine weather and the bad weather, and when each of these two times would change." A weather forecaster. The god of the sea, the ruler of the Otherworld, the one who could make a single man look like a thousand — reduced to a merchant with a knack for reading clouds. This is what scholars call euhemerisation: taking a divine figure and rewriting him as a historical person. Christian scribes did it routinely. They could not have pagan gods in their manuscripts, so the gods became kings, or merchants, or clever men who could read the sky. The storms became weather forecasting. The Otherworld became a trade route. Moore, writing in 1891, traces the process clearly: as early as the ninth and tenth centuries Manannán "had suffered the change known as euhemerisation, from an immortal he had become a mortal." Yet the Voyage of Bran, written a century before Cormac, has Manannán riding a chariot across the ocean and seeing flowery plains where mortals see waves. The earlier text is more mythological, not less. The reduction came afterwards, deliberately. Someone decided to make the god smaller. It did not work. The fog still comes in from the south. The rushes still go up the hill. The fishermen of Peel and Port St Mary, for centuries, went to sea with an understanding that the sea belonged to someone, and you did not go out on it without acknowledgement.

Cronk y Voddy is the site of Manannan's Chair (Stoyly Manannan or Manachan), a large eroded rampart in the parish of German, on the Staarvey Road between Lhergydhoo and Knocksharry. Within it stands an earthen mound in the form of a seat, from which the legendary Manannan Mac Lir is said to have dispensed the law; a tradition also held that this mythical king of the Island was buried within.

A supernatural smith who resided on the Isle of Man, "of so long-lived or mythic a nature as to be found living in all ages of pagan history." Cuillean — or Guillean — forged the magic sword, spear and shield for Concovar Mac Nessa, king of Ulster. The oracle of Cloghor directed Concovar to travel to the Isle of Man and commission the weapons from Cuillean, and the supernatural power they carried won him the sovereignty of Ulster. Brash, writing in Antiquitates Manniae, argues that Cuillean may be identical with Manannán mac Lir. The points of identification are several: both are intimately connected with the Isle of Man, both are forgers of supernatural weapons, both are located in Ulster where Manannán is said to have reigned over the provincial fairy kingdom, and both fell into disrepute among the Christians. "Cuillean, too, fell into disrepute among the Christians, as did Mananan." The Manx Gaelic phrase giolla Guillen — "the servant of Guillean" — survived into modern usage as a synonym for an imp of the devil, carrying the memory of the old smith long after the stories themselves had faded. Cuillean's cave was on Slieve Gullion in County Armagh, still remembered with a mixture of awe and unease in local tradition when O'Kearney recorded it for the Ossianic Society.

One of the most feared actions of the malevolent fairies was to steal children, especially before baptism. If a child were taken, a decrepit and emaciated fairy would be left in its place. The prettier the child, the greater the risk. Protective measures included laying an iron poker on the child when left alone, tying a red thread around the child's neck, and carrying bread and cheese to give to the first person met on the way to christening. Salt and iron were the most reliable protections. The changeling tradition reflected a world where children were vulnerable and the community had rituals to express and manage that anxiety.

A system of domestic customs designed to maintain good relations with the fairy world. A fire was kept burning in the house through the night so the fairies might come in and enjoy it. Bread was left out for them. Water crocks were filled with clean water before bed, used by the fairies for bathing and thrown out in the morning, never used for any other purpose. Women would not spin on Saturday evenings as this displeased the Mooinjer Veggey. At every baking and churning a small piece of dough and butter was stuck on the wall for fairy consumption. The mountain ash or cuirn, in the form of a cross made without a knife, was placed over the threshold. Yellow flowers growing in a hedge offered protection. These were not quaint survivals. They were practical measures in a world where the fairy folk were neighbours.

Moore records the tale. All the fish were summoned to choose a king. The herring was elected, and all the fish came to pay homage — all except the fluke, who arrived late. When the fluke heard that the herring had been made king of the sea, he twisted his mouth to one side and said "The Herring, king of the sea!" — and his mouth has been on one side ever since. The story connects directly to one of the most distinctive oaths in Manx law. The Deemsters, in their oath of office, swore to execute the laws of the Isle "as indifferently as the herring's backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish." The herring's backbone runs perfectly straight through the centre of the fish — and so the Deemster must hold the balance of justice, favouring neither side. The same fish that ruled the sea by election governed the courtroom by metaphor. The oath is ancient. The six days of creation are invoked, and the herring backbone is the standard of impartiality. The tale and the oath belong together: the herring earned its kingship by consent, and the Deemster earned his authority by the same principle. Both systems — the fish and the court — worked because they held the centre.

Manannán mac Lir had another name: Orbsen. From Orbsen, Lough Orbsen — now Lough Corrib in Galway — took its name, because when his grave was being dug the lake broke forth from the earth. The name corruption is traced by O'Flaherty: Orbsen became Oreb, then Orib, then Corrib. At Magh Ullin — now Moycullin — Uillin, grandchild of Nuadh of the Silver Hand, "overthrew in battle, and had the killing of, Orbsen Mac Alloid, commonly called Mananan (the Mankish man), Mac Lir (son of the sea), for his skill in seafaring." O'Flaherty records this in his West Connaught, published by the Irish Archaeological Society in 1846. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the lake was still called Lough Orbsen. Keating gives Manannán's genealogy through the name Orbsen: "Mananan, the son of Alladh, the son of Elathan, son of Dalboeth, an immediate descendant of Nemedius, the progenitor of the Tuatha de Danans in Ireland." The Tuatha Dé Danann, Keating continues, "are still believed to rule the spirit or fairy land of Erin; to reign paramount in the lis, the cave, the mine; to occupy genii palaces in the deepest recesses of the mountains, and under the deep water of our lakes." Under the deep water of our lakes. The god of the sea lies beneath a lake, and the lake came from his grave. Gill noted the connection in 1929: wells and lakes as thresholds to the Otherworld, and Lough Corrib as one of them — "said to have issued from the burial-place of Manannan MacLir."

Manannán wrapped his island in mist to hide it from invaders. The Traditionary Ballad records the method: "It was not with his sword he kept it, neither with arrows or bow, but when he would see ships sailing, he would cover it round with a fog." The Supposed True Chronicle adds that he "kept, by necromancy, the Land of Man under mists," and that if he feared an enemy, "he would of one man cause to seem an hundred, and that by art magic." The Manx Gaelic word for this power is cloagey druiaght — the invisible cloak, rendering invisible at pleasure the person who wore it. Roeder recorded the term in 1904, sitting in a list alongside fer obbah, pishag, and guesag — the wider Manx magical vocabulary still in living use at the turn of the twentieth century. It is not borrowed from the Irish féth fíada tradition. It is a Manx word for a Manx concept. In Irish mythology the cloak does more than hide islands. In the Wasting Sickness of Cúchulainn, Manannán arrives in a magic mist, takes his wife Fand back from the Ulster hero, and shakes his cloak between them so they can never meet again. Cúchulainn takes a draught of forgetfulness. The cloak separates lovers and erases memory. That is a different kind of power from the one the Manx stories describe, and rather less comfortable. Whether anyone still believed in the mist by the eighteenth century is another question, but the old sense persisted that the Island was a place apart, sheltered, hidden, answerable to its own customs. Hall, writing in the 1880s, put it simply: "The mists of Little Mannanan, son of Lear, did not forsake our island when Saint Patrick swept him out of it. They continued to come up from the south, and to conspire with the rapid currents from the north to drive ships on to our rocks." The mist outlasted the god. Or the god outlasted the saint.

The Manx mermaid. Part of Moore's full taxonomy of the supernatural beings that inhabited the Manx landscape alongside the human population. The ben-varrey belonged to the coastal waters in the same way the buggane belonged to specific inland sites. Each creature had its territory, its character, and its rules of engagement with the human world.

A melody the Manx people said had been learned from the fairies themselves. A farmer wearing mugwort for protection went into the hills and heard the fair folk playing music. He went back three times to memorise the tune, each time returning home later until finally arriving at sunrise to be met by an angry wife. But he had the tune, and it passed into the tradition of the island. Fairy music made safe by the protective herb, captured and carried back to the world of men.

In 1896, a gold model boat was found at Broighter on the shore of Lough Foyle in County Derry. It is eighteen centimetres long, with two rows of nine oars, benches, a paddle rudder, rowlocks, and miniature tools. It was buried in a salt-marsh, probably as a votive offering to a sea god — probably Manannán mac Lir — sometime around the first century BC. The craftsmanship is extraordinary. Someone spent weeks on it, getting every detail right, and then put it in the ground where nobody would ever see it again. That is what an offering looks like. Not showy. Not loud. Just the best work you can do, given to the sea, in the dark, and trusted to reach where it is going. O'Donovan recorded that Manannán was still vividly remembered in the mountainous district of Derry and Donegal, and was said to have an enchanted castle in Lough Foyle — the same stretch of water where the boat was buried. The hoard also contained a gold torc, a gold bowl, and other gold ornaments, all of exceptional quality. The collection is now held by the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. The Broighter boat is the earliest known physical evidence of devotion to a sea god in the Irish Sea world. It predates the written sources by a thousand years. When the Manx people carried their bundles of rushes up South Barrule at Midsummer, they were performing a version of the same act: offering the best of what they had to the one who kept them safe.

The most famous of the bugganes, the malevolent site-specific spirits of Manx folklore. This buggane tore the roof off St Trinian's church every time it was built. Timothy the tailor took on the challenge, stitching a pair of breeches while the buggane rose from the ground before him. It demanded he look at its great head, large eyes, and long teeth. Timothy kept stitching. He finished the last stitch and leapt to consecrated ground just in time. The buggane, unable to follow him onto holy earth, tore off its own head and hurled it after him. Timothy was unscathed. The church remains roofless to this day. The story captures the accommodation at work: Christianity protected against the buggane, but it did not deny the buggane's existence.

The water-horse of Manx folklore. A shape-shifting creature who could appear as an ordinary horse grazing by a lake or river. Anyone who mounted it would find themselves unable to dismount as the creature plunged into deep water. In 1859 it was reported that such an animal was to be seen in a field near Ballure Glen, and hundreds of people left Ramsey to catch sight of it. Campbell, writing of the same tradition in Scotland, concluded that the old Celts must have had a destroying water-god to whom the horse was sacred. The Manx water-horse was sometimes identified with the Glashtyn.

The cloak of mist is the most enduring motif in the Manannán tradition. When enemies approached the Island, Manannán mac Lir would wrap it in fog, hiding it from sight. The Traditionary Ballad, composed between 1504 and 1522, records it plainly: “when he would see ships sailing, he would cover it round with a fog.” The Supposed True Chronicle elaborates that Manannán “was a paynim” who “kept, by necromancy, the Land of Man under mists,” and that if he feared an enemy, “he would of one man cause to seem an hundred, and that by art magic.” The Manx Gaelic word for the cloak is cloagey druiaght — the invisible cloak. Charles Roeder recorded it in 1904. It is a Manx word, not borrowed from the Irish, for a specifically Manx tradition. The Irish equivalent, feth fíada, appears in several of the major Irish mythological texts. In the Wasting Sickness of Cúchulainn, Manannán arrives “in a magic mist,” takes back his wife Fand, and shakes his cloak between her and Cúchulainn so they can never meet again. Cúchulainn takes a draught of forgetfulness. The cloak does not just hide islands. It separates lovers and erases memory. Morrison places Manannán at Peel Castle, where he once caused a single man standing guard on the battlements to appear as a thousand, sending the enemy fleet away in terror. In another version, he made boats from sedges, creating the illusion of a great fleet in Peel Bay. A god who fought with fog and grass — easy to dismiss, but hard to forget. The cloak survives in everyday Manx speech. When the sea mist settles along the coastline, someone will say it: Manannán’s cloak. A piece of mythology so embedded in daily life that people repeat it without thinking about what they are saying, or who they are remembering.

Spirit of the sea-caves in Manx supernatural tradition. Part of Moore's classified taxonomy of the Manx supernatural world, which was not chaotic superstition but a named, categorised system. Every type of spirit had its Manx name, its characteristics, its locations, and its relationship to the human community.

The Night Man, a familiar spirit peculiar to the Isle of Man, though bearing a faint resemblance to the Irish Banshee. One of the two familiar or household spirits known on the Island alongside the Lhiannan-Shee. While the Lhiannan-Shee was a guardian, the Dooinney-Oie was a warning spirit whose appearance foretold danger or death.

Crossing points on the Island where tradition holds the fairies pass. Travellers say 'hello fairies' when crossing. Not antiquarian curiosity but living practice, observed by visitors and residents alike into the present day. Part of the accommodation between the visible and invisible worlds that defines Manx cultural identity.

The interior of Fairy Hill in Rushen was supposed to be the palace of the Fairy King. Many a tale was told of the midnight revels of the fairy court of Mona. The fairies were especially fond of the glen at Glentrammon, and were always abroad during the harvest moon. The fairy hills were the ancient tumuli, the burial mounds of an older people, and the connection between the fairy world and the land of the dead ran through everything.

Men and women who had acquired the reputation of being able to counter the malevolence of the fairies through incantations and herbs. Their remedies were usually applied to the cure of cattle. One of the most renowned, Teare of Ballawbane, told Train in 1833 that the malevolence of the fairies had caused the seed potatoes to become tainted in the ground, and that all the potatoes he had taken under his protection had vegetated vigorously. The fairy doctors occupied a recognised position in the community, mediating between the human and fairy worlds through knowledge passed down across generations.

A young sailor, coming ashore at Douglas on a fine moonlit night, was crossing the mountain toward his sister's house at Kirk Malew when he heard the noise of horses, a huntsman's halloo, and the finest horn in the world. He counted thirteen riders, all dressed in green, gallantly mounted, riding so close he could have touched them. He was so delighted he would gladly have followed. When he reached his sister and told the story, she clapped her hands in relief: those you saw were fairies, and it is well they did not take you away with them. Waldron recorded the story as though it had happened to someone he knew.

The Manx Heritage Foundation's schools resource card records that fishermen "in early times" prayed to Saint Patrick before putting to sea: Dy bannee Noo Parick shinyn as nyn maatey — "St Patrick bless us and our boat." This was the formal prayer, spoken at the harbour, addressed to the saint. But a song called Mannanan Beg Mac y Leir also circulated among the fishing communities, collected in Kiaull yn Theay — the Music of the People, published by Culture Vannin. The formal prayer went to the saint. The song remembered the god. Both lived in the same community, often in the same boat, and nobody saw a problem with that. The two existed side by side because the accommodation ran deeper than theology. Moore records that Teare's daughter was still practising the charming of fishing nets in the late nineteenth century: "she is resorted to by the fishermen for the sake of having their nets charmed, and so cause them to be lucky in their fishing." The power passed man to woman to man, alternating through generations. The Church knew. The fishermen knew. The fish, presumably, did not mind. Bishop Wilson composed a formal prayer for the use of fishermen, printed in Manx by Bishop Hildesley. Train records it. A formal ecclesiastical composition, separate from folk tradition, issued by a bishop who understood that the sea demanded its own forms of address. Between the bishop's prayer, the saint's blessing, and the god's song, the Manx fisherman had every authority covered.

A hairy goblin or sprite of similar character to the Phynnodderee but more unpredictable. Cregeen defined the Glashtyn as a goblin or sprite. He frequented lonely spots and was useful to people or otherwise as the caprice of the moment led him. The name also applied to the water-horse, the Cabbyl-Ushtey, a shape-shifting creature who could appear as a handsome young man to lure victims, then transform and drag them into the water. The people around Glen Meay believed the glen below the waterfall was haunted by the spirit of a man who mistook the Glashtyn for an ordinary horse, mounted it, and was carried into the sea and drowned.

The communities remembered what happened to anyone who interfered with the keeills. A windmill built from keeill stones went with tremendous fury and had to be taken down. A farmhouse roofed with stone from a keeill produced such unearthly noises that the stone was returned to the site. Bishop Wilson knew the formula for the worst curse a Manx person could utter: Clogh ny killagh ayns corneil dty hie mooar, may a stone of the church be found in the corner of thy dwelling-house. The stories protected what the buildings could not. The holiness was understood to be permanent, deposited in the ground, infused into the stones. A ruined keeill was not a dead church. It was a sleeping one.

The spirits that haunted churchyard stiles in Manx tradition. The boundary between consecrated and unconsecrated ground was a charged threshold in Manx belief. The keimagh inhabited that boundary, occupying the liminal space where the sacred met the everyday. Part of Moore's comprehensive taxonomy of the Manx supernatural world.

The spirit friend, a guardian spirit identical with the Irish Liannan-Shee. A familiar or household spirit who was implacable in resentment but unchanging in friendship. One of the two familiar spirits known in the Isle of Man, the other being the Dooinney-Oie. The Lhiannan-Shee attached itself to a particular person and could bring either great fortune or great ruin depending on how the relationship was maintained.