← Places

Glen Rushen (The Witch of Glen Rushen)

Place

Glen Rushen, a glen in the parish of Patrick near South Barrule in the west of the Island, is the setting for a well-known Manx folk tale (recorded in Manx Notes and Queries, 1904) of an old witch who could summon sudden storms and set dog-fish loose to destroy fishermen's nets, and who habitually shapeshifted into a hare to escape hunters until a young man wounded the hare with a silver-button-loaded gun and traced the same wound to an old woman in a nearby cottage. A separate Manx legend of the Island's first settlement, hidden under a perpetual 'blue mist' until fishermen discovered it, is sometimes associated with this glen because of the shared name 'Rushen,' but per A.W. Moore's Folk-lore of the Isle of Man (1891) that legend is actually set at Castle Rushen in Castletown, a different place entirely.

Sources

  • As Manx As The Hills; Wikipedia (Buggane)
← Back to Places