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.