Well in Onchan traditionally said to rise and fall with the tide. W. Walter Gill grouped Ballig Well with a small number of Manx wells whose water was believed to fluctuate with the sea. He compared it with Chibber Hidee in the courtyard of Castle Rushen, the name of which he translated as the Tide Well. Gill noted that Chibber Hidee lay sufficiently close to Castletown harbour for tidal movement to have a plausible natural explanation, but Ballig Well was treated in tradition as belonging to the same class of wells. He made the same comparison with Chibber Valthane near Bradda Mooar. That well lay almost half a mile from the sea, yet its water was supposed to be taken at the ebb of the tide. Gill therefore listed Ballig Well, Chibber Hidee and Chibber Valthane together among wells whose behaviour or ritual use was associated with the state of the tide. The present evidence pack preserves no fuller account of Ballig Well itself, and the surviving references are from Gill’s later compilation of Manx well-lore.

Pool in the Awin Ruy, near its junction with the Glen Roy river in the parish of Lonan, associated with a water-spirit tradition. W. Walter Gill described the pool as shut in on its northern side by a high concave wall of rock, with the stream falling into water screened by small timber. It was usually called simply “the Nikkesen”. The Nikkesen was said to appear either as a horse or pony, like the Glashtyn or Cabbyl-ushtey, or as a handsome young man. In the latter form he drew people, particularly young women, into his dwelling beneath the pool. A small stream entering from the south was identified as the route by which he brought them to the water. Their bodies were said never to have been recovered. At full moon the Nikkesen was instead believed to lead his victims in a singing and dancing procession around the small meadow below the pool, watched by people from the slopes above. Gill also recorded another Nikkesen's Pool in the upper Groudle River, although he said the details of that tradition had probably been forgotten.

Former settlement on the slopes above Laxey in the parish of Lonan. The name Lhergy Veg was translated by W. Walter Gill as “The Little Slope”. It lay below Eairy Veg, the Little Shealing, and Creg Dhoo, the Dark Rock. By Gill’s time the house at Lhergy Veg had long been deserted and had fallen into decay. Earlier occupants had included weavers, and Gill noted that architectural traces of their work survived in the building. Another resident was remembered as both the “Fairy Doctor” and the “Fairy Tailor”. He practised veterinary cures and other forms of folk medicine as well as tailoring, played the fiddle, and was said to produce tunes from the sounds made by the river among the rocks below the house. Tradition also credited him with remarkable speed. Gill was told that he could set off across the mountains to Douglas for a reel of thread or some other item and return within twenty minutes. Douglas was about ten miles away by road, although Gill dryly calculated it at about eight miles “as the tailor flies”. The abandoned house also acquired a supernatural story involving two weavers. They saw what appeared to be a pair of enormous figures emerging through the hearth, wearing objects described as resembling horses’ blinkers or bridles at the sides of their heads. The men fled to Agneash for help, but when they returned the house was empty.

Rock cleft and small cascade on the eastern side of North Barrule, in the parish of Maughold, associated with a well-known Buggane tradition. The place was known as Gob ny Scuit and was described in the nineteenth century as a cleft in the rock beside a small cascade. Local people attributed the strange noises heard there in particular winds to a Buggane, or restless spirit, which became known as the Gob ny Scuit Boagane. The spirit was said to wail when the wind was in a certain direction. One account describes it as a disquiet spirit which had met an untimely end. Ballawhane, the celebrated Andreas charm-doctor, was reputed to have tried unsuccessfully to lay it. William Kinnish of Maughold, author of Mona’s Isle and Other Poems (1844), investigated the noises himself. He repeatedly examined the rocks until he discovered that the supposed Buggane was produced by a natural feature: a deep cleft in the face of the rock through which wind and water could produce the sound. Later folklore gave the apparition a more elaborate form. W. Walter Gill recorded that Gob ny Scuit had been haunted by a spectre resembling a man with the head of a cat and large fiery eyes. It was said to howl through the district on winter nights and to be the ghost of a murderer.

Pair of upright slate slabs on the broogh above Dhoon Bay, in the parish of Maughold. W. Walter Gill recorded the stones as standing just above the bay, north of the shore. They were locally called the Giant's Stones, while their Manx name was given as Meir ny Foawyr, “Fingers of the Giant”. Gill described them as smooth slabs of slate, each a few inches thick and about ten feet high by ten feet across. They stood upright and parallel in the ground, approximately eighteen inches apart. One tradition explained them as the giant's fingers. Another said that the stones were the petrified bodies of a giant and his wife. A local wishing custom was attached to the narrow gap between them. The person making the wish stood squeezed between the two slabs, facing north-east towards the sea, with one palm placed flat against each stone. Gill recorded the practice as oral tradition. The present evidence does not establish its age or connect it securely with a particular religious site.

Landslip site on the west coast north of Fleshwick, associated with a traditional disaster involving the Dalby and Niarbyl fishing fleet. William Cashen recorded the story as part of the customs and superstitions of Manx fishermen. According to the tradition, the fleet from Port Masooyl, the old name he used for the Niarbyl, went out and shot its nets on a Sunday night. A south-easterly storm forced the boats to anchor beneath Cronk-yn-Irree-Laa. Part of the steep cliff then slid into the sea. The surf raised by the falling rock was said to have swamped the boats. Cashen wrote that only one fisherman was left alive in Dalby village after the disaster, living at Ballelby. He also said the site of the landslip, called Garroo Clagh or the Rugged Stone, had been pointed out to him when he was a child by old men then over seventy years of age. They accompanied the story with the warning that he was never to fish on a Sunday night. Gill later placed Garroo Clagh among what were remembered as the three great losses of the Peel herring fleet, together with the Mooir ny Fuill and the Wart near Spanish Head. He noted that the date of the disaster could not be securely established. An anonymous account of the Island published in 1809 already described it as having happened more than a century earlier. Fishing on Sunday had also been restricted by law. Gill noted prohibitions in 1610 and further orders in 1714 and 1752.

Before a fishing boat went to sea for the first time, or at the start of each season, it was blessed. The custom connected the practical business of fishing to the spiritual life of the community. The sea was dangerous and unpredictable, and every coastal parish had its stories of boats that did not come back. The blessing acknowledged that danger and sought protection from it, whether from God, from the saints, or from older powers that nobody named too precisely.

The midsummer custom centred on mugwort, gathered at midnight for maximum protective power and worn as a chaplet to ward off enchantment. On Midsummer Eve the bollan bane was pulled and woven. Women wore chaplets of it. Sprigs were pinned to clothes for the Tynwald ceremony the following morning. The herb connected the spiritual protection of the eve to the constitutional ceremony of the day. The sequence mattered: all witches and evil spirits having been disposed of on the previous evening, the great Tynwald Court was held. The Christian saint's name attached to a plant gathered for pre-Christian protective purposes: Bollan-Feaill-Eoin, John's Feast-day wort. The accommodation in a single herb.

Chibbyr Feeayr ("Cold Well") is a holy well in the parish of Malew, part of the tradition of sacred wells found across the Isle of Man. Holy wells were visited for healing, divination, and devotion, and many retained their associations with folk religion well into the modern period.

Dub ny Marroo ("Pool of the Dead") is located on Lamb Hill along the funeral road (Bayr ny Merroo) from Shellack Point to Kirk Bride in the north of the Isle of Man. When a funeral procession passed this way, the bier was laid down on a stone beside the pool, a prayer was said, and a handful of water was sprinkled on the corpse before the journey continued to the parish church.

The agricultural customs surrounding the harvest went beyond the calendar observances. The first furrow of the ploughing season was marked. The last sheaf of the harvest, the mheillea, was given ceremonial treatment. Neighbours helped each other bring in the harvest, and the harvest supper was a communal event that bound the farming community together. These customs required no legislation and no institutional support. They were the habits of people who worked the land together and understood that survival depended on cooperation.

The great November hiring fair, held at Martinmas (12 November). The principal day in the Manx agricultural calendar when farm servants were hired for the coming year and families moved between farms. Hollantide marked the beginning of the Manx winter half-year. It was a day of reckoning, settlement, and transition. The fair combined practical economic business with social gathering, and the movement of servants between farms maintained the connections across parishes that held rural communities together.

The last night of October, the Manx new year. The night the dead walked abroad. Bonfires burned on the hilltops. A calf was sacrificed. Offerings were left at the threshold. Children carry carved turnips and sing the Hop-tu-Naa song door to door, one of the oldest surviving Celtic calendar customs in the British Isles. The tradition predates Christianity but was never suppressed by the Manx church, which understood that the calendar of the older world and the calendar of the Christian year could coexist without contradiction. Hop-tu-Naa required no permission, no funding, no legislation. It required only that people remember it and continue to do it.

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.

A midwinter tradition observed on 26 December, St Stephen's Day. Groups of men and boys would hunt a wren, carry it on a decorated pole, and process from house to house singing the Wren Song. The wren was the king of the birds, hunted at midwinter as part of the ritual turning of the year. Still practised on the Island today, making it one of the oldest continuously observed folk customs in the British Isles.

May Day in the Manx calendar. Mountain ash branches placed on doorways and gateposts to protect the household from evil. Rowan crosses tied with red thread above the door. Cattle driven between fires for purification. The combat between winter and summer enacted on every farm. One of the quarter days marking the turning of the Manx year, connecting the agricultural calendar to the older world of protective custom. The mountain ash went on the door because that was what you did on May Day. The practice required no explanation to the people who carried it out, and no permission from anyone else.

Lammas, 1 August. The people climbed to the highest hills and visited the sacred wells. Probably originally associated with the Celtic god Lug, who in Manx tradition had been brought up at the court of Manannan. Another point in the ritual year where the Christian calendar and something older converged without contradiction.

St Bridget's Day, 1 February, the first of the Manx quarter days. Rushes gathered and laid at the threshold with a spoken invitation: Brede, Brede, tar gys my thie, Bridget, Bridget, come to my house. Was this a Christian saint's day or something connected to the Celtic goddess Brigid? Both. Neither. It was what the Manx people did on the first of February, and they had always done it. The crossing point between the Celtic goddess and the Christian saint was so seamless that nobody needed to choose. The accommodation at work in a doorway.

St Patrick's Day, 17 March. The saint's staff was carried in procession. Staffland was held on that tenure since at least 1231, confirmed by Papal Bull. Another intersection of the Christian calendar with older practice, woven into the land tenure system itself.

Bonfires lit on the hilltops across the Island on Midsummer Eve. They were lit to the windward side of every field so that the smoke might pass over the corn. Cattle were herded into enclosures and blazing furze was carried around them to purify the herd. Protective herbs were gathered. The bonfires connected to the Tynwald Day ceremony the following morning: spiritual protection on the eve, then constitutional ceremony at dawn.

Mary's Feast, observed on the eve of Lady Day (24 March). One of the traditional Manx observances marking the transition points in the agricultural and spiritual year. Part of the network of quarter days and feast days that structured Manx life before and after the Revestment, requiring no institutional support to continue.

Ooig ny Seyir ("Cave of the Carpenter") is a sea cave on the coast beneath Cronk yn Iree Laa in the parish of Patrick. Fishermen reported hearing the sounds of woodworking from within, variously explained as elementals making barrels for the herring catch, building boats, or - most ominously - making coffins. The sounds were said to be heard with unusual vigour before a disaster befell the Peel-side fishing boats.

One of the principal trading fairs on the Island, held at Peel. The fairs were not just markets but social institutions where the scattered farming communities came together, news was exchanged, bargains struck, and the wider world connected to the parish. The fairs survived the Revestment because they served practical needs that no administration could replace.

The first person met on a journey, or the first person to enter a house on New Year's Day. The qualtagh carried significance: a dark-haired man was lucky, a woman or a red-haired person less so. The custom shaped behaviour at the turning of the year and reflected the Manx understanding that thresholds and beginnings carried particular power. The qualtagh tradition connects to the wider Celtic belief in the significance of first encounters and first footings.

Annual festivals organised by the Cleveland Manx community from 1853 onward. The festivals brought Manx families together from across the settlements in Cleveland, Newburgh, and Warrensville, sustaining the communal bonds that the emigration had carried across the Atlantic.