The Phynnodderee

The Phynnodderee was a fallen fairy, cast out of fairyland for falling in love with a mortal woman. Hairy, ungainly, enormously strong, and slightly tragic. He would gather sheep from the mountain in a single night, cut meadow grass, or move stones that no team of men could shift. He asked nothing in return except to be left alone.

The stories clustered around him like burrs. A farmer at the round meadow in the parish of Marown complained the grass wasn’t cut close enough. The following year the Phynnodderee let the farmer cut it himself, but followed behind stubbing up the roots so fast that the farmer barely escaped having his legs cut off. For years afterwards nobody could be found to mow that meadow until a fearless soldier from one of the garrisons took the task on, starting in the centre and cutting outward in a circle, one eye on the scythe and the other watching for the Phynnodderee. The field is still called yn cheeaney rhunt, the Round Meadow.

A gentleman building a house at Tholt-e-Will, at the base of Snaefell, quarried stones on the beach. One immense block of white stone could not be moved despite the united strength of all the men in the parish. Overnight the Phynnodderee carried not only this block but the entire quarry — over a hundred cartloads — from the shore to the building site.

Among his many errands gathering sheep, there is the story of the Loaghtan hare. The Phynnodderee brought home a hare among the flock and explained that the loaghtan beg, the little native sheep, had given him more trouble than all the rest, making him run three times round Snaefell before he caught it.

When a grateful farmer, meaning kindness, laid out clothes for him, the Phynnodderee picked them up one by one and lamented in Manx over each piece: cap for the head, alas poor head; coat for the back, alas poor back. Then he departed forever, mourning: if these be all thine, thine cannot be the merry Glen of Rushen. The old people mourned his going. “There has not been a merry world,” they said, “since he lost his ground.” The kindness that drove him away was genuine, but it misunderstood him. The Manx people who told that story across the generations understood what it meant to be improved by people who did not understand what they were improving.

The Moddey Dhoo of Peel Castle

Waldron, writing in the 1720s, recorded an apparition in the shape of a large black spaniel with curled shaggy hair that haunted the guard room at Peel Castle nightly. The English garrison soldiers grew so accustomed to it that they adjusted their behaviour in its presence, refraining from swearing and profane discourse as though a senior officer were watching. Every evening it appeared. Every morning it was gone. The soldiers lived with it.

Then a drunk soldier went alone to test whether the creature was dog or devil. A great noise was heard. He came back unable to speak, and died within three days “in agonies more than is common in a natural death.” The passage where the apparition had been seen was closed up and another way made. Waldron recorded this not as folklore but as something the garrison took seriously enough to alter the architecture of the castle.

The supernatural imposing better behaviour on the occupying army than any order from London had managed. That detail matters. The Moddey Dhoo was not a Manx spirit tamed by the English presence. It was the other way round.

The Household Guardians

Two familiar spirits were known on the Isle of Man, and between them they covered most of what a household might need to fear or hope for. The Lhiannan-Shee was the spirit friend — a guardian who attached herself to a particular person and could bring either great fortune or great ruin depending on how the relationship was maintained. She was implacable in resentment but unchanging in friendship. The Dooinney-Oie, the Night Man, was the warning spirit — his appearance foretold danger or death, calling from the cliffs before storms to warn the fishermen.

The Glashtyn was harder to classify. Cregeen defined him as a goblin or sprite who frequented lonely spots and was useful to people or otherwise as the caprice of the moment led him. He was similar in character to the Phynnodderee but more unpredictable — sometimes helpful, sometimes dangerous. 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.

And then there was the Pagan Lady of Peel — not a folklore character but a real woman, buried around 950 AD on St Patrick’s Isle with the richest Viking-age female grave goods in the British Isles. An iron rod lay down the length of her body, wrapped in textile and feathers from a goose wing. The archaeologist Neil Price identified its resemblance to staffs found in Norse graves associated with women who practised seiðr, the Norse tradition of prophecy and magic. If Price is right, the Pagan Lady was a völva — a seer, a practitioner of the old religion, buried with the tools of her art inside a Christian cemetery. The community that buried her saw no contradiction, or if they did, they accommodated it. That accommodation runs through everything on the Island.

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