We’re a curious lot, us Manxies. We love nothing better than a bravvag by a warm fire, then settling down with a hot cuppa and a slice of buttered bonnag and swapping some skeet with friends. Let’s face it, on an island there are limits to what you can get up to (and get away with), even for a wise old Manx Cat like me. But I remember in my younger days, exploring around Laxey to see what was what. Laxey, as practically everyone knows, is the home of the famous Lady Isabella. OK, not actually Lady Isabella, I doubt she spent much time in the village admiring the magnificent engineering spectacle that bore her name. Whilst the Queens of the world got enormous liners proudly bearing their names as they forged across oceans and stars of the silver screen adorned the latest fighter planes that blazed across the skies, poor Lady Isabella was forced to stand in front of a large and no doubt excited crowd and smile and thank them ever so much for the incredible honour of having her name forever linked with........a wheel.

In its defence, the Lady Isabella, or as most people refer to it (no doubt to Lady Isabella’s secret relief) the Laxey Wheel, is a very impressive wheel. The absolute cutting edge technology of its day, the Wheel was essential to pumping water from the equally impressive deep mines in Laxey. With a diameter of 72 feet and 6 inches (I can’t help thinking someone was either proving a point or made a slight miscalculation in the construction) and with buckets 6 feet wide, its construction in 1854 was no mean feat of engineering and it is a testament to how well it was built that it is still standing, and turning, today. Every year it is visited by countless numbers of tourists (more than ten less than ten hundred thousand), the bravest of whom will scale the narrow stone steps that wind around its main supporting tower. And of those, I would estimate that very very few indeed of those brave enough to look down from the wooden platform that stretches out above it, consider its height to be any less impressive than when they were safely on the ground looking up. The large, bright red, multi spoked wheel steadily turning amidst a cacophony of dripping water is very definitely the star attraction. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the wheel itself is quite probably the first thing people notice when they stand in front of it. After all, it is in Laxey and it is a wheel, so it would be awkward if that wasn’t the case.

But for all their cunning detective work in identifying the wheel, just as many people also manage to miss the large stone carved three legs motif set proudly at the front of the wheel’s stone base, directly below the bright Manx flags fluttering in the breeze at its crown. Well, when I say they miss seeing it, that’s not entirely accurate, I’m certain that they definitely see it, but what they likely don’t notice is the direction in which those stone legs are facing.

The toe is touching the ground and the foot is pointing to the right.

Trust me, when you’re a cat you tend to make a note of stepping feet, even if you are a cat without a tail. So it’s no surprise that I paid attention to this detail, or that I realised it’s the opposite way to the Manx flag. Those same flags flying on the poles at the top of the wheel, goes the opposite direction to the legs carved into it. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised the Wheel isn’t the only example of the three legs that way round. Even a cat with only a passing interest in heraldry will find them all around the island — carved into stone crosses, set into old buildings, mounted on hotels along Douglas promenade — and most of them have the legs running to the right. The last time I snuck onto a computer to check (well, what do you expect if you just leave a mouse lying there in the open, it’s bound to attract a nosey cat), the official Roll of Arms from around 1280 showed them running to the right. To me, seeing the legs in this direction, as if turning clockwise, is the natural way. If you placed them on a compass with north at the top, they’d be walking West to East towards the next sunrise, always moving forwards in time, and more importantly to the next breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and so on. One theory for the origins of the triskelion is that it was a solar symbol, following the path of the sun. There has been an example found just across the water in Ireland dating back to around 3200BC, and they have been found in association with almost every ancient culture along the shores of the Mediterranean. Although not, it seems, in ancient Egypt, where they were, presumably, much more interested in spending their time worshipping cats. And that’s just purrfect.

But back to the here and now and that Manx flag. What is the reason for having them going towards the sunset, moving back in time. And when did someone make the decision to have it that way, and why?

Now my first thought, and bear with me because this is a slightly uncomfortable one — one comparison I’ve heard made is to the Nazi swastika and a question if the similarity was uncomfortable so they decided to officially make it go the other way around. And from the pictures I’ve seen, I can understand why people might think the three legs does look a lot like that wartime flag. But here’s the thing, a lot of that is the colours and the general idea of the shape but I had it in the back of my mind that those two shapes were older than the 1940s, a lot older. There was something, I just needed to.....that’s it, I remember now, I’ve seen that four legged shape carved into stone somewhere, a really really old stone....now where was it.......think, think...there’s something about fish.....hmmm fish.....now, why am I thinking of fish and stones......fish....stone...that’s it, St Peter! The church in Onchan named after the fisherman. There’s old stones there, really really old ones, much older than the church. Time to investigate.

So I hopped aboard the toast rack heading south. For those who don’t know it, that’s the open sided coach pulled along behind the main electric tram, it’s not as posh as the main tram but you get a better view and more importantly, it’s much easier for a cat to work the tourists for attention as you walk beneath the seats. Now normally I’d stay put until we reached Port Jack where I could work the tourists into handing over some of the fish and chips, well, fish, but for this I jumped off a bit earlier and made my way up the hill towards the church.

Now, the tramlines had been running alongside King Edward Road for quite a distance before I hopped off, and as I took the path on the landward side of the tracks leading up towards the church, the name was rattling around in my head. King Edward Road. Most people, if they think about it at all, assume the King Edward in question is Edward VIII, in the same way they assume the Edward of the Edward VIII Pier down in Douglas was Edward VIII. He was not. The King in question is Edward VII, his father, who came to the island with Queen Alexandra on the 25th of August 1902, sixteen days after his coronation. The road was renamed in his honour after that visit. Before that, it had been called New Marine Drive — and that’s the bit that interests me, because Marine Drive, the road that skirts the coast on the south side of Douglas, still has its old name, and the two of them mirror each other across Douglas Bay almost exactly. North marine, south marine. One got a royal name, one didn’t. And down on the pier, well, Edward VIII never even visited the island. I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the British Isles still named after him. We do things differently here.

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, the church.

I padded into the churchyard and began to wander through the oldest looking gravestones, hoping to find whatever it was that I had remembered. But, nothing. I sat down and began to clean my paws whilst I had a think. There was definitely something about this place, I could feel it in the back of my mind, but what. It wasn’t the Archibald Knox designs, as nice as they were and it wasn’t those big stone box things they had....but there was definitely something. Then a movement from inside the church caught my eye. Hmmm, might as well nip in and see if there’s any skeet I’m missing whilst I wait to remember what it was I had come for.

As soon as I walked in it struck me. Well, nearly, but I managed to stop before I walked into it. A stone. A big stone, with lots of carvings on it. And there were more of them, this was it, this is what I couldn’t quite remember, these stones and there was one with a very specific symbol.....there...I found it. Leant up against the wall at the back of the church, number 92, a big round wheel shaped cross at the top, some fancy ribbon like carving running down the middle and at the bottom.....a swasti...wait, no that’s not right. My mind again, there was something....a fylfot, that’s it. A fylfot. Or as I like to think of it, a strangely fancy name for a four armed version of the three legs of Mann. But old, like, before the Vikings really established themselves around here. Ninth century, the experts reckon. An ancient symbol on the other end of an old style cross. Christian and pagan both carved into the same stone.

What the Victorians Found

There’s a particular kind of tourist — invariably a clergyman or a fellow of some learned society, usually both — who spent the latter half of the nineteenth century crawling around old churches with a notebook and an excess of enthusiasm. We owe them a great deal. They wrote everything down.

Llewellyn Jewitt documented the Onchan fylfot in 1885, tracing it back through Trojan whorls and Scandinavian bracteates and identifying the four-armed version as Thor’s hammer — Mjölnir, the weapon of the sky-god, seen from above, spinning. A year later Dr John Newton traced the three legs from Greek coins through Sicily to the Isle of Man via Alexander III of Scotland, identifying the triskele as the emblem of the sun-god Frey. Then in 1887 the Reverend W. S. Calverley published a paper on a carved stone at Isel Church in Cumberland that had both a svastika and two triskeles on it. Calverley described one triskele as whirling “from left to right — with the sun.“ He called it, directly, “the origin of the ’Legs of Mann.’“

And then there was Robert Gregg. Unlike the others who made very definite claims about what was what, Gregg was more cautious. Whilst he did suggest that the fylfot originated from two Z-shaped lightning bolts crossing in the middle instead of from solar motion, mostly he argued that the triskele and the fylfot were “not necessarily either the same“ and that neither was derivable from the other. So, more a case of not specifically any one thing but generally any one thing. Which is useful.

I stretched out in a patch of sun on the south side of the churchyard and considered this. Five scholars, one family of symbols, and not one of them agrees on which god owns which shape. The hammer is Thor — that much is solid, it’s in the texts, Mjölnir, no argument. But everything else? It seemed like everyone who gave an opinion wanted to be different in some way than the others and not necessarily argue or disagree, just quietly give their own opinion and pick out the bits from others that agreed with what they wanted to say. Huh, what an idea, as if that kind of thing would carry on now....and then I got distracted by a couple of wolves carved into a nearby slab. Wolves.....people domesticated them, trained them and called them dogs. Now cats....well cats are just cats and always have been. Freyja, she was a cat lady. I bet the Egyptians would have liked her......where was I, oh yes, the symbols. Well it doesn’t matter what symbol belonged to what Norse god really does it, we’re not here to argue who got which lucky necklace, what matters is the shapes, and on that score they’re all pretty consistent.

But knowing that they all had similar shapes that mostly went the same way around, it still didn’t really give me any clue if this was a deliberate choice, coincidence or just someone doing it first and other people thinking oh that looks good let’s do that.

I lay down. And stretched. It’s amazing just how good a stretch can be, especially if it’s on a nice flat, warm stone in the sunshine. Hmmm, the sun, it definitely felt goo...the sun! That’s it. I remembered that weird monument thingy they’d got in Castletown. Hmm Castletown, lovely harbour they’ve got there and there’s those little fishing boats...oh wait, where was I, oh yes, the sundial. Ignoring that crazy thing in Castletown that seems to have a different sundial for every hour of the day, a sundial, that explains it. Ah, hmm, let me back up a step or two and explain what I mean a little better. You see, a sundial is pretty simple, it’s basically a stick in the ground and you look at the shadow to work out what time it is. Simple as that. The sun goes across the sky and the shadow of the stick moves as it does, and, well, that’s it really. You don’t have to wind it or connect it to your phone, there’s no annoying alarm and it doesn’t have a stopwatch feature (well, I suppose technically it does but a really slow one and it’s the dial), but they’ve been around for, well, as long as someone needs to know they’re late for something really, or someone else is late for your thing. I’ve never really understood why so many people are obsessed with time, that’s one of the best things about being Manx, Traa dy Liooar yessir, there’s time enough and I’ll be there when I’m there. That’s basically cat time really.

But sundials, they’re old, as old as these stones, and sundials work...well....clockwise. The giveaway is sort of in the name, like the Laxey Wheel. Sundials work like clocks....or do clocks work like sundials....anyway, that doesn’t matter. The important thing is, they go that way around, sort of looping to the right, well to the right at the top and the left at the bottom, but you get what I mean. That would make sense. If you’re really old and you live a really long time ago, you’d just go with what you know, and shadows go the same way so it’s natural to think you’d just copy that pattern. I mean, if you think Gods (and cats) created and rule the world, then it stands to reason you’d stick with how they made shadows work. So you’d just make your symbols go the same way. Sort of makes sense really.

Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, but let’s face it, then you’d be so dizzy about turning the wrong way up when you got here that you’d not be worried about which way around the crazy symbols go. Or which way the toilet flushes.

I sat up and licked my paw triumphantly — yes, it’s a cat thing, we do it, we like it, you know what we mean when we do it, it means we’re right, and smug, live with it. But as I did, I saw my reflection in the glass doors of the church. And I looked goooood, some might even say, purrfect. Ha, purrfect, get it? Of course you do, now where was I. Oh yes, I’m a genius. Why? Because I saw my reflection and it was a mirror image of me. A mirror image. An exact copy but the opposite way around. So what, you might ask. But let’s think about this a little. A reflected image is just like making a stamp print of something. If you carve a picture into a block of wood say, and then cover it in ink and stamp it onto a piece of paper what you get is the reverse of that image. Don’t believe me? Try it. If you carve your name into a potato then cover it in (washable) paint and press it onto a piece of paper, your name will have all the correct letters, but they’d be the wrong way around. And that’s what happened to the first coins. Well, that’s my theory and unless you were there can you prove me wrong?

The first Manx coins with the three legs of Mann symbol on them were produced in the seventeenth century and those coins had the three legs going right to left. But, when they agreed to use that symbol and they carved it onto a solid press to stamp onto the coins, if they’d carved it the way it “should“ look then the coins they stamped out with it would have the symbol in the reverse direction. And I can definitely believe a person who was approving the stamp to be used would have wanted to see it the way they expected to see it, not the reverse. That’s just the kind of oh yeah, should have thought of that moments that happen all the time, to everyone who’s not a cat.

But then I thought about it a little more. What if those coins weren’t a mistake? What if, just suppose, that was how they were meant to look. If they were the “wrong“ way around wouldn’t someone have noticed and complained. I mean, making a mistake is one thing, but letting the mistake carry on and pretend that was how you meant it to be all along. Well, there’s a name for people like that, I think it starts politi......

It turns out, both directions have been in use for centuries — the Sword of State runs them against the sun, the Kirk Maughold Pillar Cross runs them with it — and nobody particularly worried about which was correct. The reversed version even generated its own folklore, including the well-known verse about spurning Ireland with one leg, kicking Scotland with the second, and kneeling to England with the third. The kneeling only works if the legs run against the sun. I have nothing further to say about kneeling to England, other than, cats don’t kneel. We bend. And stretch. And, did you know that Joseph Pilates based his famous exercise regime on what he saw whilst watching cats? He called it contrology at first, and he finished off a lot of his ideas whilst he was on the Isle of Man. Now I’m not saying that the global fitness craze that is Pilates is essentially based on Manx cats. I’m just saying, cats, and he was on the Isle of Man, with time on his hands, near Manx cats. You can join the dots.

But, back to the legs, this time not stretching them but finding out who actually made the decision to have the official Three Legs of Mann going round the way they do, and when. Time for some more investigation. Well, maybe a little stretch first, and possibly a slight nap before that lovely warm sun disappears.

Right, investigation. Time to find a mouse. OK, a computer, but where there’s a computer there’s bound to be a mouse. Let’s see what I can find out, maybe a record of an announcement, or a debate in the House of Keys, some record in the newspaper about impassioned debates over the national symbol, some monumental vote to decide the fate of the Island’s coat of arms.

Oh. Nothing. That’s disappointing.

All that research and the best I could discover is that some time in the early twentieth century a decision was taken to fly the Manx flag outside Government buildings, instead of the Union Flag that had been raised over Castle Rushen when the Revestment took effect on 11 July 1765. I went through the Tynwald and House of Keys Hansard records, searching for “flag“ across that entire period, and found nothing relevant. Not a single mention of the design, the direction, or even the adoption. The flag appears to have been introduced by executive decision, and no specification of which way the legs should face was ever written down.

For the next quarter of a century both directions continued in general use, which is what happens when you don’t actually tell anyone. The first formal adoption of the current version — feet to the viewer’s left, running against the sun — came in 1958 when the Manx Post Office used it on the Island’s first local postage stamps. Even then, it wasn’t a proclamation. It was a postage stamp.

Then on 19 July 1968, Government Secretary G. J. Bryan issued Government Circular No. 41/68 — Regulations for the Flying of Flags on Government Flagstaffs. Well that says it all really doesn’t it, you trawl through a thousand years of history and someone issues an official......memo. A short and simple note that goes into every specific detail about when and where the flag should be flown, listed the colours, and described the design as “the Three Legs armoured and spurred, in the centre of a red field.“ But nothing at all about which direction the legs should face. All that fuss about the shade of red, the armour and the spurs but nothing actually useful like, oh yes and make sure to hold it this way up. Instead it noted that “a reproduction of the agreed and authorised emblem of the Three Legs may be seen or obtained at Government Office.“

That was it. No debate, no argument. No one brought up the swastika and the terrible mistaken connections people might make. That precious and unique symbol which appears on every official document, is flown high on flag poles around the Island, is spotted being waved in a crowd on TV triggering cries of “There’s a Manx flag!!“ was basically stuck in a drawer and if you wanted to know which way around to have it you took pot luck on whichever way the clerk you spoke to slapped it down on the counter. Like a wet herring before it becomes a delicious Manx kipper.

All that thinking, all that research, all those people over so many years debating and arguing and what it came down to was which way it came out of a drawer. So, that’s that, a Manx Cat’s tale of why the legs of the flag go round and round, backwards.

But as Stuart Slack’s famous song goes, the Laxey Wheel keeps turning, turning, turning, in Lady Isabella’s memory. What direction it turns in though depends on which side of the wheel you’re standing at the time. Either way, the wheel keeps turning, and the Laxey river still runs down to the sea. Yee haw.