Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-12-11

customs, enmeshed in the strangest super
stitions. Illustrative. the parish clerk is
still elected by the votes of only those
parishioners who ''put out smoke" that is,
whose habitatiOns possess chimney; and q
near Runic cross by the roadside is pro-
tame old female wool carrier who, for ours
ing at the wind, was turned to stone.
When Maughold Head is rounded, the
long reach OF Ramsey Bay, extending nine
miles to Point OF Ayre, the northernmost
headland of Man, gives a scene of unsur-
passed beauty and interest. The red cliffs
trace an almost vermillion shore line be-
tween the blue of the sea and the simmer
ing gold of the upland gorse. At the center
of the bay is the fine old town, its ancient
walls and roofs contrasting STRANGELY with
its modern ways and facades A sleepy
yet bright old face has Ramsey; like some
nodding grandam whom hoyden children
have stolen upon in her sleep to befower
and beribbon and who, on waking, has as
much mischief in her glad old eyes as in
the merry hearts that made the frolic. To
the right and left, villas and villages in
Vulnerable; and behind, but a mile or two
away, the golden gorse is blended with the
purples and mists among the heights of
North Barrule.
Back Into the Centuries.
ALI along down the west coast your in
terest will be divided between glimpses of
strange old Manx hamlets peeping from the
mountain bases where flashes of foaming
streams tremble like the gorse tops upon
the hills, with the splendid mountain views
behind and above, and the plainly discerned
Irish coast where the Mourne Mountains
through the distance cover with purple
their emerald green. But at last here is
ancient Peel, Thistle Head and st. Patrick
Isle. Miles of white strand threat along
the coast to the brown old nest upon the
rocks, like q shining way of faith leading
untalteringly to dateless antiquity. No
cobweb lover will be disgruntled that a
broom of progress has modernized Peel.
Everything is old and mellow and dim. The
hundreds of fishing craft forming with their
old masts an antique tracery before the
town seem to belong to forgotten age.
Dark are its walls, narrow its streets, tiny
its windows, grave and silent its people.
Gray and old and more forbidding than
all else is its once mighty castle at the
harbor mouth. 1t stands on Patrick's
Holm, or st. Patrick's Island, seven acres
in extent Venerable, haunted and hal
lowed all. Hallowed and venerable for st.
Patrick himself raised the beginnings of
the church on whose site the half ruins OF a
because of inexpressible cruelties and foul
murders in crypts and castle here. Through
these lofty pillars, bending arches, hollow
galleries and by these dismantled altars one
can stride from the nineteenth to the fifth
century In the saddening echoes of the
sea calls he can hear the meanings of i'm
prisoned Eleanor, the curses of Stanley, the
triumphant "Allelujahr" of Germanus that
put to rout the Saxons in the bloody Flint
shire fields Haunted, more than all else
to Mainland mind, because it is the abiding
place for all time of that most terrible of
Manx powers of darkness, the black and
dreadful "Moody Dhoo."
A Fashionable Watering Place.
Here of crorse is some true Manx color
in the strange old closes and wynds of the
ancient part of the city; but Douglas is
essentially fashionable watering place the
whole year round. You must leave Douglas
behind to completely know Mainland This
Is no venturesome task. You can walk to
the remotest portion of the island in one
day. There never were finer roads There
never were lovelier Views There never
we're quainter, more comforting old inns.
And there never were more simple, genial,
hospitable people than in Man. In most
countries have visited the peasantry are
vacous and fistless or suspicious and resent
full of him who comes to spy into their ways
and poke among their shrines The Manx
folk take it as an honor. The Manxman is
proud of his ancestry, his history, his inde-
pendence, his ehangeless customs and laws.
Indeed often think that much of his good
ness to the stranger comes from pity that
the stranger was not born in his fair,
liberty-loving island.
EDGAR L WAKEaAN.