Note 12 — Chapter IV · Manx Folklore

One more Manx instance: an octogenarian woman, born in the parish of Bride, and now living at Kirk Andreas, saw, when she was a ‘lump of a girl’ of ten or fifteen years of age, a live sheep being burnt in a field in the parish of Andreas, on May-day, whereby she meant the first of May reckoned according to the Old Style. She asserts12 very decidedly that it was son oural, ‘for a sacrifice,’ as she put it, and ‘for an object to the public’: those were her words when she expressed herself in English. Further, she made the statement that it was a custom to burn a sheep on Old May-day for a sacrifice. I was fully alive to the interest of this evidence, and cross-examined her so far as her age allows of it, and I find that she adheres to her statement with all firmness, but I distinguish two or three points in her evidence: 1. I have no doubt that she saw, as she was passing by a certain field on the borders of Andreas parish, a live sheep being burnt on Old May-day. 2. But her statement that it was son oural, or as a sacrifice, was probably only an inference drawn by her, possibly years afterwards, on hearing things of the kind discussed. 3. Lastly, I am convinced that she did hear the May-day sacrifice discussed, both in Manx and in English: her words, ‘for an object to the public,’ are her imperfect recollection of a phrase used in her hearing by somebody more ambitious of employing English abstract terms than she is; and the formal nature of her statement in Manx, that it was customary on May-day to burn as a sacrifice one head of sheep (Laa Boaldyn va cliaghtey dy lostey son oural un baagh keyrragh), produces the same impression on my mind, that she is only repeating somebody else’s words. I mention this more especially as I have failed to find anybody else in Andreas or Bride, or indeed in the whole island, who will now confess to having ever heard of the sheep sacrifice on Old May-day.