ng. This is true of
some Manx ballads, and perhaps also of many Manx carols. The carols,
called Carvals in Manx, serve in Man, as in other countries, the purpose
of celebrating the birth of Jesus, but we have one ancient custom
attached to them which we can certainly claim for our own, so Manx is
it, so quaint, so grimly serious, and withal so howlingly ludicrous.

It is called the service of Oiel Verree, probably a corruption of
_Feaill Vorrey_, literally the Feast of Mary, and it is held in the
parish church near to midnight on Christmas Eve. Scott describes it in
"Peveril of the Peak," but without personal knowledge.

Services are still held in many churches on Christmas Eve; and I think
they are called Oiel Verree, but the true Oiel Verree, the real, pure,
savage, ridiculous, sacrilegious old Oiel Verree, is gone. I myself just
came in time for it; I saw the last of it, nevertheless I saw it at its
prime, for I saw it when it was so strong that it could not live any
longer. Let me tell you what it was.

The story carries me back to early boyish years, when, from the lonely
school-house on the bleak top of Maughold Head, I was taken in secret,
one Christmas Eve, between nine and ten o'clock, to the old church of
Kirk Maughold, a parish which longer than any other upheld the rougher
traditions. My companion was what is called an original. His name was
Billy Corkill. We were great chums. I would be thirteen, he was about
sixty. Billy lived alone in a little cottage on the high-road, and
worked in the fields. He had only one coat all the years I knew him. It
seemed to have been blue to begin with, but when it had got torn Billy
had patched it with anything that was handy, from green cloth to red
flannel. He called it his Joseph's coat of many colours. Billy was a
poet and a musical composer. He could not read a word, but he would
rather have died than confess his ignorance. He kept books and
newspapers always about him, and when he read out of them, he usually
held them upside down. If any one remarked on that, he said he could
read them any way up--that was where his scholarship came in. Billy was
a great carol singer. He did not know a note, but he never sang except
from music. His tunes were wild harmonies that no human ear ever heard
before. It will be clear to you that old Billy was a man of genius.

Such was my comrade on that Christmas Eve long ago. It had been a bitter
winter in the Isle of Man, and the groun