hey were all startling and almost ghastly appeals to
the sinner to shun his evil courses. One of them ran like this:

HELL IS HOT.

O sinner, see your dangerous state,
And think of hell ere 'tis too late;
When worldly cares would drown each thought,
Pray call to mind that hell is hot.
Still to increase your godly fears,
Let this be sounding in your ears,
Still bear in mind that hell is hot,
Remember and forget it not.

There was another poem about a congregation of the dead in the region of
the damned:

I found a reverend parson there,
A congregation too,
Bowed on their bended knees at prayer,
As they were wont to do.
But soon my heart was struck with pain,
I thought it truly odd,
The parson's prayer did not contain
A word concerning God.

You will remember the Danish book called "Letters from Hell," containing
exactly the same idea, and conclude that the Manx bard was poking fun at
some fashionable yet worldly-minded preacher. But no; he was too much a
child of Nature for that.

There is not much satire in the Manx character, and next to no cynicism
at all. The true Manxman is white-hot. I have heard of one, John Gale,
called the Manx Burns, who lampooned the upstarts about him, and also of
one, Tom the Dipper, an itinerant Manx bard, who sang at fairs; but in a
general way the Manx bard has been a deadly earnest person, most at home
in churchyards. There was one such, akin in character to my old friend
Billy of Maughold, but of more universal popularity, a quite privileged
pet of everybody, a sort of sacred being, though as crazy as man may be,
called Chalse-a-Killey. Chaise was scarcely a bard, but a singer of
the songs of bards. He was a religious monomaniac, who lived before his
time, poor fellow; his madness would not be seen in him now. The idol
of his crazed heart was Bishop Wilson. He called him _dear_ and _sweet_,
vowed he longed to die, just that he might meet him in heaven; then
Wilson would take him by the hand, and he would tell him all his mind,
and together they would set up a printing press, with the types of
diamonds, and print hymns, and send them back to the Isle of Man. Poor,
'wildered brain, haunted by "half-born thoughts," not all delusions, but
quaint and grotesque. Full of valiant fury, Chaise was always ready to
fight for his distorted phantom of the right. When an uncle of my
own died,