Adhene

The old Manx would not use the word. Not fairy, not *ferrish*, which was only the English word wearing a Manx coat and had not existed on the island a hundred and fifty years before Sophia Morrison wrote it down. A man on a dark road said Themselves, or the Little Fellows, or the Lil’ Boys, and he said it warmly, because the thing he was avoiding naming might be standing close enough to hear the tone. That habit is the whole of it. Adhene is not a species. It is Manx for *themselves*, and it is what you call a neighbour you would rather not summon.

They came down for three days and three nights, thick as a hailstorm. William Cashen, who kept Peel Castle and had it from his father and his father’s father, said the Manx believed the fallen angels were driven out with Satan and fell in equal thirds, one part into the sea, one part onto the land, one part left hanging in the air, and there they stay until the Judgement. The sin was pride. That is where the other name comes from, Cloan ny Moyrn, the Children of the Pride, and it is the name that turns up in the prayer people said walking home after dark: *Saue Jee mee voish Cloan ny moyrn.* God save me from the Children of the Pride. Cashen knew what a reader would think and got there first, noting that the Manx were telling this long before Paradise Lost was ever put into their language.

Fishermen out of Peel saw them working. A boat’s crew would come on lights lying quiet in the dark water ahead of the nets, riding-lights and the pale bobbing of floats, a whole fleet at anchor, and every man aboard would settle in to wait for daybreak and a shout across the water from the others. Daybreak came and the sea was empty. It was reckoned a fine thing to see: where the fairy fleet lay there were herring under it, and the boats that shot their nets on that mark came home heavy. Under Cronk-yn-Irree Laa there is a sea-cave the Manx call Ooig-ny-Seyir, the Cave of the Carpenter, and from it the fishermen heard hammering, the flat knock of staves being set and hooped. Themselves were making barrels. They cured their own catch. A season that opened with that sound coming off the rock was a season that turned out well in the Big Bay.

The trouble started closer to the hearth. Before a child was baptised it was not safe alone, and the prettier the child the worse the risk, so an iron poker went into the cradle or a red thread round the neck, and a woman reaping with her baby laid between two sheaves would set an open pair of scissors across it and check twice. What came back in place of a stolen child was thin and long-limbed and beautiful and would not speak, or would not stand, and ate almost nothing for years. Grown women were taken too. A Ballaleece man lost his wife to them and married again, and the first wife came to him at night with instructions: sweep the barn floor until there is not one straw on it, stand at the door, and when the riders come through, take hold of my horse’s bridle and do not let go. The second wife heard every word and hid a single straw under a bushel. He got his hand to the bridle. The horse went out from under it and the whole troop went with it.

They ride hard on borrowed animals. A vicar of Braddan kept finding his horse in the field at dawn, soaked through and shaking, until the morning he came back from a sick parishioner’s bedside and caught a small man in a green jacket with a whip in his hand turning the animal loose. Music is the other lever. A man who stops to listen on a summer hillside near a tumulus, and especially a man who plays, has already made his mistake. One fiddler took an engagement from a stranger who sank into the ground the moment the money changed hands.

And yet the preacher walked away. One of the early Manx Wesleyans crossing the mountain by moonlight was stopped and asked, straight out, who would be saved. He answered that none would be saved but such as had flesh and blood. The thing went off across the heather wailing, *Cha vel ayrn erbee ayms ayns Chreest.* I have no share in Christ.

That is the shape of their limits. Their power runs out against anyone on an errand of mercy or charity, which is the doctrine of the fall working itself out logically: creatures damned for pride cannot get purchase on someone going out of themselves for another. Everything else that holds them is ordinary and cheap. Iron, in any form. A pinch of salt, in the mouth of a fish carried home after dark. Baptism. Crosses of *cuirn*, the mountain ash, cut without a knife and set over the door and the byre on May Eve when they are strongest. The Almighty’s name spoken flat and loud, which was enough to make one lot drop a baby and go, though they spun a table twenty times round the floor on the way out. And the cock, at whose first note every fairy and buggane and ghost on the island is gone.

The Manx did not think this was a story. Morrison, writing in 1911, knew two women of good family who still put out cakes and water every night of their lives, and Cashen’s fishermen were still watching for lights on the water. Set a tub of clean water by the fire before bed, keep the embers in on a bad night, and do not say the word. They are neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell, and they have nowhere else to be.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the name Adhene mean?

Adhene is the Manx phrase *ad hene*, meaning “themselves”. Manx people avoided the word “fairy” in case the fairies overheard, so they used friendly substitutes instead: Themselves, the Little People, the Little Fellows, or the Lil’ Boys. The name is a piece of politeness rather than a species label.

Where do the Adhene come from?

Manx tradition held that they were angels cast out of heaven with Satan for the sin of pride, which is why they were also called Cloan ny Moyrn, the Children of the Pride. They fell as thick as hail for three days and three nights and landed in equal thirds in the sea, on the land and in the air, and they remain in those three places until the Day of Judgement.

Are the Adhene dangerous?

They are dangerous mainly to infants and to unbaptised children, whom they steal and replace with a changeling, and occasionally to grown women. They also ride farmers’ horses to exhaustion at night and lure listeners with music. They are not confined to one spot the way a buggane or a lhiannan-shee is, so they may be met anywhere on the island.

How do you protect yourself from the Adhene?

Iron, salt and baptism all work, as do crosses of mountain ash cut without a knife and fixed over the door on May Eve. Speaking the Almighty’s name drives them off, and the Manx used the prayer *Saue Jee mee voish Cloan ny moyrn*, “God save me from the Children of the Pride”. They also have no power at all over anyone travelling on an errand of mercy or charity.

Why did Manx fishermen want to see the Adhene?

A fairy herring fleet seen lying at anchor in the dark, riding-lights and floats and all, marked a shoal, and boats that shot their nets on that spot were reckoned certain of a good catch. Fishermen also listened at Ooig-ny-Seyir, the Cave of the Carpenter under Cronk-yn-Irree Laa, where the Adhene were heard making barrels to cure their own herring. That sound promised a good season in the Big Bay.

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Mooinjer veggey, Fenodyree, Buggane, Moddey Dhoo, Arkan Sonney, Manannán mac Lir, Changeling, Sídhe, Seelie, Trow, Huldufólk, Lucifer