Mooinjer Veggey

The last thing done in a Manx house before sleep was to bank the fire so it would not die, set out a piece of bread, and fill the water crock to the brim. Nobody drank that water. It was thrown out at the door in the morning and drawn fresh, because the dark hours belonged to other guests, and it was a poor host who left them a cold hearth and nothing to wash in. Speaking their name aloud was worse than rudeness. You called them the little people, or the good people, or simply Themselves, and you said even that under your breath.

They stood two to three feet high and were otherwise built like anyone else, though a person who got close enough often found the handsome figure was withered and old. They favoured green or blue jackets and pointed red caps, and they were most often met on horseback, riding small horses at a furious pace with packs of little hounds streaming behind them in every colour of the rainbow. They lived inside the green hills, and they were partial to the ancient burial mounds, the Bronze Age tumuli scattered across the Island where a house built too close could expect trouble in the night. They were not, in the old belief, the winged and kindly things the word fairy would later smuggle in. They were an underground people, half human and half spirit, visible only when they chose to be.

The Manx said they had been there first. Centuries before the Christian era, the story ran, the Island was theirs alone, hidden from passing ships beneath a blue mist that never lifted, and the mist itself was held in place by a fire that was never allowed to go out. One day the fire failed. The fog rolled back, the shore showed itself to a boatload of stranded fishermen, and word of the place got out. The little people fought the newcomers at Castle Rushen and lost it by degrees, and the Island passed to mortals, though its first tenants never entirely left.

What they did best was hunt. A sailor coming off a long voyage once landed at Douglas on a bright frosty night and set off over the mountains toward his sister’s house, and on the high ground he heard horses, a huntsman’s halloo, and the finest horn in the world. They passed him so close he could count them, thirteen riders all in green and gallantly mounted, and he crossed the path twice more just to watch them go, and lost the sound of the horn only after some miles. When he told his sister she clapped her hands, glad he was home safe, for those were the good people, and it was luck they had not taken him with them.

That was the smaller danger. The greater one waited over cradles. The little people coveted human children, the beautiful ones above all and the unbaptised most of all, and where a fine babe had lain they would leave one of their own, a lean, withered, deformed thing that neither spoke nor walked, ate almost nothing, and lay slack in every joint. One Manx mother, brought to bed of her third child, watched her infant lifted from the blankets and carried out of the room by no hand she could see, and cried out, and was not heard; when her husband came in he told her not to be mad, the child lay right beside her, and she turned and saw the changeling. It lived in the house for nine years. Against this everyone knew the guards: an iron poker laid across the sleeping child, a red thread tied round its neck, a piece of bread and cheese carried to the christening and given to the first person met on the road.

Their power ran both ways, which is why it paid to keep on good terms. The good among them cured diseases and lifted misfortune, and were reckoned the stronger party. But a slighted fairy took payment. They shot elf arrows, the little flint heads still turned up in the fields, and the blow was never felt and never broke the skin, though a blue mark showed on the body afterward. They milked cattle dry, tainted the seed potatoes in the ground, slipped into mills at night to grind stolen corn, and borrowed horses from their stalls, returning them by dawn soaked in sweat and half spent. Cross them to their faces and it went worse. A drunk man at Laxey met a party of them and cursed them for the devil’s imps; they answered with a shower of gravel that broke his skin, and he sickened that night, and his horse died in the morning, and his cattle after it, and within six weeks he was a corpse. A woman at Bride who forgot to leave out their cake was punched in the eye in her sleep.

For all that, they could be turned. Salt undid them, and so did iron. A cross of rowan, the cuirn, cut and bound without a knife and set over the threshold, kept them out, as did yellow flowers from the hedge and herbs strewn at the door on Midsummer Eve, when their strength stood highest. Above everything they hated noise, and could not bear the ringing of church bells. When a fulling mill went up near Bearey Mountain, a man at dawn saw a long, wailing procession of them crossing the river on the stepping stones and climbing into the mist, dressed in undyed loaghtan wool and little red caps, carrying their kettles and pots and spinning wheels on their shoulders, gone to look for somewhere quieter. That is the shape of the old belief, before the visitors came and heard the word fairy and pictured something with wings. The Manx had refused them a proper name in the first place, precisely so as not to draw their eye.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Mooinjer Veggey mean?

Mooinjer Veggey is Manx for “the little people,” the usual term for the fairies of the Isle of Man. It corresponds to the Irish and Scottish Gaelic Muintir Bheaga, and describes a race of small, part-human, part-spirit beings believed to live inside the Island’s green hills and burial mounds.

Why did the Manx avoid calling them fairies?

The Manx believed the little people disliked being named and might do mischief if offended, so they used respectful euphemisms such as “the good people,” “Themselves,” or the Mooinjer Veggey instead. The very word “fairy” (Manx Ferrish) was a recent borrowing from English; there was no such word in the Manx language a couple of centuries before.

What do the Mooinjer Veggey do to humans?

The Mooinjer Veggey could either help or harm, curing diseases and lifting misfortune for those who treated them well, but punishing anyone who slighted them. Their most feared act was stealing beautiful, unbaptised children and leaving a withered changeling in the cradle, and they were also blamed for elf-shot injuries, blighted crops, sickened cattle, and horses ridden to exhaustion overnight.

How did people protect themselves from the Mooinjer Veggey?

Manx folk used salt and iron against them, laid an iron poker or tied a red thread on an unbaptised child, and set a cross of rowan wood, made without a knife, over the threshold. They also kept the fairies content by banking the fire, leaving out bread, and filling a crock with clean water each night, and they strewed protective herbs and yellow flowers at the door on Midsummer Eve.

Where do the Mooinjer Veggey live?

The Mooinjer Veggey were said to live inside the green hills of the Isle of Man, especially the ancient burial mounds and Bronze Age tumuli. Houses or mills built too close to these sites were thought to disturb them, and in some tales the little people abandoned a haunt entirely when noise, such as the ringing of bells or a new fulling mill, made it unbearable.

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Glashtyn, Fenodyree, Buggane, Moddey Dhoo, Manannán mac Lir, Tylwyth Teg, Sídhe, Leprechaun, Leanan sidhe, Brownie, Pixie, Trow, Cu Sith, Changeling