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Name
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The Rushes to Manannan
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Description
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The oldest recorded rent on the Island. Bundles of coarse meadow grass carried to the summit of South Barrule each midsummer and offered to Manannan mac Lir, the god of the sea. The practice predates Christianity. A farm adjoining the Tynwald grounds held its tenure tithe-free on the condition of providing rushes for the Tynwald ceremony. The rushes laid along the procession way at Tynwald connect the constitutional ceremony to a pre-Christian offering. The farmer's obligation was older than the Christian calendar that now governed the ceremony.
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Date / Season
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Midsummer
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Type
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Custom / Ritual
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Source
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Train, Metrical History
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Moore, Folk-lore (1891)
