Ward & Lock's descriptive and pictorial guide to the Isle of Man ...

;——Introduction. 11Henry Loch, and the fact that at the beginning of each sessionLoch opened the Keys, a reversal of the usual process,only adds to our mental confusion.Another apparent anomaly is that the arms of the islandare legs ;that is, to speak with some approach to heraldicprecision, in 1270, the old coat of arms, representing a shipin full sail, was superseded, by order of Alexander of Scotland,by guJes three legs of a man in armour conjoined infesse at the upper part of the thighs, flexed in triangle,garnuled and spurred, or, with the motto on garter surrounding,'^ Quocunque jeceris sfahit." The translation of the mottois, " Whithersoever thrown, I shall stand." This is, of coui-se,the origin of the popular pleasantry about the three-leggedManxmen. The present arms of the island were imdoubtedlycopied from those of Sicily. Dr. Snaith says, " The threelegs on the Sicilian coins were the type of the three seasons[wc have always thought there were four], probably takenfrom the most ancient religion of the Chinese." Man isevidently, though an island, not cut off from the world. Wehave already seen it linked with Egypt and India, and nowfind a connection between it and China.The island is divided for civil purposes into a northernand a southern district, with subdivision into six " sheadings,"a word possibly derived from the Manx shef/, six, and theScandinavian thing, a judicial assembly. The sheadings areagain divided into parishes, of which there are seventeen inthe island. The names of the sheadings are Northern,Ayre, Garff, Michael ;Southern, Middle, Glanfaba, Rushen.The island is the diocese of a bishop, with its own canonsand an independent convocation ;Init, for certain purposes,the diocese is attached to the arcliicpiscopal province of York.Very probably some of our readers may have asked, withoutgetting a satisfactory answer, what is the meaning of thetitle, "Bishop of Sodor and Man " ? Sodor is a contractionof Sudoreys, or Soclorenses, "southern isles," the ancientname of the Hebrides, which, as wo have seen, King Orrysubdued, and which at one time acknowledged the sway ofthe Bishop of Man. If in some of the preceding remarkswe have laid ourselves open to the charge of levity, we mayplead episcopal example ; for the following verses, attributedwithout contradiction to one of the bishops, were sent inreply to an inquiry as to the meaning of " Sodor " :"What docs the title 'Sodor' mean ?Pray tell me, if you cauSo strange are many facts we gleanAbout the Isle of Man.