Manx Museum Hosts Exhibition on Obscure Folklore Characters

A new exhibition is highlighting some of the less familiar characters from Manx folklore. Titled Rare Sightings and Urban Fairies, the display was created by illustrator Julia Ashby Smyth and showcases 77 illustrations of magical beings. It is currently available for viewing at the Manx Museum, which operates from 09:30 to 16:30 GMT daily until 23 February, with free admission. Ms Smyth commented that the collection contains “everything from dark and weird to utterly daft” and is intended to “hopefully makes people giggle a bit.” She explained her desire to develop the collection stems from her conviction that folklore should be “evolving all the time,” incorporating individuals’ own narratives and customs. The illustrator also expressed her hope that it would provide people with “a different way” of looking at things. Her artistic creations draw inspiration from a document known as the Manx Scrapbook, which compiles oral tales and customs from the 1900s, including some of the more obscure characters from Isle of Man fantasy. The exhibition claims to allow visitors to step through a doorway into a “realm of magic” composed of various sections: the wet, the weird, the dark, the airy, and the mossy. Having worked as an illustrator for over 40 years, Ms Smyth’s art has been featured on stamp collections and coins, as well as in publications such as Sophia Morrison’s Manx Fairy Tales. Ms Smyth, who has maintained an interest in folklore since childhood, expressed her wish for the work to reawaken people’s imaginations, adding: “If you don’t look, you won’t see the magic and it is all around us.”