On a quiet stretch of road between Douglas and Castletown, on the Isle of Man, sits a small stone bridge that almost everyone on the island treats with a strange kind of respect. Cross it without saying hello to the fairies, tradition warns, and bad luck will follow.
The Fairy Bridge, near the village of Santon, is one of the island’s best-known pieces of folklore. Locals greet the “Mooinjer Veggey”, Manx for the Little People, with a cheerful “Hello fairies” in English, or “Moghrey (Fastyr) mie Vooinjer Veggey” in Manx, a language itself once declared officially dead before islanders brought it back from the brink.
Taxi and coach drivers routinely remind first-time visitors to do the same, and buses on the route have been known to play a recorded announcement reminding passengers not to forget.
Nobody agrees on exactly how old the custom is, but it was well established by the middle of the last century, when it became common for locals to coach visitors into saying the greeting just as they crossed.
Ignoring the fairies is said to invite misfortune, from a spell of bad luck to a car that mysteriously breaks down. In the past, small souvenir charms said to have been dipped in the water beneath the bridge were sold to tourists as good luck tokens.
Confusingly, the well-known Fairy Bridge on the main road is not, according to some islanders, the original one. An older stone bridge near Kewaigue, hidden down a quiet track, is said by some to be the true site of the tradition, and today local children still visit it to leave small gifts and handwritten wishes for the fairies tucked into gaps in the stonework.
Belief in fairies, traditionally also called “Themselves” by many islanders, runs through much of the island’s older folklore. The Fairy Bridge sits right on the main road from the island’s airport to the capital, Douglas, so visitors often hear the story and are expected to say hello within minutes of landing.