The story Moore gives is short and grim. Slieau Whallian, about two miles from Peel, was where accused witches were put to the test. A woman was shut inside a barrel with spikes driven inward through the staves and rolled from the top of the hill to the bottom. Moore also names one victim, Thomas Carran, who protested his innocence and said that a thorn tree would grow to mark the spot where he died. The thorn, it was said, duly appeared.
Morrison's telling in "Manx Fairy Tales" puts a face on it. On Midsummer Day at Peel harbour a wise woman warned the herring fleet not to sail, describing drowned men and broken boats. The admiral of the fleet ignored her and ordered the boats out. A storm came up and nearly the whole fleet was lost. The only crew to come home safe were the Seven Boys, unmarried lads from Dalby who always left an offering for the merman, and who were warned to turn back. The people of Peel blamed the wise woman for raising the storm. They put her in a spiked barrel and rolled her down Slieau Whallian into the bog at the foot.
After that, Morrison says, a bare track ran down the hillside where the barrel had gone, and no grass grew on it. People called it the Witch's Way. Her screams were heard on the hill every year on the anniversary of her death, and modern guides still say that on windy nights you can hear a witch crying all round Slieau Whallian.
Moore also records a prophecy tied to this hill: the witch Calgagh-ny-Ghueshag said the Quirk family would leave Slieau Whallian when the flood carried away the chapel of Keeil Vout. By Moore's time both had supposedly happened.
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