Throughout the 1930s, the world’s newspapers were full of incredible stories about Gef, a ‘talking mongoose’ or ‘man-weasel’ who had allegedly appeared in the home of a peculiar family living in a somewhat dilapidated Isle of Man farmhouse. Gef was said to speak several languages, sing, steal objects from nearby farms, and eavesdrop on local people, bearing local gossip back to his host family, James and Margaret Irving and their teenage daughter Voirrey.
James and Margaret were not native Islanders, but had moved there from Liverpool in 1917, where, up until the Great War, they had enjoyed comparative prosperity. James, an educated and intellectually curious man, had been Britain’s sales representative for the Dominion Piano & Organ Company, a Canadian firm whose grand and upright pianos were renowned for their high quality and exported worldwide.
However, in September 1915 Parliament passed the ‘McKenna Tariff’, a tax intended to save shipping cargo space for essential goods. It applied a 33 per cent import duty on what were seen as luxury items like cars, clocks, and musical instruments, thus bringing James’s thriving piano dealership to an end. After a failed attempt to set up an engineering business and some property speculation, he decided on a dramatic career change. Despite having no farming experience, in November 1916 James used his savings to purchase Doarlish Cashen, a semi-derelict farmhouse on the Isle of Man. It consisted of two floors, with a parlour, sitting room and pantry on the ground floor, two upstairs bedrooms, and 70 acres of farmland.
Situated in Kirk Patrick, a parish in the Island’s remote south-west where older people still spoke the Manx language, and where traditional folk beliefs in ghosts, fairies and other supernatural beings were still prevalent, the farm was 725 feet (221m) above sea level and half-way up Dalby Mountain.
