Exhibition features lesser known folklore figures

The exhibition will run until 23 February

A new exhibition is shining a spotlight on some of the lesser known figures of Manx folklore.

The display, called Rare Sightings and Urban Fairies, has been created by illustrator Julia Ashby Smyth and features 77 illustrations of magical characters.

It can currently be viewed at the Manx Museum, which is open from 09:30 to 16:30 GMT until 23 February, and admission is free.

Ms Smyth said the display had "everything from dark and weird to utterly daft" and would "hopefully makes people giggle a bit".

She said she wanted to create the collection as she believes folklore should be "evolving all the time", incorporating people's own stories and customs.

And the illustrator said she hoped it would give people a "different way" of looking at things.

The display is showing at the Manx Museum

Her work takes inspiration from a document called the Manx Scrapbook, which is a collection of oral tales and customs from the 1900s and includes some of the lesser known characters of Isle of Man fantasy.

The exhibition boasts it enables people to walk through a door into a "realm of magic" comprised of different areas - the wet, the weird, the dark, the airy and the mossy.

As an illustrator for more 40 years, Ms Smyth's work has featured on stamp collections and coins as well as publications such as Sophia Morrison's Manx Fairy Tales.

Ms Smyth, who has been interested in folklore since she was young, said she wanted the work to reignite people's imaginations, adding: "If you don’t look, you won’t see the magic and it is all around us."