The Romantic movement gained momentum in Europe during the second part of the eighteenth century and coloured much of the artistic and literary trends during the nineteenth century. Its search for the original and the soulful led to a deepened interest in folklore and ancient poetry; James MacPherson's controversial but influential Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in Six Books, published in 1762, purporting to be the translated work of the Celtic bard Ossian, made the Celtic world fashionable.

Well-read Manx people and the discerning visitor discovered to their delight that they were living in a treasure-house of folklore. The legends quoted by George Waldron in A Description of the Isle of Man (1731) were recounted and enlarged upon by the Scottish antiquarian Joseph Train (1779–1852) in his monumental An Historical and Statistical Account of the Isle of Man, published in 1845, and new myths or variations of old ones were tracked down and displayed in learned journals and popular magazines (see under FOLKLORE). No respectable guide book of the Isle of Man was complete without a chapter on folklore. Usually the stories were told unadorned, but it was inevitable that such fascinating material should lend itself to literary embellishment. Typical of this treatment are, for instance, the beautifully produced The Phynodderree and Other Legends of the Isle of Man (1882) by Edward Callow and the novelistic Shadowland in Ellan Vannin; or Folk Tales of the Isle of Man, published in 1890 by I.H. Leney (Mrs J.W. Russell). The folklore also provided useful padding in novels. This trend is particularly marked in Hugh Coleman Davidson's The Green Hills by the Sea (1887), and the wealth of folkloristic details contributed to the enthusiastic reception of Hall Caine's first Manx novel, The Deemster (see below).

The popularity of all things Celtic led to the smallest fragment being used. The most startling example is perhaps the 249-page poem Blanid, published in Boston, USA, in 1879 by Robert Joyce, about a Manx princess who meets a untimely death in an epic of love, jealousy and treachery. But better-known Manx legends inspired many poets. Some of these versified versions were sufficiently interesting to be included in Mona Miscellany, volumes XVI and XXI of Manx Society (1869 and 1873).