Jimmy Squarefoot belongs to the older, stranger corners of Manx folklore. He is described as a creature that walks upright with two great tusks like a boar's, and whose broad, squarish feet — swaddled in calico bands — give him his name. For the most part he is a harmless wanderer of the southern hills of the Isle of Man.
The story
In his more menacing aspect, however, Jimmy Squarefoot is counted a kind of buggane, a phantom haunting the river and bridge at Grenaby, where he appears as a huge white boar. In that shape he is greatly feared, for he is said to be able to seize mortals and carry them off up the river and through a cave somewhere near the slopes of Barrule.
His origin story is stranger still. He was once, the tale runs, the mount of one of the Foawr — the race of stone-throwing giants of Manx legend — and a hurler of stones himself, whose favourite target was his own wife. When at last she left him, he is said to have taken on his semi-human form and wandered the island alone, a melancholy and grotesque relic of the giants' age.