Jersey As It Is - Part 1

This Friday is a blog in which I have transcribed a translation of an essay called "Jersey as It Is", published in 1844, as the result of a winning entry by F. Robious de La Trehonnais which won first prize in the competition of the Jersey Emulation Society.

The introduction lays out how the essay is planned, starting with history, but also including geography and customs. It is wonderfully poetical.

Jersey As It Is - Part 1

THERE exist upon our globe certain spots, the importance of which, far from being proportionate to their extent, seem to derive the more strength and influence from the very diminutiveness of their proportions. They are so many centres to which converge the interests of human societies, and which seem to be marked out by Providence, to preserve by their counter-weight an equipoise in the scale of international justice.

On the threshold of the Mediterranean Sea, a rock rises, immense, threatening: it is Gibraltar, this old guardian of a whole sea, who, from his hollow batteries, opens or shuts the gates of the east. Malta, girded with its ramparts as a knight with his armour, commands and protects the new route to the Indies, and becomes a depot for all the riches of Asia. Although of less influence, as regards the great interests of Europe, Jersey shares, in a smaller scale it is true, but on the same principle, this central importance which sets in motion a whole world of interests.

An advanced guard of Great Britain on the coast of France, this isle possesses too many advantages as a military post to need any demonstration. Its harbours and creeks can shelter squadrons, its resources are sufficient to maintain an army, and from the midst of its rocks can rush forth, at the first signal, a swarm of hardy privateers, who, in hindering the enemy's commerce in the channel, would insure and protect a frequent communication with the mother country.

Situated at the south of the group known under the name of Channel Islands, Jersey, as well by its extent and its population, as by the large scale on which its commerce is established, is by far the most important. Its picturesque beauties are a constant source of attraction to a multitude of visitors, whose arrival and departure impart to it an air of life and prosperity almost incredible in an island of so small dimensions. The lofty cliffs of Normandy, the golden sands of which can be perceived, stretch themselves towards the east; on the south and the west fade away the coast of Brittany, to which the island seems to be linked by a chain of rocks, whose grey summits rise on all sides; and Guernsey and its neighbouring islets are scattered towards the north.

Its proximity to the shores of Normandy, of which it formed a province before the conquest of Britain by William the Conqueror, must have cast on its community a similarity of manners, laws, and language with that part of France ; but at present a broad line of distinction has been established.

In France the political and social revolutions have overturned not only institutions and customs, but also laws, language, and manners: everything has yielded to that irresistible impulse which they have given to all the principles of the society of men; and that great level to which nations aim, like the waves of the wide ocean, has suddenly been accomplished, attended by the wreck of all that obstructed their overflowing. These mighty convulsions which shook the Continent like an earthquake, crumbling to the dust the firmest and the most highly-placed social edifices, and the most ancient constitutions, were, however, compelled to pause on the shore of the waters that divide the island from the Continent.

There, fell powerless and exhausted those torrents of innovations which, Pêle-Mêle, carried along the just and unjust, the innocent and guilty; and Jersey, ever generous and hospitable, opened its arms but to receive the victims whom these mighty conflicts cast poor and forlorn on its beach, like shipwrecked mariners after a storm.

The constitution by which the island was governed centuries ago is still almost the same at present; perhaps some charters granted by the kings of England, or resolutions carried by the states, have either increased or restricted its abuses, but the principle has remained unaltered, and the observer can derive from their study valuable insights into the old Norman customs, the remembrance of which has even vanished from the country where they formerly flourished.

The so picturesque and expressive idiom is still spoken now as it was in the days of yore. The Jerseymen, religious guardians of the language spoken by their illustrious fathers, are loath to abandon the use of their own old patois, and that sacred heritage traditioned from lip to lip until the present age, displays the striking contrast still observed in the heath of Armorique, on the wooded hills of `Vales, and on stern coast of Erin. Strange spectacle, is this struggle of old things with modern civilization, strengthened with their antiquity, using as an arm the religion of souvenirs, they resist with a persistence which their young enemy will conquer, but after many efforts.

This love to their old customs will render the Jersey people very interesting to the philosopher. Their character, much calumniated by superficial authors, who, confining themselves to a rapid observation, judge a whole race by the moral of a few individuals, will appear in its truer light, if their habits, their faith, their principles, and, above all, their history, are scrutinized by a free and judicious mind.

The general aspect of the island presents a variety of picturesque beauties, in which Nature seems to have blended all her loveliest features with the most stern and severe ones. There, the ocean with its calms, its majestic storms, its boundary-rocks shaping themselves into all the fantastic forms with which imagination, aided by distance, loves to invest them.

Here, retired and peaceful valleys, deep creeks, solitary bays, disturbed only by the plaintive cry of the sea bird, by the merriment of summer visitors, and by the voices of the wind and the waves.

There, ruins mantled with ivy, that people the solitude with phantoms of past and nobler days, of heroes and captives; whose moated recesses are covered with wild flowers, and around is many a deep-shaded and gloomy path dear to the fancy.

Laughing orchards, whose fruit weighs down the rich branches which bear it, and in which idly recline, or quietly graze, the far-famed kine of Jersey-vales, where the bird sings and builds its nest, the brook murmurs, and from the cottages the light columns of smoke wreath and disperse themselves over the oaks which shelter them with their foliage.

There, old seignorial manor-houses, the calm retreats of men who live apart from the world, without forsaking its charms; whose casements open but on velvet smooth lawns, on flowers and fragrant shrubs.

All this multitude of natural charms, which scattered throughout a realm would make its aspect attractive, are here centred in one small islet, which God has cast as a forlorn rock on the shores of a mighty empire, whose advanced golden downs surround and shelter it within their embraces.

The history of Jersey, although rather closely connected with that of the neighbouring isles, presents, however, a peculiar physiognomy and a quite distinct interest, not only for its superior importance, but for those frequent struggles out of which it has ever come victorious and faithful.

The sole relic of the power formerly held by the kings of England over Normandy, Jersey was the stage and the object of the ambitious enterprises of most of the successors of Philip of France, who wished to complete the conquest of that monarch over John of England, in reuniting these islands to the fief of Normandy ; but the inhabitants, combining their efforts to those of the kings of Britain, anxious to keep to their realm this last remain of their beautiful Norman province, obstinately clung to this rock and there displayed more valour and prowess than would be needed for the conquest of kingdoms.

Unfortunate royalties, bowed down under the anathema of their subjects, have come to seek in it a sympathy for their broken hearts, a loyalty for their fallen power, and a sword to defend them. The privileges which are the sources of its prosperity and the reward which it has deserved are also the proofs of its glory; the island has preserved them with quite a religious fondness, like a soldier his Croix d’Honneur.