D's articl'yes et des nouvelles entouor lé Jèrriais 2008
Press cuttings about Jèrriais 2008
Société Jersiaise
It must not be forgotten that up to the Victorian era the spoken common language of Jersey was Jèrriais. It was in the Victorian era that English came to dominate in St Helier and it did not supersede Jèrriais in the country parishes until as late as the 1950s and 1960s.
This led, as Geraint Jennings pointed out in his Thursday lunchtime talk to the Société Jersiaise entitled Witchcraft, Elections and Snuff, Jèrriaise literature and its themes, to a wealth of written material that was published mainly in newspapers, almanacs, booklets and pamphlets.
It is sometimes claimed that there is no Jèrriase literature but this is far from the truth. There are no novels in Jèrriais but there is a wealth of poetry, short stories, articles and plays. Almost from the moment that printing was introduced into Jersey in 1780, the Jèrriais writers realised what a good medium it was to be for gossip, scandal mongering, electioneering and advertising. The first Jèrriais printed and dated poem is from 1795 by Mathew Le Geyt. It was used to advertise the Green Door snuff shop of Mr Simonet in King Street.
‘Si quicun veut du sno bon, frais, fort, bain-râpait
Y ly faut l’acate siés Mousieu Simonet’
(If someone wants snuff, good, fresh, strong, well grated
He must buy it at Mr Simonet’s)
Snuff taking in the 18th and 19th centuries was considered to be a genteel and even medicinal practice. It was particularly popular with women as smoking was considered to be a male preserve and also rather odious. (Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!) The Green Door was obviously not just a snuff shop. It was a centre of gossip, of electioneering propaganda — for the Rose party — as well as, it is suspected, a place where the two sexes could meet and enjoy a snuff tasting.
The interesting fact about Jèrriaise poetry is that it was written by those who had obviously been well educated. The format of the poems is classic French — 12-syllable Alexandrines rather than the more rhythmic structure of English verse — the iambic pentameters. As Jèrriaise poetry developed, it followed the developments in the French Alexandrine format. With a sly grin, Geraint pointed out that if rock and pop art forms of the 2lst century have been fuelled by certain substances, one could say tongue in cheek, that Jèrriais literature of the 18th and 19th centuries was turbo-charged by snuff.
Snuff was also the connection to witches, in particular the witches of Rocqueberg in St Clement. It seems that the covens were always well attended
when the snuff boxes were in evidence and their sneezes could be heard throughout the parish leading as you might expect to poems in honour of their activities.
Sorcery and witchcraft were a part of rural fantasies up until the 20t century when there was a general fear that one might meet witches after dark in the streets. These fears were to be superseded by the fear in the 20th century that one might meet electioneers after dark and, in turn, a fear in the twenty first that one might meet a gang of unruly youths.
Geraint concluded his talk by reiterating what an interesting history we have through Jèrriais and that it was the language chosen by writers to comment and influence the indigenous population of the Island. Fortunately, there are still many examples of the written word extant and these can be found at the Lord Coutanche library at the Société Jersiaise at 7 Pier Road.
JEP 28/2/2008
Quirky, independent and proud, the isle of secrets and whispers
Until comparatively recently, the language of the islands was Jèrriais, a Norman French patois almost equally incomprehensible to French and British ears. Only three in a hundred islanders still speak the language (although one in eight claims some knowledge) but the linguistic difference persists in a guttural accent, closer in sound to South African than French.
Times 26/2/2008
(JEP = Jersey Evening Post)
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