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Speaking and Eating

[from Introducing the Channel Islands by Henry Myhill (1964)]

The English visitor to the Islands will be able to talk to almost everyone in his own language: it may even be a day or two before he hears any Norman French being spoken. Equally, however, the French visitor can land in any of the Islands, and have no more difficulty in making himself understood, than the Englishman finds in Scandinavia. His ear will not at once become accustomed to the Norman French dialect, but those who speak this can often speak official French as well, and in all the banks, and most of the shops, there is at least one French-speaking member of the staff. For French is very much the first language in the Islands' schools, and French workers cross in large numbers to work on the Island farms. Television sets, with or without a small adjustment, can receive French programmes, so that contacts are increasing, rather than the reverse.

The Norman French dialects, however, are slowly dying. It is a very gradual process; but a significant event was the demise of Jersey's French language newspaper, Les Chroniques de Jersey, which ceased publication in 1959. Jersey's Evening Post still has a page in French once a week, and also a section in Jersey French which provides a commentary like the B.B.C’s The Archers on the activities of a typical, but presumably mythical, farming couple at St. Ouen's, called Ph’lip et Merrienne. Here is an extract from the Evening Post, of Monday, March 11th 1963, of Ph'lip's weekly letter to Moussieu l'Editeu, written "a Portinfe, Sount Ou", on "Jeudi au se".

The translation runs as follows:

There are considerable variations between the dialects of the different Islands, between those of the different parishes in Jersey and Guernsey, and even sometimes between different vingtaines of the same parish. The above extract from a letter supposedly written at Portinfer, is specifically in "le jèrriais" of Portinfer. Portinfer is in the cueillette of Vinchelez. (Just as Sussex is divided into rapes, where most other counties are divided into hundreds, so St. Ouen's is divided into cueillettes, where all other Jersey parishes are divided into vingtaines.) But in Les Landes, or at l'Etac, in the adjacent cueillette of Millais, I have been assured that there would be certain variations.

There are variations, too, in the extent to which Norman French is still in regular use. In Alderney it has died out. In Sark, on the other hand, it is still the everyday language for everyone over thirty, and the dialect spoken there has considerable affinities with that of St. Ouen's, from which most of Helier de Carteret's first Tenants emigrated in 1565- in Jersey, it is still widely spoken in all the country parishes, especially to the north and west of the island. In St. Helier itself, however, it is only used "en famille" by certain families who have often moved in from the country only a generation or two ago. An English child whose parents move to any part of Jersey, will almost certainly not learn to speak Norman French. The same child in Guernsey, however, quite possibly will. There are big variations between the dialects of the 'north', around Vale, the 'west', around St. Saviour's, and the 'south', around Forest; and "le dgernesiais" is furthest removed of all the dialects from those of the adjacent French provinces.

Even in Guernsey, however, the visitor from Normandy, or even a little beyond Normandy, soon finds his ear tuning in to the local variations of the same old French which he speaks himself. At the Old Government House Hotel in St. Peter Port, a young waiter from as far south as La Perche, the region to the west of Chartres, told me what a strange experience it was to be able to converse with his Guernsey contemporaries in a variation of the patois of his own province.

Fortunately, everything possible is being done, in 'eisteddfods', and in "sethees jerriaises" {sethee = soiree), to preserve the use of Norman French. Fortunately, too, the younger generation, where they have been lucky enough to learn their native language in their own homes, are proud of the fact. Fifty or sixty years ago, it was evidently a mark of social refinement to speak nothing but English. Old people will sometimes tell you, with a note of pride, 'My Mother would never let us speak French at home.' The result of this can be seen all too clearly in a stroll round any of the churchyards. The likelihood is that any tombstone erected before 1900 will be engraved in French: if erected after 19141 that it will be inscribed in English.

The visitor is unlikely to see many specialities of the Islands' cooking beyond the Jersey "merveille", or wonder, and the Guernsey "gache", which are all too available at the teashops. Their best recommendation is their exciting names!

Once, there was a whole gamut of dishes. Even in St. Helier, within living memory, one encountered on the way to early morning service, each Sunday, all the maid-servants returning from the bakeries, each bearing an earthenware pot decently covered with a cloth. This contained a mixture of beans and hock of pork, which had been carried up the night before for a gentle cook, as the embers of the bakehouse oven fire slowly died for the baker's day of rest. The result was an infinitely vaster and more elemental version of Messrs. Heinz's 'Baked Beans with pork added, and the whiff of baked beans still brings back the memory of Sunday mornings to many Jerseymen.

Apples were the basis of several recipes. Occasionally, one still has the opportunity of tasting Jersey black butter, or "nier beurre". This is a type of very rich confiture. In country cottages all over Jersey, too, the delicious local apple pie, or "pate d’pommes", still makes a regular appearance on the dinner table.

With a little patience and persistence, the visitor may be able to sample the greatest delicacy of the Islands: that 'succulent univalve', the ormer. This superb shellfish is the meatiest and most steak-like crustacean of all. Both its capture and its cooking are best left to the expert. Its catching requires an 'R' in the month, a very low tide, and the 'know-how' of where to look. Its cooking necessitates a good deal of time and trouble.

With one group of locally produced foodstuffs, the visitor cannot fail to become familiar. These are the dairy products: the milk, cream, and butter of the famous Island breeds of cattle. Any fresh milk consumed in the Islands is bound to have been drawn from them, for no other cattle have been allowed to enter the Islands for more than a century. The ban on imports of foreign cattle by the Jersey States actually dates from 1789. and was designed to prevent French cattle from entering the United Kingdom free of import duty, through the 'back door' offered by the Channel Islands. When the Germans offered a whole herd of French cattle to supplement the Jersey meat ration during the Occupation, the States had to pass a special law permitting them to enter the island, and to graze for a few weeks on the airfield between landing and slaughtering.

Until well on in the nineteenth century, beasts occasionally travelled between Guernsey and Jersey, 'because', to quote Mr. Eric J. Boston in Jersey Cattle, 'of the old custom whereby a girl from one island who married a man from the other frequently took with her a calf as part of her dowry. Needless to say, it was usually a very good calf. Women usually controlled the dairy and a farmer's daughter would insist upon the best!'

The Alderney was the first breed to be appreciated outside the Islands, and was already being exported to the Mainland during the eighteenth century. Mrs. Lane Clarke, writing in 1851, speaks of the Alderney's yellow ears and tail; good udder; handsome colour, cream, light red, or both mixed with a little white; its handsome deer-like head, well horned; its bright prominent eye; its deep barrel-shaped body, its good hind quarter and straight back; its handsome legs and small bones.

Unfortunately, the Alderney breeders had already allowed their herd-book to be merged with that of the Guernsey before the war. During the war, when the entire stock was slipped to Guernsey a day or two after the population had evacuated to England, the identity of the Alderney as a breed was finally lost.

Today the 'Golden Guernsey' is the only breed of cattle throughout the northern bailiwick, in Alderney, Sark, and Herm, as well as Guernsey. A larger animal than the Jersey, it owes some characteristics to the large brindle cow of the Cotentin known as the 'Isigny', and others to the smaller red cow of Brittany known as the 'Froment de Leon'. Its colour varies from light fawn to dark red, generally with white patches. Its numbers have declined in its own island with the spread of horticulture. I therefore imagined that the northern parishes of Vale and St. Sampson's would contain few or no cows, for these are the parishes with the greatest number of glasshouses. I was surprised, however, when the Secretary of the Royal Guernsey Agricultural and Horticultural Society told me that although there were fewer herds of cattle in the northern parishes, these herds are larger than the small stock of six or ten cows which are typical of the mixed farm in the centre and the south.

The Jersey is now one of the most popular dairy breeds throughout the world. By 1940, for example, three-quarters of the dairy herds of New Zealand consisted of Jerseys. With their beautifully shaped heads, and their delicate fawn or brindled bodies, the tethered cows, wearing a coat in winter, form an essential feature of the Jersey landscape.

The tiny fields which they so neatly crop are measured, not in acres, but in "vergees". To make one English acre requires 23 Guernsey "vergees", but only 2 1/4 Jersey "vergees". For in this, as in everything else, the Channel Islands prefer to go each their own