Articles

A priest takes refuge in Alderney and Guernsey, 1792-93

Extracts from 'Relation du voyage en Angleterre de Monsieur Lefebvre d'Anneville, Curé de Sotteville (près les Pieux)', from Notices, memoires et documents de la Société d'agriculture, d'archéologie et d'histoire naturelle du Départment de la Manche (1924). The author was one of 142 Catholic priests who fled persecution in France and came to Alderney in 1792. The photograph shows the Le Mesuriers' Les Mouriaux House as it is today.

Four-horned ewes and six-horned rams, 1779

From the New Universal Traveller, Containing a Full and Distinct Account of All the Empires, Kingdoms, and States, in the Known World, by Jonathan Carver, 1779.

Taxation

From Duncan's History of Guernsey, 1841, pp. 270 ff. From Ferdinand Brock Tupper.

Tethering of cattle, 1836

Tethered cows from Bellamy's Pictorial Guide of 1843 in the Library collection.

In view of the current controversy over tethering, here is a view of the practice in Guernsey from Duncan's Guernsey and Jersey Magazine in 1836. The woodcut is by Dr Thomas Bellamy from his 1843 Pictorial Directory in the Library Collection.

Taxation and parish meetings, 1840

From Sarnia, or the Holy Land, a new guide to the privileged island of Guernsey, &c. by a Twenty Years' resident: Payn, Jersey, 1840, pp. 83-4.

Actions de graces, prayers of thanksgiving

Beautiful prayers in French, previously used in Guernsey. As written in the History of Guernsey Churches scrapbook in the Library. During the Reformation this type of prayer was said after a baptism; later they were used at special services of thanksgiving, such as at the end of wars, or recovery of a monarch from illness.

Bread and hot cross buns

From the History of the Guernsey Churches scrapbook.

Guernsey enterprises, 1830

Chapter XVII of Jacob's Annals, 1830, pp. 465 ff.

The Season in Alderney

From The Ladies' Companion and Monthly Magazine, 1868. Old-fashioned and full of Latin tags but more fun that you might think. 'For be it remarked here, that the Alderney girls age remarkably fast, and very probably the charmer who is carrying on a conversation with you, and parrying all your flirting and causerie, with all the nerve and steadiness of five-and-twenty, is, after all, only adorned by the petitionary grace of sweet seventeen.'

The Alderney cow

From Supplement to the Penny Magazine, September 1837, p. 383, republished from Volume V of the Guernsey and Jersey Magazine of 1831, with other descriptions of the Alderney cow from various sources.

Adulteration of wine, 1825

More Guernsey skulduggery, from the Economist and General Adviser, 1825.

A Guernseyman is duped, 1590

A cheeky tale, suspiciously similar to Boccaccio's Decameron, from The Stranger's Guide to Guernsey and Jersey, 1833, pp. 128 ff., written by Dr Thomas Bellamy. 'In an old book, now out of print and very scarce, published in 1590, entitled Morgan's Feats of the Cardinals, is the following ludicrous account of the midnight ramble of a gentleman, sent from the island of Guernsey to Naples, in Italy, to buy horses.' The detail is from the frontispiece of the Library's 1566 edition of the Chroniques et Annales de France, Vol. I.

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