The Guernsey peasant and patois, 1846

The swarthy locals and their barbarous dialect, an excerpt from the Dublin University Magazine, 1846. This is no doubt based on Inglis' 1834 description of the Guernsey peasant: 'I cannot greatly compliment the personal appearance of the Guernsey country people. There are dark and sparkling eyes among the women .... The men are, with few exceptions, badly limbed; and among the women too, the bust is better than the ankles.'

Italian Comedy

Frontispiece showing Harlequin costume from Riccobon's Histoire du Theatre Italien, 1728, in the Priaulx Library Collection
The Priaulx Library holds a small suite of rare books on the subject of Italian Comedy, the most desirable of which is probably Luigi Riccoboni's Histoire du theatre Italien, depuis la decadence de la Comedie Latine; avec un catalogue des tragedies et comedies Italiennes imprimees depuis l'an 1500, jusqu'a l'an 1660, et une dissertation sur la tragedie moderne Paris : Imprimerie de Pierre Delormel, Rue du Foin, Sainte Genevieve, 1728. 60p., [18] leaves of hand coloured plates, one folding. (8vo). Bound with Dell'Arte rappresentativa; Capitoli sei, London, 1728.

La Discipline ecclesiastique, 1576 et 1597

Title page of the Discipline Ecclesiastique, Priaulx Library Collection
In 1885 was published the original French text of the Ecclesiastical Discipline for Guernsey, edited by the Reverend G.-E. Lee of the Town Church and published by Thomas Bichard of the Bordage. The Police et discipline ecclesiastique was a set of regulations for the management of the Church and its congregation in the island, established by consensus in 1576 and which, despite the severity of its rules, remained in force until the Restoration in 1660, when Charles II imposed a form of Anglicanism on the island.

Selected House Pedigrees

The History Section of the Societe Guernesiaise has produced a set of pedigrees of houses taken from Guernsey's Livres de Perchage, which list the owners of a particular house from the earliest times at which it was rated, together with a glossary of French terms found in these documents. These will prove very useful for genealogists and can be consulted at the Library, as can our collection of original Livres de Perchage.

Table des Monnaies, Poids et Mesures en usage a Guernesey, published by Frederick Clarke

In the mid-19th century Frederick Clarke produced in his establishment in the States Arcade this little booklet, attempting to distil in four pages the labyrinthine system of weights and measures at that time employed in the island. Its difficulty was compounded by the sheer number of currencies that island merchants and traders had to deal with. The information is taken literally from schoolmaster Thomas du Frocq's Nouveau Precepteur of 1818, which is a (mainly) applied mathematics primer of tortuous complexity and much greater length.

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