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burned the archives to destroy the plague. In France these islands are generally known as the English islands, in England as the Norman islands. The Channel Islands coin their own money, though only coppers. A Roman road, which can still be seen, ran between Coutances in Normandy and Jersey. As we have seen, Jersey was detached from France by the ocean in 709, when twelve parishes were engulfed. There are families living today in Normandy that still have the lordship of these parishes. Their divine right is now under water: such is sometimes the fate of divine rights.

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    HISTORY, LEGEND, RELIGION
    The original six parishes of Guernsey belonged to a single seigneur, Néel, viscount of Cotentin, who was defeated in the Battle of the Dunes in 1047. At that time, according to Dumaresq, there was a volcano in the Channel Islands. The date of the twelve parishes of Jersey is inscribed in the Black Book of Coutances Cathedral. The seigneur of Briquebec had the style of baron of Guernsey. Alderney was a fief held by Henri l’Artisan. Jersey was ruled by two thieves, Caesar and Rollo. 20 Haro 21 is an appeal to the duke (“Ha! Rollo!”); or perhaps it comes from the Saxon
haran,
to cry. The cry
haro
was repeated three times, kneeling on the highway, and all work ceased in the area until justice had been done. Before Rollo, duke of the Normans, the archipelago had been ruled by Solomon, king of the Bretons. As a result there is much of Normandy in Jersey and much of Brittany in Guernsey. On these islands nature reflects history: Jersey has more meadowland, Guernsey more rocks; Jersey is greener, Guernsey harsher. The islands were covered with noble mansions. The earl of Essex left a ruin on Alderney, Essex Castle. Jersey has Mont Orgueil; Guernsey has Castle Cornet. Castle Cornet stands on a rock that was once a holm, that is, a helmet. The same metaphor is found in the Casquets (
casques
= helmets). Castle Cornet was besieged by the Picard pirate Eustache, Mont Orgueil by Du Guesclin 22 ; fortresses, like women, boast of their besiegers when they are illustrious. In the fifteenth century a pope declared Jersey and Guernsey neutral. He was thinking of war, not of schism. Calvinism, preached on Jersey by Pierre Morice and on Guernsey by Nicolas Baudouin, arrived in the Norman archipelago in 1563. Calvin’s doctrines have prospered there, as have Luther’s, though nowadays much troubled by Wesleyanism, an offshoot of Protestantism that now contains the future of England. Churches abound in the archipelago. It is worth considering them in detail. Everywhere there are Protestant churches; Catholicism has been left behind. Any given area on Jersey or Guernsey has more chapels than any area of the same size in Spain or Italy. Methodists proper, Primitive Methodists, other Methodist sects, Independent Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Millenarians, Quakers, Bible Christians, Plymouth Brethren, Non-Sectarians, etc.; add also the episcopal Anglican church and the papist Roman church. On Jersey there is a Mormon chapel.
    In St. George’s Fountain, at Le Câtel, girls see the image of their future husband. Another spring, in St. Andrew’s, I think, compels liars who have been unfortunate enough to drink from it to tell the truth. If a woman scrapes a stone in a dolmen, mixes the resultant powder, known as
pérelle,
into water, and drinks it, she is sure to have sturdy children. The wall of a church can be scraped with similar success. In every bay there lives an elf who, if a child gives him a cake, will in due course, according to sex, give the little girl a dowry when she reaches marriageable age and the boy, when he becomes a man, a fully rigged boat. There are two giants: the giant Longis, father of Gayoffe, father of Bolivorax, father of Pantagruel, 23 and the giant Bodu, who has now been transformed into a black dog, having been punished by the fairies for his dalliance with a princess. This black dog,