I’m glad Ebenezer, who dies alive, doesn’t know.[2]
31st July 1974
[2] Mr Harry Tomlinson, an authority on the patois, asks me to point out that Edwards’ account of the difference between the high and low parish dialects is misleading. The transposition of r in words and the replacement of soft French ch (as in chercher) by hard English ch (as in church) are universal on Guernsey. In fact the most striking difference lies in vowel-sounds, low parish being much nearer to standard French. JF.
GLOSSARY
The French patois of Guernsey is by no means without its own literature, past or present. Its first poet, Georges Métivier (1790–1881), can stand comparison with William Barnes of Dorset and should surely be more widely known. Métivier well symbolizes Guernsey’s eternal dilemma, for his master (whose spirit he at times carried brilliantly into French) was Robert Burns. The English are baffled by his language; the French, by his alien mentality. However, a very determined contemporary effort is being made to see that this vigorous tongue of the Cotentin and Channel Islands does not drown under the tide of the standard one. Phrases in that latter are in general not glossed here. I must thank Mr Harry Tomlinson for his very considerable help in compiling this glossary.
baise mon tchou: probably for baise mon cul, kiss my arse
boud’lo: a puppet or effigy burnt at year’s end (bout de l’an)
cauchie: chaussée, causeway, jetty
chancre: cancre, large edible crab
chétif: stunted, puny
chonna: cela, that. Est-che comme chonna, Is that how it is?
connétable: in former times an honorary parish policeman
crapaud: toad, a nickname for Jerseymen. Those of Sark were ‘crows’; of Guernsey, ‘donkeys’.
damme: usually ‘cor damme’, from corpus domini mei, Christ’s body
dido: a caper, a fuss
double: obsolete Channel Island coin, eight to the penny
douit: stream or water-course
douzaine: parish council of twelve; douzenier, parish councillor
écrivain: scrivener, notary public
fé: foi, faith; ma fé, my word
fénion: fainéant, lazy person
fiche le can: fiche le camp, clear out, buzz off
fippennies: perhaps fourpenny pieces, groats
gâche: ‘a kind of bread in which yeast and fruit are used with flour, butter, milk and sugar kneaded together’
Grand Saracen: a legendary Guernsey pirate
green-bed: jonquière, a fern-littered couch used by farmers for their midday rest
Greffe: the civil and land registry office of Guernsey
greffier: registrar
grimerai: mais je te grimerai, donc, I’ll scratch your eyes out
G.U.B.: the Green-house Utilisation Board, which supervised crop-growing during the German Occupation
j’sis fier: I’m glad
jurat: magistrate and member of the island electoral college
long-nose: the garfish, highly esteemed on Guernsey
mais verre dja, donc: that’s very true, yes indeed
mais wai, mais nonnain: of course
Mess: monsieur
mitching: playing truant or hookey
mommet: a lifeless effigy
mon Dou: my God
mon viow: mon vieux, old man, old chap
Muratti: the Muratti Vase, a Channel Island football cup
museau: literally ‘snout’, in slang face or mug
orfi: another word for the garfish
ormer: the sea-ear, an abalone-like shellfish unique to the islands
par il lo: par là, that way
pied-du-cauche: pied de chausse, stocking-foot for hiding money
planchette: fortune-telling board
Pool: the deep-water part of St Peterport harbour
pourchay: pig
purain: purin, liquid manure
royne: reine, queen, also a kind of frog
Russel: the Little and the Great Russel are respectively the channels between Guernsey and Herm, and Herm and Sark
scoop: a sun-bonnet with a projecting brim over the face
spawls: stone chips or splinters
States: les états de délibération, the Guernsey parliament
té: toi, familiar form of you
terpid: trépied, trivet or gridiron over an open fire
vergée: land measurement, just over one third of an acre
verre: vrai, true
vier: vieux, old
volresse: female thief; tu fichu petite volresse, you wretched little thief
vraic: wrack, seaweed used both as manure and as fuel. The island’s previous staple industry of stone-quarrying began to give way to the present one of producing early vegetables and flowers in the 1880s. Guernsey soil is not naturally fertile, thence the importance of vraicing, collecting shoreline seaweed. Ancient and complex laws still govern right of vraic.
wharro: a greeting, from ‘what ho’
THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK
PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
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Copyright © 1981 by Edward P. de G. Chaney
Introduction copyright © 1981 by J. R. Fowles Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Cover image: R.B. Kitaj, Blake's God, Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Fine Art, London
Cover design: Katy Homans
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:
Edwards, G. B. (Gerald Basil), 1899–1976.
The book of Ebenezer le Page / by G. B. Edwards ; introduction by John Fowles.
p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59017-233-9 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-59017-233-7 (alk. paper)
1. Guernsey (Channel Islands)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6055.D87B6 2007
823'.914—dc22
2007010956
eISBN: 978-1-59017-611-5
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The Book of Ebenezer le Page Page 57