THE FOREST OF VAZON
_A GUERNSEY LEGEND OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY_.
London:
HARRISON & SONS, 59, PALL MALL
Booksellers to the Queen and H.R.H the Prince of Wales
1889.
PREFACE.
Nothing authentic is known of the history of Guernsey previously to its
annexation to the Duchy of Normandy in the tenth century. The only
sources of information as to events which may have occurred before that
date are references in monkish chronicles of the usual semi-mythical
type, and indications conveyed by cromlechs and menhirs, fragments of
Celtic instruments and pottery, and a few Roman relics. It is
unfortunate that we are thus precluded from acquiring any knowledge of
the development of a people as to whom the soundest among conflicting
conjectures seems to be that, coming originally from Brittany, they
preserved the purity of the Celtic race through periods when in other
offshoots of the same stock its characteristics were being obliterated
by the processes of crossing and absorption.
If early local records had existed they would hardly have failed to
have given minute details of the convulsion of nature which resulted in
the destruction by the sea of the forest lands on the northern and
western sides of the island, and in the separation of tracts of
considerable magnitude from the mainland. Geologists are agreed in
assigning to this event the date of March, 709, when great inundations
occurred in the Bay of Avranches on the French coast; they are not
equally unanimous as to the cause, but science now rejects the theory of
a raising of the sea-level and that of a general subsidence of the
island. The most reasonable explanation appears to be that the
overpowering force of a tidal wave suddenly swept away barriers whose
resistance had been for ages surely though imperceptibly diminishing,
and that the districts thus left unprotected proved to be below the
sea-level--owing, as regards the forests, to gradual subsidence easily
explicable in the case of undrained, swampy soil; and, as regards the
rocks, to the fact that the newly exposed surface consisted of
accumulations of already disintegrated deposits.
It is unquestionable that before the inroad of the sea the inlet in the
south-west of the island known as Rocquaine Bay was enclosed by two
arms, the northern of which terminated in the point of Lihou; on which
still stand the ruins of an old priory, while the southern ended in the
Hanois rocks, on which a lighthouse has been erected. Lihou is at
present an island, accessible only at low water by a narrow causeway;
the Hanois is entirely cut off from the shore, but it is a noteworthy
fact that the signs of old cart-ruts are visible at spring tides, and
that an iron hook was recently discovered attached to a submerged rock
which had apparently served as a gatepost; besides these proofs of the
existence of roads now lying under the waves, it is said that an old
order for the repair of Hanois roads is still extant. That Vazon and the
Braye du Valle were the sites of forests is indisputable, though the
former is now a sandy bay into which the Atlantic flows without
hindrance, and the latter, reclaimed within the present century by an
enterprising governor, formed for centuries a channel of the sea by
which the Clos du Valle, on which the Vale Church stands, was separated
from the mainland. A stratum of peat extends over the whole arm of the
Braye, while as regards Vazon there is the remarkable evidence of an
occurrence which took place in December, 1847. A strong westerly gale,
blowing into the bay concurrently with a low spring tide, broke up the
bed of peat and wood underlying the sand and gravel, and lifted it up
like an ice-floe; it was then carried landwards by the force of the
waves. The inhabitants flocked to the spot, and the phenomenon was
carefully inspected by scientific observers. Trunks of full-sized trees
were seen, accompanied by meadow plants and roots of rushes and weeds,
surrounded by those of grasses and mosses; the perfect state of the
trees showed that they had been long buried under the sand. Some of the
trees and boughs were at first mistaken for wreckage, but the fishermen
soon discovered their error and loaded their carts with the treasure
locally known as "gorban." Subsequent researches have shown that acorns
and hazel-nuts, teeth of horses and hogs, also pottery and instruments
of the same character as those found in the cromlechs, exist among the
Vazon peat deposits. There is therefore abundant evidence that the
legends relating to the former inhabitants of the forest are based on
traditions resting on an historical foundation.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.--TRADITION
CHAPTER II.--SUPERSTITION
CHAPTER III.--DEVOTION
CHAPTER IV.--REVELATION
CHAPTER V.--AFFLICTION
CHAPTER VI.--CONSOLATION
CHAPTER VII.--ANNIHILATION
CHAPTER I.
TRADITION.
"What can he tell that treads thy shore?
No legend of thine olden time,
No theme on which the mind might soar
High as thine own in days of yore."
_The Giaour_.--BYRON
In the beginning of the eighth century Guernsey was a favoured spot.
Around, over the Continent and the British Isles, had swept successive
conquests with their grim train of sufferings for the conquered; but
these storm-clouds had not burst over the island. The shocks which
preceded the fall of the Roman Empire had not been felt, nor had the
throes which inaugurated the birth of Frankish rule in Gaul and Saxon
supremacy in Britain, disturbed the prevailing tranquillity. Occasional
descents of pirates, Northmen from Scandinavian homes or Southmen from
the Iberian peninsula, had hitherto had a beneficial effect by keeping
alive the martial spirit and the vigilance necessary for self-defence.
In the third century three Roman ships had been driven on shore and
lost; the legionaries who escaped had established themselves in the
island, having indeed for the moment no alternative. When their
commander succeeded in communicating with Gaul he suggested a permanent
occupation, being secretly influenced by tales of mineral wealth to
which he had lent an ear. Disillusioned and recalled, he was followed by
a sybarite, whose palate was tickled by banquets of fish of which he
wrote in raptures to his friends at Capri and Brindisi. This excellent
man, dying of apoplexy in his bath, was replaced by a rough soldier, who
lost no time in procuring the evacuation of a post where he saw with a
glance that troops were uselessly locked up. From this time nothing had
been heard of the Romans; their occupation had lasted forty years, and
in another forty the only physical traces of it remaining were a camp at
Jerbourg, the nearly obliterated tessellated pavement and fragments of
wall belonging to the sybarite's villa, which occupied the site in the
King's Mills Valley where the Moulin de Haut now stands, the pond in
the Grand Mare in which the voluptuary had reared the carp over which,
dressed with sauces the secret of which died with him, he dwelt lovingly
when stretched on his triclinium, and the basins at Port Grat in which
he stored his treasured mullet and succulent oysters. The islanders were
of one mind in speeding the parting guests, but the generation which saw
them go were better men than their fathers who had trembled at the
landing of the iron-thewed demi-gods. Compelled to work as slaves, they
had learnt much from their masters; a knowledge of agriculture and of
the cultivation of the grape, the substitution of good weapons and
implements of husbandry for those of their Celtic ancestors, improved
dwellings, and some insight into military discipline,--these were
substantial benefits which raised them in some respects above their
Continental and British neighbours, among whom patriotism had, on the
disappearance of the civilization of the Romans, revived the more
congenial barbarism. Arrivals among them of Christian monks, scanty at
first, more frequent since the landing of S. Augustine in Britain, had
also had a certain effect. The progress of conversion was, however,
slow; the people were bigoted, and the good fathers were compelled, as
in Brittany, to content themselves with a few genuine converts, wisely
endeavouring rather to leaven the mass by grafting Christian truths on
the old superstitions than to court certain defeat, possible expulsion
or massacre, by striving to overthrow at once all the symbols of
heathenism.
The island was larger in extent than it is at present, as, in addition
to the Vale district, the islet of Lihou, Vazon Bay, and the rock group
known as the Hanois formed part of it. It is with the events that
altered this configuration that the following legend deals.