Guernsey Folk Lore: a collection of popular superstitions, legendary tales, peculiar customs, proverbs, weather sayings, etc., of the people of that islandMacCulloch, Edgar, Sir
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Guernsey Folk Lore: a collection of popular superstitions, legendary tales, peculiar customs, proverbs, weather sayings, etc., of the people of that island
MacCulloch, Edgar, Sir
Folklore -- Guernsey
She had heard old wives tell how the fairies sometimes took advantage
of the absence of the mother or nurse, to steal away a sleeping child,
and to substitute one of their own bantlings in its place, and how the
only way to cause them to make restitution was to throw the changeling
on the hearth, when the fairy mother, unable to withstand the piteous
cries of her offspring, was sure to appear, and bring back the stolen
infant with her.
She lost no time therefore in catching up the fairy imp, who, knowing
the fate that awaited him, set up a fearful yell. Immediately, the
fairy mother, without stopping to lift the latch, leaped over the
“hecq” or half-door, and, restoring to the trembling housewife her babe
uninjured, snatched up her own squalling brat, and departed by the same
way she had come.[108]
[108] From Mrs. Savidan. (Also see Page 225).
BUILDING OF THE CASTEL CHURCH.
The parish of Notre Dame du Castel, or, as it is now the fashion
to call it, St. Mary de Castro, is the largest in the island, but
the church is situated at one extremity of the parish, close on the
bounds of St. Andrew’s, to the great inconvenience of many of the
parishioners. It is true that in former days they had some relief in
the Chapels of Ste. Anne, St. George, and St. Germain, but chapels are
not parish churches, and many, while trudging through the miry roads in
winter, or toiling up the dusty hill in summer, when some of the great
festivals required them to present themselves at the mother church,
have inquired how it came to pass that so inconvenient a site had been
chosen. The old people, depositaries of the ancient traditions of the
place, will answer that originally the foundations were laid in a
field called “Les Tuzés,” but this was haunted ground, and a favourite
resort of the fairies, and that, these little ladies, unwilling to
yield up their rights without a struggle, in the course of a single
night transported all the tools, stones, etc., in their cambric aprons,
to the spot where the Church of St. Mary now stands. Thrice did this
happen before the builders gave up their intention of erecting the
sacred edifice on the site first chosen.[109]
[109] From Rachel Duport.
Similar stories are told of the Forest Church, of St. Martin’s and the
Vale Churches, of St. Brelade’s in Jersey, and many others.
See Chambers’ _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, p. 335, and _Notes and
Queries_, 2nd Series, IV., 144.
THE GUERNSEY LILY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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