GUERNSEY DIALECT NAMES. 515 



Toiimassc. Some are translations of, or adaptations from his 

 favourite poets, snch as Shelley and Longfellow, but princi- 

 pallv Robert Bnrns, of Avhom Metivier seems to have been 

 particularly fond, for he has turned many of his poems and 

 songs into patois verse, as witness T.e houan mer temps, Tani 

 an Sabbat, Une marguerite mhichie yav luie Qu.erue^Jcaii Grain 

 (Torcje, Urier David Griset, and others. 



But throughout the whole series of these interesting 

 compositions one perceives that the author is constantly 

 thinking in French while writing in the dialect. Modern 

 French is clearly his mother-tongue, and the patois flows 

 awkwardly from his pen, with a certain amount of constraint, 

 even at times with evident labour. Here and there lines are 

 built up with ill-fitting, farfetched words violently dragged in 

 to fill' up the metre or to suit the rhyme, so that they do not 

 fall into their i)laces at all gracefully or naturally, and there 

 is a marked predilection for certain pet words and phrases. 

 The truth is that Metivier Avas too profound a scholar, too 

 deeply imbued with classical ideas and literature, to be able to 

 wn-ite simple patois poetry with perfect ease and fluency. 



To ])roperly understand the richness and flexibility of the 

 old Guernsey dialect, we must turn to the two volumes of 

 poetry composed by Mr. Denys Corbet, entitled respectively 

 Lci Fieille.s de la Fona.ret and T^es Chants die Drain Rimeiix. 

 The latter work consists almost entirely of one long poem 

 called Le Tonar de Guernesi composed in the ])iu^e, unalloyed 

 vernacular, and extending over some 220 closely printed pages. 

 In spite of its length, however, it is by no means tedious 

 reading — quite the contrary ; for it is written with a facile 

 pen, and contains graphic sketches of people and places, 

 customs and fashions, old things and new, all looked at from 

 their humorous side, so that a spice of pungent satire gives a 

 pleasant flavour to it all. Many diverting episodes treating 

 of special subjects are introduced, but the main poem is the 

 simple narrative of a keenly-observant, nature-loving son of 

 the soil, who having at command a wonderfully copious voca- 

 bulary, jots down in free and unlaboured verse the impressions 

 suggested to his mind during a leisurely ramble across Guernsey. 



Mr. Corbet possesses a natural gift for versification, and 

 he confesses that what affords him the greatest pleasure is the 

 composition of verses in his own beloved native patois. Pro- 

 bably there is not now extant a more truthful and vivid 

 pen-picture of Guernsey as it was during the third quarter of 

 the nineteenth century than this Tonar de Gv,ernesi. As 

 examples of the author's talent and versatility, the reader 



