The Guernsey Norman French translations of Thomas Martin

In 1953, an article by C.P. Le Huray in the "Quarterly Review of the Guernsey Society" drew attention to a major corpus of exercise books containing what he described as the Guernseyman Thomas Martin's translations into 'Norman French, as spoken in the parish of St. Martin', of 'the four gospels, the plays of Shakespeare and the Comedies of Moliere'. The next time the exercise-books were mentioned in print (1981) it was noted that, although over 200 of these had been obtained
by the Societe Guernesiaise, the remainder of the collection had disappeared and was believed to be out of Guernsey.

Recent research I have undertaken in the Archives of Guernsey has led me to propose some revisions to these claims. The Martin manuscripts are in fact complete- the missing 206 exercise books were acquired by the Archives from a London auction house in 2003. Moreover, as far as the contents are concerned, previous accounts also need to be reassessed, for examination has revealed the manuscripts to contain a complete translation of the Bible (including the Apocrypha) and 100 plays, including the complete plays of Shakespeare (37 plays) and 63 plays from the work of the French authors Corneille, Moliere and Voltaire.

The fact that the Martin manuscripts have never formed the subject of serious academic study is probably due to a number of reasons. First, for many years, the collection was incomplete and fragmented. Second, Thomas Martin was almost certainly not an established Guernsey French writer (Census reports refer to him as, respectively, 'joiner' (1861), 'cabinet maker' (1871), 'carpenter' (1881, 1891) and then 'road surveyor' (1901)). Third, Guernesiais is an obsolescent variety which, for most of its recent history, has been considered as inferior to one of Guernsey's other linguistic varieties (Standard French and then, from the 19th century onwards, English). Indeed, since the dialect has never been used for official functions, including as the medium of education or even a subject of study at school, it is likely that few of the remaining speakers of Guernsiais would, in practice, be able to read the manuscripts.

The fact that Martin's work has only ever been mentioned in a relatively low key fashion and in publications not widely circulated outside Guernsey has meant that this substantial body of work has largely escaped the notice of the outside world, and yet its significance for Channel Island French - and, more widely, for French dialectology- is paramount. Martin's work represents the largest corpus of prose from one pen in Channel Island French and extends the corpus of extant Guernesiais writings several hundred-fold. The extensive nature of the corpus means that it affords real possibilities for some details of Guernesiais usage to be documented and codified for the first time. Given the age of its remaining native speakers, it is likely that Guernesiais will disappear forever as an everyday language within the next fifteen to twenty years. After the death of the last native speaker, the Martin Manuscripts will represent one of the most important sources of data available on the phonetics, morphosyntax and lexis of the dialect.

To the best of my knowledge, the proposed monograph would represent the only linguistic analysis of any aspect of Guernesiais writings existing to date in English or in French.