Witchcraft & Folklore

The Launch of the 'Concordia'

1st August 2024

A brigantine in St Peter Port Harbour (c) The Priaulx Library

Witchcraft in action - literally with a pinch of salt. From a Report by J Linwood Pitts, Hon. Sec. of the Folklore Section of the Société Guernesiaise. The illustration is a photograph of a brigantine in St Peter Port Harbour, from the Priaulx Library's Photographic Collection. Please contact us if you wish to reproduce it.

Henry Turner, ghosthunter

30th October 2017

Guernsey ghost: weird tale of a haunted house. From the Daily Express, March 31, 1903. Starring local eccentric and humanitarian, Victor Hugo's bookbinder, Harry Turner.

The wizard of Goose Common

13th September 2016

Woodcut of a duck from Bellamy's Pictorial Directory & Stranger's Guide to Guernsey, 1843, Priaulx Library Collection

Tales of the shapeshifter Benez of the Clos du Valle. The woodcut is from Dr Thomas Bellamy's Pictorial Directory & Stranger's Guide to Guernsey, 1843, in the Library Collection.

Guernsey superstitions

18th July 2016

By Alfred M Naftel, antiquarian and member of the Société Guernesiaise. From the Guernsey Evening Press, December 23, 1909.

Prehistoric remains in Guernsey, from the Lukis MSS

28th June 2016

F C Lukis at Dehus from Priaulx Library Collection

In the early 20th century, local historian Edith Carey made copious notes from various manuscripts belonging to the Lukis family into scrapbooks which are now in the Library collection. She collected the following observations about early island archaeology together and copied them again into the notes she made to the book Guernsey Folk Lore, intended to aid her as its editor in a putative new edition, which she never completed. The Lukis family (Frederick Corbin Lukis and his children) were all deeply interested in archaeology, and these journal notes give a very Guernsey flavour of the beginnings of archaeology as a science. The photograph is of 'Frederick Lukis, Esq., at the Du Tus cromlech, Guernsey' from an album in the Library's Harvey collection (the Harvey and Lukis families were related.)

A tale of St George's chapel

16th October 2015

St George's Well from Metcalfe's Channel ISland Sketches, 1852, Priaulx LIbrary Collection

A ghost story, from The Stranger's Guide to the islands of Guernsey and Jersey, Guernsey: Collins /Barbet 1833, pp. 17-18. The illustration is from The Channel Islands, historical and legendary sketches, a book of poetry by C J Metcalfe, Jnr., London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1852.

The Tchico

7th October 2015

A translation of George Métivier's dictionary entry for Guernsey's dread black dog, or Tchîco, p. 461. [By Dinah Bott]

The Warning, 1922

13th May 2015

A dolmen from Bellamy's Pictorial Directory and Strangers' Guide of 1843, Priaulx Library collection

Edith Carey, in The Guernsey Society Report and Transactions for 1922 (pp. 89-90), quotes the following mystical occurrence from a 1922 article in Blackwood's Magazine, 'A Welsh Ride,' by Edmund Vale:

The Invisible Man: A Midsummer Tragedy

22nd April 2015

This story is by J R Le Ruez, and was published in the magazine Guernsey Gossip and Visitors' List, June 6 1908. The tale comes from Jersey, and is interesting because of the superstitions and beliefs it is based on; in the seventeenth century Elie Brévint of Sark, himself of Jersey extraction, wrote of the belief that one could aller à la graine de fougère, or 'use the fern seed' and become invisible.

St Saviour's Church damaged in a storm: January 1658

St Saviour's Church from Bellamy's Guide of 1843 in the Priaulx Library collection

Tonnerre, foudre et orage. From Pierre Le Roy's Notebook, edited and transcribed by the Reverend G Lee in 1893 under the auspices of the Guille-Alles Library. The woodcut is by Dr Thomas Bellamy, from his Guide of 1843.

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