The Clameur de Haro, by Dagonet
From G R Sims' comic Dagonet's Visit to Sark.
'Dagonet,' the name of King Arthur's jester, was a nom de plume adopted by the humourist and dramatist George Robert Sims. We have several versions of a spoof guide book he wrote around 1886 in the Library collection; the earliest edition is probably Sims, G. R., Humorous Sketch of Dagonet's visit to Sark, or, Peregrinations in the Norman Archipelago: Guernsey, Ernest F Tozer, Park Street, and London: G Vickers, Angel Court, Strand, 1886, Sark Pamphlets VII.
Sims was a popular journalist, with an interest in the psychology of crime. One of his more bizarre claims to fame is that he was so interested in the Jack the Ripper murders that he actually became a suspect.
Dagonet's introduction to the work:
Excerpt from 'The Referee.'
I have received from Mr Tozer, publisher (founder, proprietor and publisher of the 'Guernsey Evening Press,' Guernsey), a little book entitled 'Dagonet's Visit to Sark,' which is a reprint of my peregrinations at the beginning of the year in the Norman Archipelago. Let the visitor in search of picturesque scenery not fail to spend three days in Sark. I should recommend every tourist on his arrival in Guernsey to supply himself with my book, which gives full particulars of all the principal railway lines in Guernsey and Sark, the tariff of the Grand Hotel in Jethou, the omnibus and tramway fares of Herm, and is crammed full of the most accurate detail. Many people, I have been told, charge me with exaggeration, and are inclined to think I occasionally deviate a hair's breadth or so from the truth. Let such, if there be, visit Guernsey and Jersey and Sark armed with my guide book, price one penny, and then say if there is the slightest grounds for these grave accusation of throwing the hatchetism which are being continually levelled at DAGONET.
What Dagonet has to say about the Clameur de Haro:
If anyone offends you in Guernsey, and you want redress, you must go out in to the street and fall down on your knees and shout out, 'Haro, Haro, Haro! à l'aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort!' ('Haro, Haro, Haro, help, my Prince! they are wronging me!'); then the Courts instantly take up the matter and set you right.
I determined, for the benefit of my readers, to thoroughly investigate this system of 'Clameur de Haro,' so one Sunday, just as the people were coming out of church, I fell on my knees in the roadway and shouted, 'Haro, Haro, Haro! à l'aide mon Prince; on me fait tort!' A jurat and a douzenier instantly stepped forward and took a note in their pocket-book, and requested me to come on Monday to the office of the greffier and state my wrong. When I arrived I found the bailiff and the rector and the Queen's Procureur all assembled in state ready to do me justice. I was very frightened, because I hadn't expected so much ceremony, and it was with trembling knees that I explained that the wrong I had suffered was that someone had taken my umbrella in mistake for his own. There was a moment of dead silence, and then the bailiff rose and informed me that the penalty for shouting 'Haro' without sufficient cause was the same as that fixed for needlessly pulling the alarm bell in the train, and I was fined forty shillings British money (they have francs and doubles for money in Guernsey), and cautioned not to cry out 'Haro' again unless I had something to cry for.
Dagonet on getting to Sark¹
I am writing in full view of Sark. It lies some seven miles south-east of my sitting-room window. And yet I am by no means sure I shall get there, although I have come within what Mr Gladstone would call 'measurable distance' of it. I have got as far as Guernsey, but I am further from Sark than I am from Southampton. You can only go to Sark twice a week, and when you get there you are by no means sure that you will get back again. It isn't a nice passage and this isn't a nice coast, and before you set out for it anywhere it is advisable to leave your affairs in order and arrange for somebody to look after them in your absence .... A few miles from my sitting-room window, at half-past six this morning, a large steamer sent up rockets. She was from Southampton bound for St Malo, and she came to grief just off Sark. At half-past five this evening somebody happened to hear of the facts, and tugs went off to the rescue. At midnight I stood with a little crowd in Guernsey harbour, and still the steamer and her unhappy passengers had not been brought ashore. The channel at this part is fraught with a hundred dangers. It is a perfect sea of rocks, and you may be an hour crossing from island to island, or you may be a day, or you may be a week. Everybody tells you stories of disasters and shipwrecks, and of people who went across for an afternoon and didn't get back till next year .... There is an old gentleman in Sark who went over, a baby in his nurse's arms. He is now seventy-three, and he is waiting for a favourable opportunity to get back to Guernsey, where he left a Noah's ark and a box of paints and an india-rubber ball in his nursery, which he wishes to recover possession of. In Sark there are no shops; if you want meat there you must take it with you. There is no telegraph office. You signal with flags to the nearest island; and when it is foggy, and flags can't be seen, you must wait for a change in the weather. Fancy, if I got cut off from the world in Sark and had to signal 'Mustard and Cress' every week by means of flags! Do you wonder that I hesitate a little before I embark for Sark .....
For the origin of the word 'Haro' see Quarterly Review of the Guernsey Society XXI (1) p. 13, discussing Edith Carey's explanation of it as 'Hello!' in her Channel Islands book published in 1925.
¹ He never actually gets there in the end.