Among the previous inhabitants of the Channel Islands comes a group of stories that recall times in the past when it was possible to walk from (what are now) the Channel Islands to the adjacent French mainland. One 1899 account states that
‘in past times, the [English] Channel was not as broad as it is now; one could go to Jersey [from mainland France] without encountering any obstacle other than a stream which was not very wide’;
in the original,
‘au temps jadis la Manche n’était pas si grande que maintenant; l’on pouvait aller à Jersey sans rencontrer d’autre obstacle qu’un ruisseau qui n’était pas tres large’.
Another account references French stories that recall a time before the English Channel (La Manche) formed, noting that a Roman road once connected Coutances (Normandy) to Jersey and that ‘the last decisive assault’ on the French coast occurred in AD 709;
‘A Roman road, still visible, led from Coutances to Jersey. It was in 709 … that the ocean tore Jersey from France. Twelve parishes were swallowed up’;
‘Une voie romaine, encore visible, menait de Coutances à Jersey. C’est en 709, nous l’avons dit, que l’océan a arraché Jersey à La France. Douze paroisses furent englouties’.
A redrawn map showing what might conceivably be a transcription of oral traditions about an ancient shoreline is shown below. This is my redrawing of the 1714 Deschamps‐Vadeville map found in tatters, ‘trouée par les vers et l’humidité’ (‘eaten by worms and damp’), at Mont St‐Michel. While a possible forgery, this map has also been proposed as being an authentic reproduction of a late Roman period map, made around AD 350–400. Recent research suggests that if this map is indeed a Roman transcription of extant oral traditions, these could date back eight thousand years or more.
Most stories from the Channel Islands refer to a land connection between France and the island of Jersey and marry traditions of land loss with observations of submerged forests; in an 1817 account,
‘A tradition has been handed down, in Normandy, that there existed formerly, between Jersey and the diocese of Coutances, a forest, which extended from Le Mont St. Michel to Cherbourg: it is conjectured that the greater part of this forest has been absorbed by the sea; because, at spring‐tides, a number of trees and stumps are discovered’.
A similar story was alluded to by Poingdestre, writing in 1682, and was a ‘fabulous Tale of the conjunction of Jersey to Normandy’ that recalled when it was possible to walk from Jersey to Normandy, crossing the only prominent river by a bridge and ‘paying a small toll to the Abbey of Coutances’. While this story has been dated by approximate history to the year AD 565, which explains why some judge it apocryphal, the error is treating such estimates, derived before modern scientific reconstructions of past sea‐level changes, as unchallengeable.
Comparable stories of coastal submergence, albeit more fragmented, are known from elsewhere in the Channel Islands. On Jersey almost seven hundred years ago, it was reported that
… part of the great Bay of St. Oûen was a rich Vale, which the Sea has swallowed up. Not only ancient Records speak of a People inhabiting that Tract, but to this day at Low-water great Stumps of Oaks shew themselves in the Sand, with evident Marks of buildings among the Rocks.
Comparable stories exist on the neighbouring island of Guernsey and involved a
… convulsion of nature which resulted in the destruction by the sea of the forest lands on the northern and western sides of the island, and in the separation of tracts of considerable magnitude from the mainland.
There are ancient stories about Alderney which show that, like its larger neighbours, it experienced considerable land loss in the past. An 1851 account, for example, states that a town named Longis in the northeast of the island that was once its principal city was submerged ‘ages ago by the judgement of God’.
And within the island groups of the Écréhous and Minquiers, today both so small that they are barely habitable, were once found many stories of submergence.
And in Australian stories, there are many parallel situations involving islandization; for example, the Lardil people of the Wellesley Islands (Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Queensland) recall how ‘in the beginning, our home islands … were not islands at all, but part of a peninsula running out from the mainland’, an oral tradition dating from at least 7400 years ago – see my 2018 book The Edge of Memory, pages 87-9 and 137.
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