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Jersey & Guernsey Law Review – February 2007

POSTSCRIPT

All Change.....

                                             Tute rien turnë en declin,
                                             tut chiet, tut moert, tut trait a fin;
                                             tur funt, mur chiet, rose flaistrist,
                                             cheval trebuche, drap viescist,
                                             huem moert, fer use, fust purrist,
                                             tute rien faite od mein perist.

                                             si par clerc nen est mis en livre;
                                             ne poet par el durer ne vivre. .[1]

1       The Ancienne Coûtume de Normandie had long since crystallised when Maistre Wace[2] wrote the above lines in the twelfth century. Contracts for the conveyance of land in these Islands would soon be in a form and expressed in a language which, as recorded in a note elsewhere in this issue, would defy Wace’s catalogue of transient things for some eight hundred years before falling foul of a new Rule of Court when the use of the ancient French tongue would be forbidden.

2       The reader will decide for himself whether these splendid lines by a Jersey Norman poet amount to a lament for the passing of things dearly held or simply a plea for the keeping of the historical record and the employment of scholars.

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