George Métivier was a Guernsey

Guernsey

Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...

 poet dubbed the "Guernsey Burns

Robert Burns

Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...

", and sometimes considered the island's national poet. He wrote in Guernésiais, which is the indigenous language of the island. Among his poetical works are Rimes Guernesiaises published in 1831. Métivier blended together local place-names, bird and animal names, traditional sayings and orally transmitted

Oral literature

Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do...

 fragments of medieval poetry to create these.

Que l'lingo seit bouan ou mauvais / J'pâlron coum'nou pâlait autefais (whether the "lingo" be good or bad, I’m going to speak the way we spoke back then), wrote Métivier.

He was born in Rue de la Fontaine, St Peter Port

St Peter Port

Saint Peter Port is the capital of Guernsey as well as the main port. The population in 2001 was 16,488. In Guernésiais and in French, historically the official language of Guernsey, the name of the town and its surrounding parish is St Pierre Port. The "port" distinguishes this parish from...

, Guernsey, in the night of 28–29 January 1790. He used the pen-name Un Câtelain, as his grandfather, a Huguenot

Huguenot

The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

 by origin, had settled in Castel

Castel, Guernsey

Castel is the largest Parish in Guernsey in terms of area.It hosts the North Show and Battle of Flowers in August, annually...

. As a young man, Métivier had studied in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 for a career in medicine, but had abandoned the idea of becoming a doctor to devote himself to linguistics and literature. His poems were published in Guernsey newspapers from 1813 until his death and since.

George Métivier corresponded publicly in verse form with Robert Pipon Marett

Robert Pipon Marett

Sir Robert Pipon Marett was a lawyer, journalist, poet, politician, and Bailiff of Jersey from 1880 until his death.He was born in St. Peter on 20 November 1820 and studied at the University of Caen and the Sorbonne...

 ("Laelius"), the Jèrriais

Jèrriais

Jèrriais is the form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. It has been in decline over the past century as English has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration...

 poet. He translated the Gospel according to Matthew into Guernésiais for publication by Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, who visited him in 1862. Métivier's close friend and protégé was Denys Corbet

Denys Corbet

Denys Corbet was a Channel Islands poet, Naïve painter, and school master. He was the second son of Pierre and Susanne who was born at La Turquie, Vale, Guernsey, Channel Island...

 1826-1909, born in Vale, Guernsey.

Influence

The first to produce a dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

 of the Norman language in the Channel Islands

Channel Islands

The Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...

, Métivier's Dictionnaire Franco-Normand (1870), established the first standard orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

 of Guernésiais - later modified and modernised.

At the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century a new movement arose in the Channel Islands

Channel Islands

The Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...

, led by writers such as Métivier and writers from Jersey

Jersey

Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...

. The independent governments, lack of censorship and diverse social and political milieu of the Islands enabled a growth in the publication of vernacular literature

Vernacular literature

Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin...

 — often satirical and political.

Most literature was published in the large number of competing newspapers, which also circulated in the neighbouring Cotentin peninsula

Cotentin Peninsula

The Cotentin Peninsula, also known as the Cherbourg Peninsula, is a peninsula in Normandy, forming part of the north-western coast of France. It juts out north-westwards into the English Channel, towards Great Britain...

, sparking a literary renaissance on the Norman mainland.

La Victime

Veis-tu l’s écllaers, os-tu l’tounère?

Lé vent érage et la née a tché!

Les douits saont g’laïs, la gnièt est nère -

Ah, s’tu m’ôimes ouvre l’hus - ch’est mé!