‘Les travailleurs de la mer’ is the title of one of the novels Victor Hugo wrote while living on Guernsey, during his exile from France in the last years of the Second Empire. Hugo encouraged many of the local poets to return to the island language, and to collect folk ballads and tunes. Prominent among the Guernesais poets was Georges Métivier, several of whose verses are to be found here. Where possible ancient Breton and Normandy tunes are used, but in other cases appropriate music has been added, which accounts for the presence of Rameau and Adam de la Halle.

The disc is divided into six ‘chapters’, moving from stories about parish girls, to travellers’ tales, courtship rituals, legends of witches and lecherous clergymen, as well as nostalgic evocations of the landscape and wildlife of the islands. Although the language is recognisable as a kind of French, and it is still spoken and broadcast nowadays, it is impossible to comprehend; luckily all the words are in the booklet. They reveal a robust and irreverent tradition of happy innuendo and the philosophy of a strong-willed and independent populace.

Andrew Lawrence-King’s arrangements use bagpipes, shawm, chifournie as well as harp, fiddle, cornetto and Baroque guitar. The effect is magical. Clara Sanabras and Paul Hillier sing duets and solos, and the whole sequence has a unique sound to it, which even those who have never visited Guernsey may find addictive. The songs are interspersed with instrumental dances, and although some of these are not as old as people were led to believe in the 19th century – one having been introduced to the islanders by Russian troops billeted there during the Napoleonic wars – the whole programme makes for something as enchanted as one of the fairy-tales that account for many of Guernsey’s legends.