> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ilesanglo-normandes.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Festivals: Beltane, Sark: “I'm on this boat, surrounded by fairies and magicians...suddenly a dolphin leaps out." - URL: https://www.ilesanglo-normandes.com/beltane-festival-sark-here-we-are-i-am-on-this-boat-surrounded-by-fairies-and-magicians-suddenly-a-dolphin-leaps-beside-the-boat/ - Published: 2026-08-27T08:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-09T13:15:27.000Z - Description: Sark, or Legend of the Ages, Guillaume Sire - Author: îles - Tags: Sér, Paris *Guillaume Sire is a contemporary author at Calmann-Lévy, the Paris publishing house which released Victor Hugo's guide to the Channel Islands, Archipel de la Manche, in 1883, the very last publication of the author's lifetime.* *Guide in hand, Guillaume Sire lets his imagination run wild at the magic of Beltane festival on the island of Sark.* ### Sark, or Legend of the Centuries *Guillaume Sire* *When I travelled to the îles anglo-normandes, to the Channel Island of Sark, I didn’t expect to find myself caught up in a poem by Victor Hugo. Yet that’s what happened: I found myself less inside his house or on the shores of exile, than in his mind, on the page, swept up in the ocean of his imagination. He himself wrote: Sark is ‘the most marvellous poem of stones rising up from the surface of the water’. I invite you to read this poem together.* When writing a poem, as every poet knows, you must begin by unsettling the reader. Poetry must transport us from the world of advertising brochures and filler words. To do so, it must first make us stumble somehow, shake us up a little, perhaps even shock us — deliver a warning, a sense of foreboding. And so, on leaving Guernsey, I’m told that one of the ferries to Sark struck a rock a few hours earlier, just avoiding sinking. I feel instant trepidation… When maybe a dozen women, blonde and red-haired, dressed up like fairies, begin to sing. They wear robes of white linen, deer antlers, flowers as belts, wreaths made of ivy, gemstones shimmer around their eyes. With the fairies, are magicians, all pointed hats, crooks, and grey robes. They are all heading to Sark to attend a Celtic ceremony called ‘Beltaine’, held on May 1st. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/2026/08/Screenshot_20230512-125715-1.png) Beltane, Sark ©Beltane It is a celebration of a reversal in the secret order of things: the arrival of light. “We shall shed the skins of winter,” a fairy tells me. “We shall wash our eyes. I shall become a flower, and within me the fruit shall begin to blossom.” When I ask, is this her way of saying she intends to take drugs, she replies, disappointedly, I have understood nothing of poetry. As we know, all poems pay homage, directly or indirectly, to Homer, the blind bard, master of all. So it’s no surprise to learn that my guide will be called Hélène. Here we are: I am on this boat, surrounded by fairies and magicians; my guide is called Hélène; and I am going to Sparta—sorry, Sark—where there are neither supermarkets, nor cars, nor tarmac, and no nightclubs. It’s official: our poem has begun. Towards ‘Le Passage de la Déroute’ (sic), I catch sight of an island outcrop called Brecqhou, upon which stands an immense castle that looks abandoned yet gleaming as if it has only just been built, never inhabited. A wizard tells me the story of the Barclay twins. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/2026/08/IMG-20250622-WA0005.jpg) Brecqhou, seen from Sark > A wizard tells me the story of the Barclay twins. These billionaire brothers built this castle, with nearly a hundred rooms, in the 1990s, then sought to abolish the feudal system on the isle of Sark, the last of its kind in Europe. I learned that the Barclays bought a number of hotels and businesses on the island, then closed them down, forcing one in four Sark residents to sign on as unemployed (a total of one hundred and forty people), triggering local fury. So, with Hélène: the Atreides! This poem will be epic! Suddenly, a dolphin jumps out beside our boat. Within seconds, there are at least forty. They are porpoises. A fairy tells me we’re very lucky to see so many… I realise the dolphins are like this poem’s semicolons, gliding through its hemistich waves. On Sark, the only motorised vehicles are tractors. A man with a beard, who goes by the title ‘The King’ (sic) drives us up on his tractor through a forest of red beeches and eucalyptus trees. > On Sark, the only motorised vehicles are tractors. A man with a beard, who goes by the title ‘The King’ (sic) drives us up on his tractor. Flowers of wild garlic give off an odour that is hard to bear. We make our way past Percheron horses, cows, little English cottages, dense, grassy thickets, strings of thorns, and thousand-year-old oaks. In the style of Homer: Hesiod’s *Works and Days,* Virgil’s *The Bucolics*… When I climb down from the tractor, still in the company of fairies and magicians, I finally meet Hélène, who leads me along countryside tracks to the Seigneurie, a manor surrounded by sweet peas. Home to Christophe Beaumont, the twenty-third Lord of Sark, and his wife, ‘the Lady’. There, I am introduced to Martin Neudörfl, a Czech linguist who has journeyed from Prague with the goal of saving the Sarkese language—in short, describing grammar, cataloguing vocabulary, listing local placenames and teaching Sark’s children nursery rhymes. Sarkese, he tells me, is the language of William the Conqueror. > Sarkese, he tells me, is the language of William the Conqueror. This young adventurer hugely intelligent, hugely approachable, makes me think of the polyglot monk Fedor Kouzmitch, the famous wanderer who might have been Tsar Alexander himself. Legend has it he wandered from village to village, teaching the children of Siberia to read. > Our poem goes on… Suddenly, a man of unremarkable appearance— in his fifties, short in stature, wearing a small tie, a small jacket and small glasses—approaches and kneels before us. Martin explains that the man in question is about to summon the court by means of ‘the clameur de haro’. I have no idea what this clamour is. But suddenly he starts bellowing like a tragedian. Ah, his voice is mammoth! Terrifying! He calls upon the spirit of the Viking Rollo, who was the first Duke of Normandy. “Come, Rollo! Come!” Then the man, on his knees, recites a prayer addressed to the Lord of Sark: “I beg you to pass your judgement. I promise to abide by it.” Then the Lord emerges from his stronghold (I notice he has an iPhone in hand) and promises the little man that the matter (a border dispute) will be settled before dawn, in the presence of witnesses, in the great hall of the manor. This Hugo-esque poem continues as Martin and Hélène guide me down to the ‘Boutiques’, the smugglers’ caves, and to ‘Little Sark’, via the vertiginous isthmus of ‘La Coupée’, which resembles what we call ‘Le Pas de Mahomet’ in the Pyrenees. I follow them past yellow-scented gorse, bays of puffins, seals and cormorants. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/2026/08/IMG-20260804-WA0007.jpg) Guillaume Sire in Les Boutiques, smugglers’ caves ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/2026/08/IMG-20260808-WA0002.jpg) "‘Little Sark’, via the vertiginous isthmus of ‘La Coupée’." Guillaume Sire > The island is a cluster of asteroids cast into the Passage de la Déroute, granite crescents and splintered cliffs. The island is a cluster of asteroids cast into the Passage de la Déroute, granite crescents and splintered cliffs. As we make our way, I feel myself carried away by the sea spray, by the salt, by the wind, by this harsh, rugged landscape, by these living rocks. I feel as though I am accompanying Pâris and Hélène to the shores of the Styx. On the return journey, the dolphins are nowhere to be seen. The fairies have taken their make-up off. The magicians, it turns out, were ordinary fellows, like me. They head back to Guernsey after celebrating with a few drinks and dancing around a fire until dawn. A strange feeling comes over me: a quiet, smoky, druidic melancholy. The island, behind me, fades. A few hours later, I’m back in the island of Guernsey, at the Pandora Hotel, in Juliette Drouet’s room, from where I can see, just as she did, the lookout of Hauteville House where Victor Hugo worked for fifteen years. I’m lost in thought. I imagine an octopus in the clouds. > I imagine an octopus in the clouds. Then suddenly, I swear to you, I swear I see him: beneath the windowed roof of Hauteville House, with his beard, his bear-like hands, his silver hair, Victor Hugo looking in the direction of Sark. I hear him recite this quatrain: > ‘Troy has been destroyed, the great city / > In the future we shall all be exiles / > Yet Hélène, one need only look / > In its direction to be almost saved’. Then he gives his belly a slap, tears up with laughter, as one does when one is brilliant and has achieved good work. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/2026/08/IMG-20260804-WA0011.jpg) "one need only look / In that direction to be almost saved" Guillaume Sire & Sarkese linguist Martin Neudorfl --- ### *Sark's next* [*Beltane Festival*](https://www.sark.co.uk/events?ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com) *will take place on Mayday itself, May 1\. 2027\.* ### *Sark will host two new music festivals next year.* ### Guillaume Sire is a writer and lecturer at ToulouseCapitole University. He has won multiple literary awards, including the Prix Orange du Livre, the City of Brive Readers’ Prize and the Prix du Roman Coiffard. [Guillaume Sire | Calmann-LévyGuillaume Sire est écrivain et enseignant à l’université ToulouseCapitole. Son précédent roman, Avant la longue flamme rouge, a été distingué par de n![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/icon/favicon-f3d0e171-6a20-4ac4-92dd-1b1b26548b6b.jpg)logo-calmann-levy-def![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d1/c7/d1c79ccb-3da4-4ed2-8fda-9b60db236f61/content/images/thumbnail/logo-calmann-levy-def-3ec1831a-b38f-4506-b6c7-dfca95e18ed4.png)](https://www.calmann-levy.fr/auteur/guillaume-sire/?ref=ilesanglo-normandes.com) The author's visit to Sark and to the islands, was supported by Visit Guernsey, Visit Jersey, Sark Tourism, Pandora Hotel, Pomme D'Or Hotel & Beltane Festival.