1834 guide to Jersey - seaweed

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1834 guide to Jersey:
Vraic


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The author remarked on the use of child labour to collect vraic from the beaches


This is the chapter on vraic collecting by farmers from the Jersey volume of The Channel Islands (the result of a two year residence) by Henry David Inglis

I must not leave the country people, their character and mode of life, without adverting to an usage pecular to these islands, one connected both with the domestic economy and with the agriculture of the islands. I allude to the collection of seaweed, which is chiefly used as manure, but which is also employed as a substitute for coal and firewood.

Vraic

This seaweed is called in French varech, and in Jersey dialect vraic, and a busy time is the vraicking season in Jersey. This season is fixed by the island legislature, and is named twice a year, commencing generally about 20 July and 10 March, and continuing each time about ten days.

It is chiefly from the beds of rocks and islets that surround the island that the vraic is gathered. The collection of vraic as an island usage is singularly striking to a stranger.

When the vraicking season begins, those whose families are not numerous enough to collect the needful supply, assist each other. The vraicking parties, consisting of eight, ten or 12 persons, sally forth betimes, from all parts of the island to their necessary, laborious, but apparently cheerful work.

Although a time of labour, it is also a season of merriment: ‘vraicking cakes’, made of flour, milk and sugar, are plentifully partaken of, and on the cart which accompanies the party to the sea beach, is generally slung a little cask of something to drink, and a suitable supply of eatables.

Every individual is provided with a small scythe to cut the weed from the rocks, and with strong leg and foot gear. The carts proceed as far as the tide will allow them, and boats, containing four or six persons, carry the vraickers to the more distant rocks, which are unapproachable in any other way.

It is truly a busy and a curious scene. At this season, at half tide or low water, multitudes of carts and horses, boats and vraickers, cover the beach, the rocks and the water. And so anxious are the people to make the most of their limited time that I have often seen horses swimming and carts floating – so unwilling are the vraickers to be driven from their spoil by the inexorable tide.

Beach collection

This seaweed is not employed solely as manure, but is also used as fuel, and for this purpose it is collected at other times than at the regular vraicking seasons, not from the rocks, but from the sea beach.

Some of the weed is constantly detaching itself from the rocks and is borne to the shore by the tide. The collection of this seaweed is a constant employment with those who live near the sea shore, and the produce of their labour is either used for fuel, or is sold to those who want it.

At almost all times, men, women and children, but chiefly the two latter, are to be seen at this employment; gathering, or spreading the weed out to dry. They use a rake, or three-pronged pitch fork, and a wheelbarrow, in which it is carried above high water mark to be dried.

This is the universal fuel of the country, and it makes a hot, if not a cheerful fire. Coal is scarcely at all used, and only a very small quantity of wood along with the vraic, and this even not universally. On feast days only, and family gatherings, a coal fire is lighted in the best parlour.

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