Marie de Garis

Marie de Garis MBE (1910 – 2010) was a Guernsey-born researcher and writer. She compiled the definitive dictionary on Guernsey French entitled Dictiounnaire Angllais-Guernesiais. She was also an authority on Guernsey Folklore. She was appointed MBE in 1999 in recognition of her achievements.

Birth

Marie de Garis was born Marie Le Messurier in Guernsey, Channel Islands and lived her enitre life on the island.

Career

Marie de Garis compiled the "Dictiounnaire Angllais-Guernesiais", an English-Guernsey dictionary. She began following the Liberation of the Channel Islands in 1945 and it was first published in 1967. De Garis was reported to have spent over 20 years compiling the dictionary and was in the initial stages of a revision when she died in 2010.

She was also an authority on Guernsey Folklore, and contributed a number of articles to the Review of the Guernsey Society during the early 1970s, which formed the basis of Folklore of Guernsey, which was published in 1975 by La Société Guernesiaise.

Honours

She was appointed Member of the British Empire in 1999 in recognition of her work on the preservation of the Guernsey language.

Works

• De Garis, Marie, Folklore of Guernsey, La Société Guernesiaise, 1975
• De Garis, Marie, Dictiounnaire Angllais-Guernesiais, Phillimore, 1982
• De Garis, Marie, St Pierre du Bois - the story of a Guernsey parish and its people, self-published, 1995

She also wrote several papers for the Transactions of La Société Guernesiaise:

• De Garis, Marie, The parish of St Pierre du Bois and some of its inhabitants in the 18th and early 19th centuries, Trans Soc Guern, 1949
• De Garis, Marie, Denys Corbet, le drain rimeux, Trans Soc Guern, 1958
• De Garis, Marie, A Brehaut family some 400 years ago. , Trans Soc Guern, 1962
• De Garis, Marie, Glossary of Guernsey place-names. , Trans Soc Guern, 1976
• De Garis, Marie, Guernesiais - a grammatical survey. , Trans Soc Guern, 1983

References

• Guernsey language stalwart Marie de Garis dies, BBC News, 10 Aug 2010
• Marr, LJ, Guernsey People, Phillimore, 1982