THE FALL OF THE GRAND SARRASIN

BEING A

CHRONICLE OF SIR NIGEL DE BESSIN, KNIGHT, OF
THINGS THAT HAPPED IN GUERNSEY ISLAND,
IN THE NORMAN SEAS, IN AND ABOUT
THE YEAR ONE THOUSAND
AND FIFTY-SEVEN.

BY

WILLIAM JOHN FERRAR.

ILLUSTRATED BY HAROLD PIFFARD.

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE GENERAL LITERATURE COMMITTEE.

LONDON:

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,

NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.;

43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.

BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET.

NEW YORK: E.S. GORHAM.

PREFACE.

Some people bring home a bundle of sketches from their summer holiday—water-colour memories of cliff, of sea, ruined castle, and ancient abbey. I brought back from the Channel Islands these pages here printed, as a kind of bundle of sketches in black and white, put together day by day as a holiday-task, and forming a string, as it were, on which the memories of ramble after ramble were threaded,—rambles from end to end of Guernsey, and rambles, too, among the treasures of the Guille-Allés Library. I enjoyed my holiday all the better, as I peopled the cliffs and glens with the shadows of eight hundred years ago, and I hope that others may find some reality and some pleasure in the result as it is given here.

If any inquire into the real historical foundations for the story, I refer them to the few notes at the end of the book, which will reveal without much doubt where fiction begins and fact ends. I hope I may be allowed a little license in the treatment of facts. There is—is there not?—a logic of fiction, as well as a logic of facts. At least there seemed to be as I wrote the story, and I hope no one who reads it will be inclined to quarrel with any part of it because its only basis is—imagination. Anyway, I will shelter myself under the great words of a great man, in the preface of one of the great books of the world: "For herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renommée. And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in, but for to give faith and belief that all is true that is contained herein, ye be at your liberty: but all is written for our doctrine, and for to beware that we fall not to vice nor sin, but to exercise and follow virtue by the which we may come and attain to good fame and renown in this life, and after this short and transitory life to come unto everlasting bliss in heaven" (Preface of William Caxton to "The Book of King Arthur").

W.J. FERRAR.

CONTENTS.