Welcome to another episode of the History Islands. Today’s story is set in Jersey’s distant past, in a world where legend and history blend. This is the life of Saint Helier. ~ Paul Darroch
Helier’s Rock
6th Century AD
It is over a century since Rome fell, and this present age of darkness swept over us all. This sorry world has become a den of thieves. We came to this Island to preach a message of hope amidst the ruins. My name is Romard, and I followed Helier, my friend.
I will never forget the day we first set foot here, by the huddle of fishermen’s huts that clings to its southern shore. Barely thirty souls lived here, fishing for conger eels in the bay beyond the dunes. And here, by the water’s edge, under the shadow of a red granite hill, we would build a church.
As dawn broke, Helier preached the good news. At once I saw a lame old man leap up into the air in joy, and the conversion of the Island was sealed. The townsfolk were fearful, haunted by terror of the seaborne lights, the long-ships who came to steal and kill and destroy. They were ready for a new Gospel.
These Saxon raiders returned again and again to strike without warning, like a primeval force of nature. The Islanders’ only defence was to melt away into the interior and seek refuge in its secret groves. The next day they would limp back, their spirits broken, to the charred remains of their hovels.
Helier decided to stand in the gap against the storm. He moved out to the tall pinnacle of rock that stood alone in the bay, making his home there amidst the gulls. As our silent watchman, he scoured the horizon. Whenever he caught sight of the black sails, he signalled to me, so I could shepherd the villagers away to safety.
It was high summer when Christ took my master home. Tradition names the date as the sixteenth day of July, in the five hundred and fifty fifth year of our Lord. Some question the memorable date, or even deny that there was once a wizened hermit who skulked like a seal among the sea-rocks.
Helier cares nothing for your times and dates; for he is at one with the blood-red granite, the daily lashings of salt, sea and sun. Like an eel drying on the bare rock, he lets the sun scourge his flesh. He chunters and prays for hours, the words smashing like chisels in his mind, cutting out his stone bed.
One summer’s day, on the far horizon where sea and sky meet, a flurry of dark clouds rushes inwards. The weather is changing. Helier prays, and through his murmurings he catches his breath. A cloud is bolder, blacker, growing. A sail.
The drill is well rehearsed. Yet Helier is agonisingly slow, a frail husk of a man, stooping to light a fire. The townsfolk see the warning signal and Helier sees them scurrying to safety like rabbits, gathering their children, packing their precious baskets of eels and heading deep inland, where the raiders fear to tread.
And when the ships draw into the great bay, they stumble on a ghost town, with the cooking pots still warm, sheepskins drying on the line. They have been cheated of their spoils. I hide close by, crouching in a hole in the sands, watching and waiting for my master.
Yet the Northmen have witnessed the fire on the rock. So, a raiding party draws up close to the hermit’s home. Black axes drawn, the pirates plunge waist-deep onto the reef, their chain mail jangling in the cold surf, their war cries rising to fever pitch.
A shadow falls, a cry shrieks, and a prayer is whispered. Their quarry is soon cornered, dragged by his wispy hair from his rock bed, as frail as a ghost. Helier prays with the boldness of a bounteous heaven. He stammers out a blessing. Then the double axes drop.
Helier turns one last time to face his bed of stone, his gentle sea-garden. Then falling as gently as a seagull’s feather, my master slips away into legend.
The boats have fled now, and night is falling on Helier’s town. At last the tide turns, flooding fast, and the first clouds of sunset race in towards the sands.
Saint Helier’s story is told in Jersey: The Hidden Histories, which imagines Jersey’s history through the eyes of those who witnessed it.
