Relief In Jersey And Guernsey: Something And Nothing?

This article offers in several parts a short account of the custom in the Islands governing relief. We consider first how it may have come into being and how its principal characteristics thereafter evolved. A comparison between Jersey and Guernsey and the continuing relevance of this custom with a glance at the equivalent répare in Normandy shows how it is alive and well in Jersey and Normandy but in contrast, seems moribund, possibly extinct, in Guernsey.