Burning Questions

The poem is by Moira O'Neill and is as follows:

Youth's for an hour,

Beauty's a flower,

But love is the jewel that wins the world.

Youth's for an hour, an' the taste o' life is sweet,

Ailes was a girl that stepped on two bare feet;

In all my days I never seen the one as fair as she,

I'd have lost my life for Ailes, an' she never cared for me.

Beauty's a flower, an' the days o' life are long,

There's little knowin' who may live to sing another song;

Ailes was the fairest, but another is my wife,

An' Mary - God be good to her! - is all I love in life.

Youth's for an hour,

Beauty's a flower,

But love is the jewel that wins the world.

HOW long have the Channel Islands been British and how many of the people of the Channel Islands are of British or French descent? - Doug McKenna, Stockton.

THE Channel Islands are just off the coast of France but, from the time of the Norman Conquest of Britain, the Channel Islands were joined to the English Crown. There is evidence that ancient man occupied the Channel Islands during the Stone Age and the islands were familiar to the Romans, who called Jersey Caesarea and Guernsey Sarnia.

After the Roman era, the islands were inhabited by British or Celtic Gauls who were Pagan. In the Sixth Century, the Welsh Saint, Sampson seems to have played a major part in the islands' conversion to Christianity.

In the following centuries, the area came under the influence of the Vikings who were settling in Northern France and who came to be known as Normans. After the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the islands were tied to Britain. When Philip II of France seized the Duchy of Normandy from the control of King John in 1204, the Channel Islands remained in English hands. The French attempted to retake the islands on a number of occasions, most notably in the 14th Century, and Alderney was seized between 1338 and 1340. Jersey Castle was built in the late 1500s to help defend the islands but French attempts at seizure continued. In 1781, the Royal Square in St Hellier, Jersey, was the scene of a battle in which the French unsuccessfully attempted to take the island.

From about 1830, there was a continuous influx of English people along with some refugees from other parts of Europe, and in recent decades, favourable tax rates have attracted many Britons. Today, French and English are the official languages in the Channel Islands but a Norman-French patois, or dialect, is spoken by some people. The Channel Islands are still dependencies of the British Crown and consist of two separate administrative areas called Bailiwicks.