All Journal stories Witchcraft, Magic and Mystery
The Sark JournalThe Sark witch who became a duck
A Guernsey hunter, a silver bullet and a wounded hand in one of Sark's stranger folklore stories.
A Guernsey hunter came to Sark to shoot wild ducks around Havre Gosselin.
He failed to hit a single bird.
The flock circled above the inlet and appeared indifferent to his musket fire.
The story that followed belongs to Sark folklore, not to the island鈥檚 court record.
The hunter went to a Wise Man
Back in Guernsey, the hunter consulted a Wise Man.
He was told that the birds might not be ordinary ducks at all, and that ordinary shot would not injure a witch in animal form.
The advice was to use silver.
The hunter returned to Sark with his musket loaded with a silver bullet.
He hit the leading bird
When the flock appeared again, he aimed at the leading bird.
The silver bullet clipped its wing and sent it spiralling into the bay.
The hunter went after it but could not find the body.
On the boat back to Guernsey
That evening, on the return boat to Guernsey, he noticed a girl passenger with a bandaged and bloody hand.
He asked how she had been injured.
According to the story, she avoided the question and turned away.
The hunter later learned that the girl already had a reputation for witchcraft.
He became convinced that the duck he had shot and the girl on the boat were the same person.
Folklore, not a witch trial
No court case followed in the surviving story. No named woman was prosecuted.
Rachel Alexandre, by contrast, was convicted by Guernsey鈥檚 Royal Court in 1627 and executed after torture. Her case survives in the legal record.
The Havre Gosselin story survives as folklore.
You can read the documented case in Sark鈥檚 Witch Trials, and more of the island鈥檚 older stories in Sark folklore.
