Word: sibyle
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...tribute Dame Sibyl exacted from the islanders included the traditional tenth sheaf of all cereals harvested and a live chicken each year as tax on every kitchen chimney on her tenants' houses. Even so, she observed with her usual wryness, "they only give me the thinnest and oldest." Other seigneurial privileges included the right to keep bitches, forbidden to the Sarkese for fear that a proliferation of dogs might drive sheep over the island's 300-ft. cliffs into the English Channel. That noble prerogative caused one of the rare Sark rebellions against Dame Sibyl's authority...
Maintaining the islet of anachronisms was no joke for Dame Sibyl. Nor was it merely a commercial venture designed to bring 50,000 tourists to Sark each year to savor medieval folkways and buy tax-free cigarettes and liquor...
...visitors," she wrote in her autobiography Dame of Sark. "It is a real live community of people who are happy to have retained their ancient form of government, and possess a subtle dignity of their own, born of many years of independence, honorable work and satisfied old age." Dame Sibyl often complained that it was not easy to maintain the unchanging character of Sark. For example telephones, electricity, and tractors have been allowed in. She noted that "it is not easy now to get horses suitable for drawing our carriages. Some of the carriages themselves are 100 years...
When the Nazis occupied the Channel Islands in World War II, Dame Sibyl heroically remained on Sark, to keep up the islanders' morale and "to look after them," as she put it. That included maintaining a haughty refusal to listen to any orders from the Germans, who helplessly fell under her commanding charm...
Feudal Utopia. Last week Dame Sibyl's grandson and heir, Michael Beaumont, 46, took leave from his job as a design engineer of guided missiles at the British Aircraft Corp. and prepared to move into the Seigneurie, the manor house of Sark. The 22nd Seigneur of Sark showed every sign of preserving his grandmother's feudal Utopia. "We want to keep the island quiet and peaceful," he asserted. "I believe the life of a seigneur to be infinitely more rewarding than making weapons...