L'Etacq is the far north-western end of St Ouen's Bay, a scatter of houses and fields where the long beach runs out into rocks and the cliffs of the north coast begin. It was, according to one of Dr Symons' informants, fairy country, and rich fairy country at that.
The story is about a farmer named James Bailhache. One day while he was ploughing, the fairies came and changed the shoes on his horses into silver, and his plough as well. He saw it happen with his own eyes. Word got round, and it became a saying in the district: 'I will have my horse shod like James Bailhache's.' The fairies who did it were believed to be very wealthy and to live in a cave around Thiébault at L'Etacq; their own horses were shod with silver too.
The account comes from Symons' early twentieth-century folklore notes in the Société Jersiaise library, as summarised by Francesca Bihet in Magical Folk (2017). Bihet adds a practical footnote: in the nineteenth century there was silver-bearing mineralisation, and mining, at Le Pulec just along the coast. A district where silver really did come out of the ground is a natural place for a story about fairy silver.
We do not know when James Bailhache lived, and the exact location of the Thiébault cave is not given, so the pin marks L'Etacq generally.
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