The saying behind this story was well known in Guernsey. A dying husband in another version asks his wife not to remarry "while any blossom can be found on the furze", and she agrees happily, only to find a year later that the gorse never stops flowering. At Les Mourains in the middle of the eighteenth century it went the other way round. Mr Ozanne's young wife died after giving birth to two sons, and made him promise he would never marry "lorsqu'il y avait des fllieurs sur l' jan", while there were flowers on the gorse. He promised, and then married again.
"But the poor spirit had not found rest." The nurse, dressing the children, would see her late mistress watching her. The other servants, gossiping with friends at the back door in the evenings, heard the rustle of her silk dress along the passages. The drawing room was her particular haunt, so much so that it had to be kept locked for years. Finally the rector was sent for to lay the ghost. He did it in the way Guernsey clergy were said to use in the eighteenth century: the spirit was driven into a cupboard and shut in.
Carey ended with a present-tense detail: "in the drawing room there is still a part boarded up, and at times strange noises are heard, as of a spirit ill at rest." Other Guernsey houses had similar locked cupboards, including the Blondel house at St Pierre du Bois and a house near the Tour Beauregard. Les Mourains is a private house on the Route de Cobo.
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