In the first version Pallot is a real scholar whose habit of studying late into the night in his locked schoolroom makes the Vale farmers suspicious. They decide he is in league with the powers of darkness. He is hurt by this, and also a little flattered. Satan decides that a schoolmaster with so much influence over the parish's children is worth winning, and after a long siege comes in person. The conference lasts for hours. Pallot refuses every offer, and the Devil storms out, taking the gate of the schoolyard with him. It was found next morning on a large hawthorn on top of the Hougue Juas. The thorn, green and healthy until then, looked as if lightning had struck it, and never recovered.
The second version is set near the Roque Balan at L'Ancresse. The schoolmaster keeps some old books locked in a carved chest, and his cleverest pupil, a boy with too much curiosity, gets hold of the keys while the master is called away to write a dying man's will. The boy opens a book at random and reads aloud. It is the spell for raising the Devil. A storm gets up and Satan appears, asking what he wants. The master comes running back just as the Devil is about to fly off with the boy, freezes him with a quick spell, and sets him a task: if he can finish it before sunset, he can have the boy. He scatters a peck of peas on the floor and hands the Devil a three-pronged pitchfork to toss them over the half-door into the yard. Not one pea will stay on the prongs. As the sun sets the Devil rips the half-door off its hinges and hurls it towards Les Landes, where it was found next day on a thorn bush that has grown blasted and flat to the ground ever since.
Similar tales are told in Brittany and Devon, and Carey pointed this out. What makes the Guernsey version local is the named schoolmaster and the named thorn. Neither the Hougue Juas nor the bush can now be pinned down, so the map point is at the Vale church.
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