St George's well cured "mal de la fontaine", the red swellings and sore eyes for which Guernsey people went to their holy springs, and it was also a wishing well. A girl who visited it fasting and silent for nine mornings, leaving a silver coin in the niche, would be married within nine times nine weeks and would see her husband's face in the water. In the old days the priest would then summon the man to be married. Miss Lane told the story of a girl whose father forbade her poor suitor, until she threatened to claim him before the priest because she had seen his face in the well, and the father gave way rather than face the scandal.
The fiery horse was St George's own. MacCulloch thought the saint of the legends had become mixed with an older watcher-spirit, "l'Egrégoire", who rode the white horse of victory. Miss Lane had a story of the Guille family, who inherited St George from the de Jerseys. The saint had promised that whoever owned the place would never lack bread or children while the well stayed pure. When the family's only son chased an escaped canary to the well and leaned too far over, a horse neighed behind him. He turned in time to see the fiery head of St George's charger vanishing into the trees, and the canary was sitting on the cross above the well, singing. A portrait of the boy with his bird hung among the family pictures.
There are two later ghost stories at St George. Métivier's girl of 1798 went to meet her lover there on a summer night and ran home in terror after seeing skeletons gathered at the well. An old servant told Carey that the last Mr Guille to live in the original house had forbidden it to be pulled down, because a spirit was shut in one of its cupboards. His son pulled it down anyway to build a modern house, and the homeless spirit wandered the garden on moonlit nights among the trees round the pond, until the family held a "conjuration" to drive it into an underground cellar under a trapdoor. Whether it worked, her uncle would never say. The estate is private. The map point is approximate.
Comments