Irish Folklore - Jack o'Lantern
by Lady Scholastica Joycors
Stingy Jack
An Irish Folktale
Long ago in a small village in Ireland lived a drunkard named Stingy Jack. He wasn’t held in very high regard by the townsfolk. One evening, Satan overheard stories of the devious deeds of Jack and decided he must have this fellow’s soul. Jack may have been stingy, but he was quite clever. When Satan came to collect his soul, he successfully made the case that the least Satan could do was allow him to have a final drink at his favorite pub. After which, Stingy Jack left Satan on the hook for the tab. Jack suggested he turn himself into a coin to pay the bill and they would be off on their journey to the underworld. Satan was fooled when Jack took the coin and put it into his pocket alongside a crucifix, thereby trapping Satan in his pocket. The devil begged and pleaded, and only upon agreeing to leave Jack alone for ten years was he released.
Exactly ten years later, Satan found Jack stumbling home from the pub. With a heavy sigh, Jack looked at the devil knowing full well that he intended to drag him to hell. Jack made the request of Satan to climb a nearby apple tree to get him a final snack to eat before the journey southbound. Satan, apparently still not as clever as Jack, climbed the apple tree. While Satan was climbing the tree, Jack carved a cross into the trunk, thereby trapping Satan up in the tree. The devil begged and pleaded, and only upon agreeing to never take Jack’s soul to hell was he released.
Many years later, when Stingy Jack took his last breath and died, St. Peter refused him entrance into heaven for all his evil deeds. Satan refused him entrance into hell due to their contract. The Devil, as a final gesture, tossed Jack an ember straight from the fires of Hell. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed-out turnip...one of Jack's favorite foods which he always carried around with him whenever he could steal one. From that day forward, Stingy Jack has been doomed to roam the earth without a resting place and with only his lit turnip to light the way in the darkness. If you see a wandering soul with only a lighted turnip as a light steer clear of Jack of the Lantern.
The History
The origin of the jack o lantern is found in Celtic Ireland and the Scottish Highlands and has always been wrapped up in Halloween, a festival known in the Irish language as Samhain. also the festival of Samhain and was seen as a time when, walked the earth.
This festival marked the end of the Celtic year and was a night when the departed returned to their former homes, as well as supernatural beings (the Aos Sí), the souls of the dead and other vengeful spirits and bad fairies who wandered the Earth. In order to prevent unwelcome guests entering their homes at Samhain, the Celts created menacing faces out of turnips and left them on their doorsteps.
Adding a lit candle to the hollowed out face gave added protection.
Jack-o'-the-lantern initially referred to the natural phenomenon of ignis fatuus, the flickering marsh-lights that appear over bogs and can often lead travellers astray. Also known as Will-o'-the-wisp, Irish folk stories offer explanations for this phenomenon.
In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits.
In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the Jack O’Lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect Jack O’Lanterns.
The practical purpose for vegetables as lanterns was that "metal lanterns were quite expensive, so people would hollow out root vegetables,” Nathan Mannion, senior curator for EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, in Dublin. “Over time people started to carve faces and designs to allow light to shine through the holes without extinguishing the ember.”
The carving of vegetables has been a common practice in many parts of the world, and gourds were one of the earliest plant species farmed by humans nearly 10,000 years ago. For example, gourds were used to carve lanterns by the Māori over 700 years ago; the Māori word for a gourd also describes a lampshade.
The legend immigrated to the new world with the Irish, and it collided with another old world tradition and a new world crop. Making vegetable lanterns was a tradition of the British Isles, and carved-out turnips, beets, and potatoes were stuffed with coal, wood embers, or candles as impromptu lanterns to celebrate the fall harvest
One of the earliest mentions of a turnip lantern in print occurs in a letter penned in 1640 by English author James Howell, in which we find “a Turnip cut like a Death’s-head with a Candle in’t” credited with terrifying “Boys and Women” (though apparently no one else). The use of jack-o’-lanterns in after-dark pranks and tomfoolery was presumably widespread even before Howell’s time and still in evidence 200 years later.“
References:
Bachelor, B. (2020, October 27). The twisted transatlantic tale of American jack-o'-lanterns. Retrieved October 2022, from National Geographic: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/the-twisted-transatlantic-tale-of-american-jack-o-lanterns
How Jack O'Lanterns Originated in Irish Myth. (2019, 21 October). Retrieved September 2022, from History: https://www.history.com/news/history-of-the-jack-o-lantern-irish-origins
The story of Jack O Lantern. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2022, from Irish Geneology Toolkit: https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/jack-o-lantern.html
©2022 MyLinda Butterworth (scholastica.ppa@gmail.com) This article first appeared in The Yeoman-October 2022.
Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited and receives a copy.
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