Halloween Folklore – Stingy Jack & The Jack O’Lantern
Stingy Jack & his Jack O’Lantern...
The month of October is upon us; it is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The cold wind nips the leaves on the trees, turning them scarlet, brown and orange, and Halloween bears down upon us like a spectral freight train. Sorry - getting a bit carried away - but I do love the autumn. The spooky festival is an old favourite of mine.
Anyway, I digress. As a nod to Halloween, throughout this dark month I’ll turn my blog towards some seasonal folklore. Let us begin with the legend of Stingy Jack.
There can be few things more closely linked to Halloween than the Jack O’Lantern. These carved pumpkins are to this celebration what decorated pine trees are to Christmas - except that they are scarier, and have a much darker origin story. To learn about it, we must travel back in time to the mist-shrouded hills and woods of Ireland.
Stingy Jack, also known as Jack the Smith, Drunk Jack, Jack-o'-lantern and Pumpkin Jack, is an old tale told beside winter fires in Irish cottages, or muttered about in warm taverns to scare locals on their journey home. It goes something like this:
Jack was a drunken blacksmith, and what we in business might call a bit of a wrong ’un. One day he uncharacteristically decided to help an old man, who turned out to be an angel. As a reward, the angel offered Jack three wishes.
This was a mistake.
Rather than use the wishes to better his lot - or better still to perform acts of charity, which would no doubt have been the angel’s chosen preference - Jack decided to use his wishes to punish anyone who sat in his chair, took wood from his tree, or tried to take his tools.
The angel, naturally disappointed, punished Jack by preventing him from entering Heaven.
Enter the Devil.
Jack was drunk and wandering through the countryside at night when he came upon a body on the cobblestone path. It had an eerie grimace on its face and turned out to be the Devil himself. Jack realised this was his end, so he made a final request: to have one last drink of ale before being dragged to Hell.
Satan took Jack to the local pub. Upon quenching his thirst, Jack asked the Devil to pay for the ale. Jack convinced him to turn himself into a silver coin to pay the bartender, and to change back once no one was looking. Satan did so - possibly impressed by Jack’s unyielding cunning.
Shrewdly, Jack slipped the now-transformed Devil (in coin form) into his pocket, which also contained a crucifix. The crucifix’s presence kept the Devil trapped, unable to escape. To win his freedom, Satan was forced to agree to Jack’s demand: in exchange for his release, he must spare Jack’s soul for ten years.
Ten years passed, and the Devil once more appeared. As Satan once more prepared to take him to Hell, Jack asked if he could have one last apple, as he was hungry. Satan - who clearly had not learnt his lesson the first time - climbed up the branches of a nearby apple tree. Quickly, Jack surrounded the tree with crucifixes. Frustrated at being entrapped yet again, the Devil demanded his release. This time, Jack demanded that Satan should never take his soul to Hell. Reluctantly, the Devil agreed and was set free.
When Jack finally died, he found that he was barred from both Heaven and Hell, and was forced to wander the earth as a spirit, with only a glowing ember in a carved turnip to light his way.
It has been suggested that this is the origin of the Jack O’Lantern, though scholars have also proposed that such carvings could be connected to ancient Celtic head cults.
Much like Jack, the people of Ireland created their Jack O’Lanterns from turnips and other root vegetables. I made one from a turnip when I was a boy and it was bluming hard work to carve the thing!
Fortunately, America had the answer: pumpkins - much easier to hollow out and carve, whilst also providing a pleasing orange glow.
A Jack O’Lantern is also another name for a will-o’-the-wisp, those mischievous spirits seen around bogs and marshy lands. It’s easy to imagine a lonely traveller on a dark Halloween road seeing such a light dancing about, imagining it to be Jack and his turnip lantern roaming the countryside.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, my friend. I want to give a huge thank you to my wonderful wife, who takes the time to read and edit my posts - without her hard work, the whole thing would be total gobbledygook.
FINALLY – FREE BOOK ALERT
From now until 8th October, my new book Threads of Shadow will be available free on Kindle - so don’t delay, download your copy today. Then curl up by the fire and prepare for some pleasing chills. It’s the perfect Halloween read.
Links below.
Stay Spooky.
Sources
www.carnegiemnh.org
The Very First Halloween Jack-O’-Lantern, Bill Russo, 2017
Wikipedia
