What would October be without Jack-O-Lanterns? Holiday celebrations are incomplete without pumpkins with twisted expressions and glowing eyes. Traditional carved pumpkins present a head with perfectly triangular cut eyes and a nose, the mouth, a crooked crescent smile typically dances between menacing and oafish. The harvest would be nothing without this icon. A carved pumpkin, in ways, is a symbol that rises above witches on broomsticks and dancing skeletons. The history of the Jack-O-Lantern is long and predates most of the traditions that we celebrate on Halloween/Samhain. The twisted expression on a carved pumpkins face, in legend, is there to ward off spirits who for one night roam the earth with malicious intentions, although the true historical relevance for our modern Jack-O-Lantern rests with the flame inside.
Will-o'-the Wisp, Arthur Hughes
Ghostly apparitions and unusual lights have been documented all over the world as early as the middle ages. One particular phenomena known as Ignis Fatuus (Medieval Latin for: The Foolish Fire), more popularly Will-O-The-Wisp appears as a ball of light, sometimes a dancing flame over water but most traditionally found in bogs and marshes. It recedes if approached, drawing travelers into unknown territory and sometimes towards a dark precipice. The Will-O-The-Wisp is related to faeries and depending on the region is known to be a trickster. When regarded as a death omen and found in graveyards it is known to be called corpse-candle or dead-candle. Most popularly in English folk belief and European Folklore it is called: hobby-lantern (Worcestershire, Hertfordshire, East Anglia, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and west Wales), friar's lantern (Wales), jenny-burnt-tail (Oxfordshire), jack-o'-lantern (Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire).
Alan Lee, Faeries, 1978
Will-O-The-Wisp comes form "wisp", which is an old world bundle of sticks used as a torch. Will refers to he that holds it, "Will-of-the-torch". This idea holds up to Jack-of-the-lantern or jenny-with-the-lantern, each etymological references to figures with lanterns and lights. Paranormal enthusiasts refer them as orbs. In ancient folk-tales told in Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland protagonists named Will or Jack are doomed to hunt through the marshes for the unobtainable orb. The most popular name Jack comes from an old tale in Ireland in which Jack is referred to as Stingy Jack or Drunk Jack. Drunk Jack makes a bargain with the devil by offering his soul in exchange for a bar tab. Thereafter Jack coaxes the devil into climbing a tree and then carves a cross on the bark below. The devil forgives Jack's debt in exchange for his freedom. Because of his malicious behavior Jack is debarred from heaven and after a great amount of time asks for a place in hell. The devil denies him but as an aid offers an ember to light his way through the twilight world where lost souls are condemned. Jack takes the ember and places it within a carved turnip to use as a lantern. Thus Jack-o'-the-lantern.
Marc Dalessio
Will-O-The-Wisp is seen with various tricksters in folklore such as Puck or Robin Goodfellow and the Phooka. The Púca in Irish lore is known for to help or hinder a figure, sometimes leading them to their demise.
Arthur Rackham, 1905
"Various legends account for Ignus Fatuus. Sometimes it is thought to be a tricksy BOGGART, and where it is called 'Hobbley's lantern', this is plainly so; sometimes ghostly in origin, a soul for some sin could not rest. For instance, a man who had moved his neighbors landmarks would be doomed to haunt the area with a flickering light. In Shropshire, Will the Smith, after being given a second spell of life by St. Peter, spent it in such wickedness that he was debarred both from Heaven and Hell. The most the Devil would do for him was to give him a piece of burning pit coal to warm himself, with which he flickers over boggy ground to allure poor wanders to their death. In other versions of the tale, the smith tricks the Devil into a steel purse, in which he so hammers him that the Devil dare not admit him into Hell, but in this version the smith tricks his way into Heaven. In Lincolnshire fen country, the WILL O' THE WYKES are Bogles, intent on nothing but evil." ---Katherine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies
Will O The Wisp, Tom Shropshire
The Will-O-The-Wisp are not unlike Pixies, a type of faerie creature who is known to mislead travelers. They are known for their pranks, often leading humans into the deep and dangerous faerie realm. In old world Europe it was a dangerous thing to be Pixie-led: an expression of leading humans astray. J. M. Barrie the author of Peter Pan must have combined elements of the pixie with the Will-O-The-Wisp when creating Tinker Bell for her most definitive attribute is her light.
There was in every hollow
A hundred wry mouthed wisps.
---Dafydd ap Gwilym (trans. Wirt Sikes) 1340
Brian Froud, Pinterest
The Will-O-The-Wisp is not unknown to science, Sir Isaac Newton mentions them in his 1704 opus Opticks. Researchers have developed mundane explanations for their existence basing the occurrence on marsh gasses, methane, formed from rotting vegetation and ignited by phosphene. The gas in these circumstances is thought to ignite spontaneously establishing a floating flame. The sightings have often been associated to ball lightning. Though science may try to explain faeries, the truth is that the Will-O-The-Wisp is quite unobtainable. The phenomena of the Will-O-The-Wisp has all but diminished and in the last 100 years sightings have become less frequent. Perhaps the over-developed world has swept away bogs and marshes, the very landscapes in which they are found or perhaps they tradition and superstition evolved for there continue to be documented cases for mysterious lights in the sky.
Source Material:
An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, Katherine Briggs, Pantheon Books, New York 1976
More English Fairy Tales, Collected by Joseph Jacobs, Dover Publications, New York 1967
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