Dark Descent Contributors

It was a dark and stormy night (so the legend goes, and a little legend goes a long way), and Stingy Jack, a blacksmith by trade and a swindler at heart, found himself at a crossroads both figuratively and literally. This story begins with Jack helping out an old man and ends with him wandering the night, eternally lost, with only a coal-lit lantern for light. It is the origin-story of the Jack O’Lantern.

The man Jack helps by the side of the road turns out to be an angel, who grants Jack three wishes. According to the Irish myth, Jack asks that whoever sits in his chair be rooted to the spot, whoever borrows his tools shall be similarly afflicted, and whoever cuts a branch from his favorite tree shall also be (yes, you’ve guessed it) forever stuck in one place. The angel, true to its word, grants Jack his three wishes, but – seeing the stingy heart of the man – decrees that he shall never get into heaven, for his meanspiritedness.

This prohibition does not seem to bother Jack, who finds himself, an undisclosed number of years later, in a tavern where he meets the devil (Eighteenth Century Ireland seems to be awash with Heavenly folk, both fallen and upright). Jack offers to buy parched Lucifer a drink, but – when the time comes to pay up – he refuses to cough up the coin (you don’t get a name like Stingy Jack if you’re known for your largess). He claims to have no money, but states that, if Satan were to turn himself into a coin, Jack could use it to pay the tab. Satan uncharacteristically obliges, but Jack pockets the coin and leaves the bar paying neither innkeep nor mind to just with whom he’s dealing.

Unable to return to his serpently form, the devil eventually strikes up an accord with Jack in which he agrees never to admit Jack into Hell and to leave him be for a whole year. Jack flips the coin into the darkness and the devil holds true to his word. One year later the devil returns, but Jack has laid a trap. He invites Satan into a fruit tree, where he is enjoying a delicious apple (oh, the irony), and offers the prince of darkness all the fruit in the tree. Satan is so distracted by the deliciousness of the fruit that he does not notice when Stingy Jack hops down and carves a cross into the bough, trapping him up there.

Once again, the Lord of Hell finds himself needing to negotiate his way out of a nifty trick. This time, Jack wheedles ten years of peace out of the fallen angel. Ten years in which he will be left alone to swindle, deceive and generally be a stingy bastard. The devil agrees and – on the anniversary of this pact – returns to watch old Jack die (of natural causes, so the legend goes). 

Jack now faces a conundrum. He is barred from Heaven, but just as barred from Hell. He has nowhere to go and is forced to wander the earth, forever stuck between one world and the other (like so many chair-sitting, tool-borrowing, branch-cutting ingrates – oh, the irony). Not without a sense of humor, the devil tosses Jack a single lump of coal to light his way, then disappears back into Hell. Jack carves out a turnip and places the coal inside as a lantern to guide his way (he’s far too stingy to actually buy a lamp of his own).

It’s thought this legend was a way to explain away strange lights in the night, will o’wisps and faeries. These lights were Jack, stalking the lands alone from place to place, forever doomed to wander the night. The practice of carving out vegetables as lanterns became a mockery of this form (this time period really went in for a good effigy, just ask Guy Fawkes). It was also a way to ward off evil spirits (who, mixed in with all the pagan symbolism of Samhain, thought these lanterns were one of their own, and left the carver alone). The tradition, on All Hallow’s Eve, when spirits like Jack walk the earth and can be seen, was eventually exported to England and – more significantly for the evolution of the form – America, where pumpkins were more abundant (and not to mention damned easier to carve).

So next time you carve a pumpkin for Hallowe’en, spare a thought for old Stingy Jack, cursed to go about the night with only a lump of coal and a burgeoning sense of guilt to guide him, and remember never to flip-off the devil lest you suffer a similar fate.