Jack-o'-lantern

Here’s my take on Jack-o'-lantern (or Stingy Jack), this character from Irish folklore closely linked to the origins of Halloween as we know it nowadays. Long transmitted orally, his legend was transcribed in writing for the first time in 1835, by the Dublin Penny Journal.

During his lifetime, Jack was a stingy, cantankerous, drunken, manipulative, and self-centered Irish farrier, as well as a drunkard. But one day, however, he happened to come to the aid of an old man on a roadside, who turned out to be an angel. The latter then offered to grant Jack three of his wishes, and the blacksmith wished that anyone who sat in his chair, took wood from his sycamore maple or stole his tools would immediately be pinned to the ground, immobilized. Disappointed, the divine messenger reluctantly granted his wishes, but informed him that, for having so misused God's grace, Paradise would be barred to him forever.
Some time later, Stingy Jack's evil deeds reached the ears of Satan himself. Both unconvinced by the rumors and eager to make Jack's soul his own, the Devil decided to go and meet this execrable man. During one of his many nights of drinking, while wandering along a paved path in the countryside, the drunkard stumbled upon a body – which was in reality the Evil One. The latter revealed himself to Jack, announcing to him that he was coming to take his damned soul. Disconcerted at first, the vile man prayed to Satan to allow him to have one last round of beer before being carried away to Hell. Seeing no reason to delay what seemed inevitable to him, the Devil agreed to grant him this favor, and so the two went to the nearest pub, where Jack got even drunker. But as the latter had no money on him, he convinced the demon to transform himself into a silver coin, to pay the bill, then to return to his original form once the owner's back was turned. Sincerely impressed by Stingy Jack's perfidy, the Evil One did so. But the blacksmith, whose cunning seemed incapable of being altered by drunkenness, surreptitiously slipped the coin into his purse, which contained a crucifix. The proximity of this talisman prohibited the Devil from resuming his original form, and Jack took advantage of his ascendancy to make him promise not to seek to seize his soul again for ten years, in exchange for his freedom.
A decade passed, and Satan returned to meet Jack, who was wandering the countryside yet again. The man pretended to accept his fate, but begged the demon to pick him an apple from a nearby tree, arguing that he was starving. Not suspicious, the Devil climbed the apple tree, before realizing that the deceitful Jack had taken the opportunity to carve crosses on the trunk, trapping him a second time. But this time, in exchange for his release, the fulminating demon had to agree to not seek to take Jack's soul to Hell ever again.
However, after a long life of villainy and debauchery, Stingy Jack finally expired – on the 31st of October, according to some sources. He first found himself in front of the gates of Paradise, but was dismissed by Saint Peter. So he went to the gates of Hell, praying to Satan to grant him this bitter refuge. But the Evil One, who might have been jubilant at this moment, reminded Jack of his last promise, before refusing him entry, true to his word. The deceased therefore realized that he would now have to wander on Earth (or in the space between the planes of Hell and Paradise), until the day of judgment. He obtained from the Devil an infernal burning coal to light his way in the darkness, which he placed in a large carved turnip/rutabaga, as a lantern. It then happened that night travelers sometimes came across the ghost of the man who was now called Jack-o'-lantern...

Probably in reference to this legend, it had become common to carve turnips, rutabagas or fodder beets to make sinister lanterns, during the Halloween/Samain period, whether in Ireland, Scotland or Wales, from the 19th century onwards. Such objects were sometimes used to scare people, sometimes to pay homage to lost souls like that of Stingy Jack, sometimes to ward off evil spirits, like ephemeral gargoyles, on window sills. It should be noted that the days forming the hinge between our months of October and November were already supposed to be favorable to the intrusions of fairies and spirits into the human world, well before the Christianization of Gaelic territories. Still, the custom of carving turnips to make lanterns was not exclusive to these regions and this time of year. But with the Great Irish Famine which lasted from 1845 to 1852, there was a mass exodus to the Americas, and it was following this change of environment that immigrants switched from root vegetables to pumpkins – which were easier to dig, thanks to their size – to perpetuate their tradition.