Every Halloween, all around the world, we carve faces into pumpkins and set candles inside them, watching the light flicker through the dark. However, most of us never think about where that tradition began, or who really started it.
Long ago in Ireland, there lived a blacksmith named Jack. He was clever, stingy, and mean when he drank (which was often). Folks called him Stingy Jack, and for good reason. He loved a good trick, especially if it was at someone else’s expense.
One night, Jack’s mischief caught the Devil’s attention. The Devil came to collect his soul, but Jack wasn’t ready to go. Instead, he invited the Devil for a drink. When the bill came, Jack suggested the Devil turn himself into a coin to pay for it. But when he did, Jack slipped the coin into his pocket beside a silver cross, trapping him there.
The Devil begged to be set free, and Jack made him promise not to claim his soul for a year. When that year was up, the Devil returned. But Jack had one more trick. He asked for an apple from a tall tree, and while the Devil climbed, Jack carved crosses into the bark, trapping him again. The Devil swore never to take Jack’s soul, and Jack let him go.
Upon his death, Jack approached the gates of Heaven. He was turned away, for such a mean and uncharitable soul, lacking in virtue, had no place there. He turned instead toward the wide, winding, and gloomy steps that led down to Hell. The Devil only laughed at his misfortune, refused him entry, and hurled an ember from the infernal fires at him. It lodged within Jack’s skull, and ever since his phantom has wandered the earth in eternal mourning, the light of Hell burning through his empty eye sockets.
Some accounts tell a far more sinister tale. According to these, the carving of turnips into grimacing heads draws from a much older Gaelic tradition. The regions of Ireland, Scotland, and England where the Samhain lantern custom endured were places where the Gaels once ruled and where Gaelic culture was not entirely erased by later invaders. Within that culture, the taking of an enemy’s head as a trophy was customary.
It is believed the Celts viewed the head as the seat of the soul or life-spark. Claiming a head meant claiming the soul within. Legends even describe severed heads that continued to speak by means of druidic magic.
There is also the dread Gaelic deity Crom Cruach, the “old black stoop of many glooms,” whose name is interpreted as “the bloody head.”
Jack’s wandering, forever caught between the worlds of the living and the damned, may yet follow the shadowed road below.
Have a mischievous Halloween!
Valisia + Alexandra + Stella
(or should we say Mary + Winifred + Sarah)