As October begins everywhere you look there are pumpkins. Every shop wanting to capitalise on the growing success of the modern Hallowe’en, has pumpkins piled up high – but of course these are not to eat ( well not by most people I would hazard to suggest) but for carving. And whilst you might think that this is a modern custom it is a much older one, like Hallowe’en itself which has been remixed in the US and re-imported.
Indeed the custom is only established because it was imported into what would become the US and Canada by the dispora of Ireland and Britain. Originally these were first recorded in the 19th century as according to Ronald Hutton’s The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain:
“turnips or mangel wurzels, hollowed out to act as lanterns and often carved with grotesque faces.”
The general view is that the custom was common across Ireland, Scotland and the west country and this was how it got to the US. An example of this is that still made traditionally in the village of Hinton St George where a separate custom of Punkie Night has arisen to explain the carving of mangle wurzels where it is recalled that the carved lanterns to hold candles to stop them blowing out as they went out looking for the men who had got lost at Chiselborough fair. Over time it has developed more into the jack o lantern carved faces. Patricia Morrell and Peter Clark’s 1977. Festivals and Customs explains, the word:
“Punkie”is an old English name for a lantern, and jack o’lanterns for Punkie Night may be made of swedes or mangel-wurzels rather than pumpkins.”
Whilst that is true there is clear evidence of it being far more widespread in Britain and thus it was not just the Irish or father the so called Celtic nations that passed it on. For possibly the earliest reference to the carving of a Jack O’ Lantern face is recorded in Worcestershire as recorded by Jabez Allies in their 1840 The Ignis Fatuus, or Will o’ the Wisp and the Fairies:
“in my juvenile days I remember to have seen peasant boys make, what they called a ‘Hoberdy’s Lantern,’ by hollowing out a turnip, and cutting eyes, nose, and mouth therein, in the true moon-like style; and having lighted it up by inserting the stump of a candle, they used to place it upon a hedge to frighten unwary travellers in the night.”
Furthermore William Holloway 1838 A General Dictionary of Provincialisms records the tradition in Hampshire but called Jack O Lanthorn:
“In Hampshire, boys on a dark night, get a large turnip and scooping out the inside, make two holes in it to resemble eyes and one for a mouth, when they place a lighted candle within side. and put it on a wall or post, so that it may appear like the head of a man. The chief end (and that a very bad one) is to take some younger boy than rest. amd who is not in the secret, to show it to him. with a view to frighten him.”
A similar plan is recorded in John Jamieson 1808’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language
” Candle and Castock, a large turnip, from which the top is sliced off that it may be hollowed out till the rind is transparent: a candle is then put into it, the top being restored by way of a lid or over. The light sows in a frightful manner the face formed with blacking on the outside. Hence the rhime of children – Halloween a night at e’en. A candle in a castock. These being sometimes placed in church-yards, on Allhallow eve, are supposed to have given rise to many of the tales of terror believed by the vulgar.”
It is interesting to reflect upon the US perspective at this point. An 1885 article by Carr Sage called Halloween Sports and Customs in Harper’s Young People, notes:
“It is an ancient British custom to light great bonfires (Bone-fire to clear before Winter froze the ground) on Hallowe’en, and carry blazing fagots about on long poles; but in place of this, American boys delight in the funny grinning jack-o’-lanterns made of huge yellow pumpkins with a candle inside.”
Thus suggesting two things. One that the tradition of Jack O’ Lanterns is instead of, and thus US only and that it is pumpkins that are used. However, it was clearly not for the want of turnips – turnips were grown in the 16th century in North America and there is even reference to a boy carrying a turnip lantern in 1778 in a Pennysylvanian Hallowe’en. Furthermore it is clear that the use of turnips for lanterns is also widespread in England:
“Children…make lanterns from turnips with grotesque faces cut into them.”
Enid Porter’s 1974 Folklore of East Anglia:
“In this century around Whitwell and other places children begged turnips or better still mangolds (mangel wurzels) from farmers, which they scooped out and carved with grotesque faces. Thus with a rushlight or bit of candle inside were hung protectively in the cottage porch or nearby on a gate or fence post.”
Doris Jones-Baker 1977 The Folklore of Hertfordshire:
“A girl from Griffitstown described how to make a lantern from a hollow swede with candle in it and take it out into the street and if anyone comes along you pop out from round a corner and frighten them. A Knighton boy went one better – he fixed his lantern onto a long pool and made it bob about outside the people’s bedroom windows..A Pontypool the Jack O Lanterns are put on gateposts to ‘to keep evil spirits away.”
Jacqueline Simpson 1976 The Folklore of the Welsh border:
In Sussex it is interesting that in 1973 Jacqueline Simpson in their Folklore of Sussex states that in:
“In recent decades Hallowe’en has become much better known in Southern England…children may be seen roaming the streets with turnip lanterns.”
It is clear that the use of turnips was widespread before the use of pumpkins and indeed whilst one can probably guess the time when the two swapped or at least coexisted. This is suggesting the two overlap over in one county for example from Maureen Sutton’s A Lincolnshire calendar of 1995. From Hykeham in the 1940s:
“Would help them make lanterns out of mangols cut out eyes and a mouth and set a small candle alight in it, the top would be put back as a lid to prevent fire.”
A lady speaking in Stamford recalled:
“We used to spend the day before hollowing out pumpkins…..put candles in them to show a face through the holes.”
The evidence points to the making of Jack O Lanterns in Britain was widespread and continual being augmented with the use of pumpkins probably in the 1950s with a revived interest in Halloween and was firmly established by the late 70s-80s. What is interesting is the joint usage of the lanterns some use them as lanterns to light the way and carry them around with them; others use them as means to warn off evil spirits and some use them to scare people. As pumpkins took over it is evident thus that the first usage died out and it is interesting that only in Hinton St George that the use of Mangle wurzels remains as they are still used a lanterns. With the adoption of the pumpkin the custom does not seem in any fear of dying out and the artistry has increased enormously.
In search of traditional customs and ceremonies 