Stingy Jack and pumpkin sculpting

The history of Jack-o’-Lanterns

The pumpkin patch ripens in autumn. We’ve celebrated the fall season with pumpkins for long now. Though these are botanically fruits as they store seeds and have bloomed from a flower, nutritionally they resemble vegetables.

Why is a sinister grin carved on bright orange pumpkins? As the old tale goes, once lived an inebriated man called Stingy Jack in an Irish village. He was despised by the town folk. This discontented man has been described as a con artist and thief who duped any person who met him. Other stories chronicle that he was depressed and played tricks on those he came across.

This alcoholic man may have been a blacksmith when sober. He ran out of money to ‘fuel’ himself with hard drinks. His addiction may have tragically claimed his life.

Jack supposedly met the Devil in a tavern on a cold and dark autumn night. He gulled this eternal fiend to buy him the last drink of his lifetime. He promised to offer his soul for this. The gullible Devil turned himself into a six-pence to pay for his beverage.  Jack was agile enough to slip the money into his pocket, thereby trapping the king of demons, where he stayed for a decade.

Jack met the Devil again ten years later. The quick-witted man entreated the Prince of Darkness to pluck him an apple from a tree. Before he could prance off from the boughs, Jack had captured him by keeping crosses around the tree’s trunk. To free himself, the Devil promised that he wouldn’t take Jack’s soul when he breathed his last.

After Jack died, he found the pearly gates of heaven shut for him for being miserly, deceitful and a drinker. Defeated, he tried to enter hell instead. Being true to his vow, the Devil didn’t grant him admittance to his eerie empire. The route back to earth was dark and windy. Lucifer tossed Jack’s soul, gasping for its last breaths in the form of a dying ember out of the cauldron of hell. Jack, who found turnips delicious when alive, placed the cinder in this hollowed vegetable. It’s believed that he is eternally prowling the mortal world in this manner.

The Irish began etching demonic faces on turnips to frighten Jack’s wandering soul away.  When they settled in America, they replaced turnips with pumpkins. Please tag me with the pumpkins that you’ve chiselled.

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https://pixabay.com/photos/pumpkin-halloween-autumn-october-2327488/: Image by Robert Davis from Pixabay

https://pixabay.com/photos/panorama-nature-light-grass-dawn-3066076/: Image by Jörg Prieser from Pixabay 

https://pixabay.com/vectors/pumpkin-halloween-food-face-187601/: Image by Frances Proctor from Pixabay 

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/forest-jack-o--lanterns-halloween-7523748/: Image by Jean-Louis SERVAIS from Pixabay