Well--in autumn when the nights first got cool--Jack liked to change the colors of the leaves on the trees before Old Man Winter caused them to turn brown and drop from the trees. Jack would paint them in colors of red, yellow, and orange, laughing all the time.
Yet, the most fun Jack had was playing in the farm fields. He would dash through the corn rows and make the dry stalks shiver like something much bigger than Little Jack was passing through.
He played out in the moonlight and dark nights. Jack Frost especially liked running through pumpkin patches late at night, where the pumpkins had been turned orange. The October moon, when it was full, was big and round and as golden as a pumpkin. He would run up and down the rows in and out among the pumpkins playing hide and seek with his own shadow, and sometimes he would snap pumpkin vines.
Jack was a mischievous boy, full of tricks.
But Old Man Winter worried about his son, Jack, out there at night playing by himself. You see, Jack wasn't actually alone out there in the trees and farm fields. Other things walked abroad at night. The ghosts and goblins and other spirits wandered freely. Late autumn was when the dividing lines between the realms grew weak and thin. Not everything that was out and about was friendly towards Old Man Winter. A body doesn't get to be the king of winter without making a few enemies--and some of those enemies might have long memories.
Though Jack had tricks of his own, Old Man Winter decided he had to give Jack something to help keep him safe. He sat and thought and thought in his icy cave.
Then suddenly it came to him. Old Man Winter reached out his long hand and plucked an orange pumpkin from the fields [rather like this one here]. Then, he cut it open. He hollowed it out, and threw the seeds in the fields. He carved a face with a big toothy grin.
Then he grabbed a light and put it inside, and gave the pumpkin to Jack and told him he could use this lantern to light his way in the dark--and none of the ghosts and goblins would ever bother him, because they'd be scared of the light. From that time on, a carved pumpkin with a light inside was known as "Jack's Old Lantern."
This story was passed down in my family. My mother grew up in Washington state. When she was young--her father, my granddad, would tell this story as he carved the pumpkin Jack O'Lantern for Hallow'een night. Years later as she carved a pumpkin Jack O'Lantern, she would tell the same story to me...omitting details about snow and frozen water pipes, as those were not something we ever dealt with in sunny Florida. She added the snow and frozen pipes back in after we had moved and had been through a Maryland winter. My parents had to explain to me what she meant about pipes freezing--not exactly an issue in Florida. Then, they had to assure me that would be unlikely to happen in the 1960s in Maryland, because the pipes were better insulated.
I have retold this tale to other folks. A Druid once chuckled and said, "Well--Fam-trad is fam-trad, such as it is." No folklorist that I know of had ever heard this particular Jack O'Lantern tale and it may have been something that my granddad made up himself.
Copyrght September 21, 2013 Myth Woodling
Jack of the Lantern
JACK O'LANTERN lyrics
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