the.com/jackolantern
a vegetable threatened into glowing, named for a man too sinful for heaven or hell
means A carved pumpkin (or turnip) with a face cut into it and a light placed inside, traditionally made at Halloween.
from From 'Jack of the lantern,' a name once given to the eerie, flickering lights seen drifting over bogs — what science calls ignis fatuus or will-o'-the-wisp. Irish folklore pinned that wandering glow to one Stingy Jack, a trickster so wicked the gates of heaven shut him out, and so cunning he'd cheated the Devil into barring hell as well; doomed to roam the dark with only a hollowed turnip and an ember to light his way. Irish immigrants carried the tale to America, where the abundant pumpkin proved far easier to carve than a turnip, and the name 'jack-o'-lantern' settled onto the grinning gourd we know today.
- original gourd
- Irish carved turnips, not pumpkins, first
- stingy jack
- named for a soul trapped wandering with embers
- swamp science
- term once meant eerie marsh ghost-lights
- world record
- largest carved pumpkin topped 2,600 pounds
- rot clock
- carved faces collapse within roughly a week
keene pumpkin festival — new hampshire town broke world record with 42,292 carved jack-o'-lanterns lit simultaneously in 2013
headless horseman bridge — sleepy hollow, new york iconic jack-o'-lantern imagery from washington irving's 1819 legend