Ask anyone where the jack-o'-lantern comes from and they will say America. They are wrong by several centuries and one vegetable.
Across Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and much of the north and west of England, the Halloween lantern was carved from a turnip, a swede — or, in the West Country, a mangelwurzel, the enormous cattle-fodder beet. Pumpkins are a New World crop. They only became the Halloween vegetable because they turned out to be abundant, soft and conveniently hollow in North America at exactly the right time of year.
They are much nastier than pumpkins
If you have only ever seen a pumpkin lantern, the surviving turnip ones come as a shock. The National Museum of Ireland holds carved Halloween turnips including examples from around 1850 and from 1903, the latter carved at Baile na Finne in County Donegal.
They do not look festive. A turnip is dense and pale, the walls have to be scraped thin, and the flesh discolours and shrivels as it dries. Light a candle inside one and you get something that looks less like a decoration and more like a small shrunken head glowing on a windowsill. Which was rather the point — these were apotropaic objects, set out to frighten away whatever was moving about on the night the boundary thinned.
The smell, by the way, is part of the experience. Scorched turnip is a distinctive and not entirely pleasant thing, and anyone who carved them as a child in Scotland or Ireland will tell you so.
Stingy Jack
The name attaches to a folk tale told in various forms across Ireland. Jack, a drunkard and a cheat, tricks the Devil into promising never to claim his soul. When Jack dies, Heaven will not have him and the Devil, held to his word, will not either. He is turned away with nothing but an ember to light his way, which he carries in a hollowed turnip, wandering ever since.
Jack of the lantern — the man himself, then the light, then the vegetable.
The tale is doing what folk tales do: explaining a thing people already did. The lanterns almost certainly came first, and Jack arrived to account for them.
Carving one yourself
Worth doing once, if only for the respect it gives you for your ancestors.
- Choose a large swede — most UK supermarkets sell them, and they are easier going than a true turnip.
- Slice off the top, then hollow it with a sturdy metal spoon or a melon baller. This is the hard part and it takes real effort. Do not use your best knife.
- Leave the wall around 1.5cm thick, then scrape thinner where you want light to glow through.
- Cut the face from the outside with a small sharp knife rather than trying to punch shapes through.
- A tealight is safer than a candle stub, and a swede lantern will last two or three days before it sags.
The tradition never actually died
It survives in the Isle of Man's Hop-tu-Naa, where turnips remain the vegetable of choice and the lanterns are called moots. It survives in Somerset at Punkie Night, where the mangelwurzel is carried in procession. And it survives in every Scottish family where someone still calls the whole business "neep lanterns" and complains about the wrist ache.