Souling And Stingy Jack
“Souling”, a sort of religious insurance policy, was a feature of All Saints’ and Souls’ Days, described by John Mirk in a sermon dating to around 1380 as the time when “good men and women would this day buy bread and deal it for the souls that they loved, hoping with each loaf to get a soul out of purgatory”. Soon, though, the poor took the initiative, going around towns, knocking on doors and asking for a soul-cake or soul-mass-cake in return for prayers, cutting a woeful figure, or “to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas”, as Speed noted in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act2 Scene 1).
By the 19th century, the baton had passed to children, at least in Shropshire, north Staffordshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire, going from house to house, singing a song and collecting money, food, drink, or whatever the household could spare. Versions of their songs have survived including this one recorded in Shropshire: Bye-gones Relating to Wales and the Border Country (1889/1890), which went “Soul, soul for a souling cake!/ Pray you, missis, for a souling cake/apple or pear, plum or cherry/ anything good to make us merry/ Up with your kettles and down with your pans/ Give us an answer and we’ll be gone”. However, by the mid-century in other parts of the country only “a few thrifty, elderly housewives still practice the old custom of keeping a soul mass-cake for good luck”, according to the contemporary historian, Michael Denham.
In Irish folklore Stingy Jack had a penchant for playing tricks on the Devil. After inviting him for a drink, Jack, living up to his nickname, refused to pay and persuaded the Devil to turn himself into a sixpence. Instead of using the coin, Jack pocketed it and kept it next to a silver cross, thus preventing the Devil changing back to his original form. Eventually Jack let him go on the proviso that he let him be for a year. On their next encounter Jack persuaded the Devil to climb a tree and pick an apple. While the Devil was up there, Jack carved the sign of the cross into the bark, trapping him. The Devil secured his release by agreeing to leave Jack alone for ten years and to not claim his soul when he died.
When Stingy Jack eventually died, he was refused entry into Heaven and the Devil kept his side of the bargain. Condemned to spend his afterlife roaming around the world, to light his way, he carried a lantern carved from a turnip, with a red-hot ember burning inside, a souvenir of Hell given to him by the Devil. Known as Jack of the Lantern or Jack O’Lantern, his ghostly light was often seen by the superstitious, although, more prosaically, what they probably saw were will-o-the-wisps, marsh gasses that glow in the dark.
For several centuries the Irish hollowed out turnips or mangelwurzels and carved scary faces into the external flesh. A candle was inserted into the hollowed vegetable, which, when lit, accentuated the ghoulish features of their creation. They were either placed in windows or carried as the revellers went out souling to frighten the unwary and to ward off evil spirits. There were even competitions, the Limerick Chronicle reporting in 1837 that a local pub held a competition at which a prize was presented for the “the best crown of Jack McLantern”.
In Worcestershire at the end of the 18th century turnips were carved to make “Hoberdy’s Lantern” while others used potatoes or large beetroots. The hard flesh of these vegetables made it a painstaking exercise and the Irish migrants to America must have been delighted to discover one of the country’s most distinctive indigenous fruits[1], the pumpkin.
Larger, with softer flesh and a hard exterior, they were much easier to carve and produced more impressive results. It was these characteristics that made gourds, one of the first cultivated plant species, a favourite for carving into lanterns around the world, particularly among the Maoris, one of whose words for lampshade also means gourd. Once pumpkins found their way to Britain, there was no turning back.
The renaissance of Halloween in the twentieth century might be for some an egregious example of the Americanisation of British culture, but its component parts have been with us for centuries, just in different forms.
[1] https://www.countrylife.co.uk/food-drink/curious-questions-is-a-pumpkin-a-fruit-or-a-vegetable-219743
