Stingy Jack: A Jack-O-Lantern Origin Story

Stingy Jack sat at a cozy table in the tavern and considered—while his eyes with great effort, reckoned the diminished volume of brandy left in his cup—the duplicity of his table mates. O’Connor was an honest fellow: Spoke the Irish with an ease which told plainly that he was born to it. A fair, guileless man with tight reddish curls upon his head. A regular Brian Boru. Then there was Tierney. A gregarious, square-headed man of determined views and spritely humor which exploded out of him at times like the shards of a grenado at one turn and with the kind solemnity of the village Priest in persona christi

Then there was the third: Mr. Shinny, he was yclept, had all the cleverness and cheek and silent cunning called to mind by his surname, or so Jack thought. He held his wine well. He might, Jack thought, have only pretended to half the drinks that had rounded the table.

What was more, Shinny was so full of life that he seemed, perhaps, too full of life: A caricature of Man. But not of Man Himself, but rather of Man in the person of his Fall: Man so full of himself qua Man that he delighted most in his base humanity.

Shinny was, thus Jack thought, a man after himself.

It was a strange night, Jack noted, his brandy-soused mind sloshing from one shoal of thought to another. First, it was unseasonably dark and, second, it was unseasonably cold. Late October, yes, but the thin, shattering chill was all January and the penetrating dark decidedly midwinter in its character.

Stranger still—sloshing back—were his tablemates. All three were unknown to him. O’Connor was a Mayoman of a moderate but, he said, healthy flock of ewes on pilgrimage to the Wicklow mountains.

Wasn’t this a walk to be made in Late May and June, man?

He owned that it was, but that Our Lord would forgive the delay or relish his zealous desire to arrive early. A general laugh went round the table.

Then there was Tierney, a Dublin man meant for Galway and then Limerick beyant on uncertain business—here, again, Jack filled his glass, concentrating on the delicate precision of his late- pour to ensure that not only did every drop from the decanter end up in his glass, but also that the transfer appeared as sober as he could manage it—and whose business was, he said, so trivial that it was unprofitable to waste the words to explain it.

O’Connor was, thus, up to something. Jack was sure of it. Cloak and dagger stuff.

Yet Shinney was the man in the cloak, a cloak of almost fuligin black.

This Shinny fellow was the least obtuse, Jack thought. He was charming, worldly and—most, most importantly—seemed the sort of man who would understand that not only did a poor man need fortifying spirits to balance his—here he hiccupped—constitution but that the poor man in question may be short of the funds required to satisfy his want on a particularly cold, particularly dark, evening, many apologies to the kind masters for their Christian, most Christian Charity, may God bless their everlasting souls.

And so Jack, Stingy Jack, decided that he would have the rest of his table pay for his bill. He was the cheat par excellance, given credit at taverns the county round on the surety that he always, always managed to get someone else to pay for every drop that passed his lips.

He began in the usual way, decrying the general failure of corn this year, his wife’s mismanagement of the household, the soggy damp and the conspiracy of cats and mice that caused the former to turn a blind eye, while the latter robbed him of his seed corn.

And then, from Shinny with a clear of his throat, gentlemen, I have seen what I would come to see and I must excuse myself from the company and something about other business this night.

Surprised, Jack managed to inhale a little of his brandy and Shinney’s exit was accompanied by a coughing fit, O’Connor pounding manfully on Jac’s back.

Fooling three for a third was easier than cheating two for a half. He tried to steady his mind.

When conversation returned to the principles of crop management, various folk remedies were suggested. Each he said he had never heard before—feeling in vain into his waistcoat pocket for the pretended errant shilling and showing merely a crucifix as he did so—and many blessings upon ye, by Our Lady, this would just answer for next year, so kind were Masters O’Connor and Tierney. So kind.

When the bill came due Tierney and O’Connor, benevolent souls that they were, made clear Jack’s portion with kindhearted admonitions on his consumption of spiritus liquors when in a state of such want and blessings and fare-thee-wells to beat the band.

Thus Jack walked—bandy and success steaming through his veins—the dark, lonely road home, through the bog, walking against the shouting wind.

His walk became a wander and he found himself somewhere in the countryside on a cobblestone road. Shoenails on cobbles and wind were his insistent and unconversational companions.

But suddenly the wind ceased to speak, and when he stopped to rest, silence and an unexpected spread of moonlight shining white through a gap in the clouds surrounded him.

Before his feet lay the body of a man in a fuligin cloak.

Was it the man Shinny?

Jack bent and, his fingers cold and drunken numb, rolled the body. It was Shinny, indeed, but his face was contorted into an otherworldly grimace.

The sight, Jack thought, would chill the heart of an apostle.

Then a smoky blackness, like a silken sheet of absence without form or substance, rose from the body of Shinny—was the body of Shinny changing being—and stood, terrible and profound, before the cowering Jack.

It was then Jack knew his charming drinking companion had been Satan himself. This was his end: His lifelong malevolent leeching had caught up with him. He fumbled about with his useless hands.

Mr. Shinny, he said. I am at my end, it is clear. I know I have no right to ask of you a boon, but if you ever had any generosity in your heart, I would have, pray, a last jar of ale.

Satan, who had pursued Jack out of an even mix of jealousy and respect, thought that there was no reason to deny a soul damned for eternity a simple, final request. A jar of ale with you, Mr. Satan, required such an infinitesimal portion of eternity for the damned that it was granted out of hand. 

Jack observed that, while his return to the tavern would be unremarkable, Satan’s would, particularly if they arrived together.

Satan agreed.

Jack then observed that, were he to return to the tavern alone, he would likely not be served if he could not pay in advance.

Satan acknowledged that this was likely to be true.

If, Jack suggested, Satan were to turn himself into a shilling, might the entire scheme come off aright.

Satan said this was so and, without a sound, turned himself into a shilling, clenched in Jack’s left hand.

This, Satan observed—his voice echoing in Jack’s mind—would also provide Jack with a poetical end; his final act would be to stand himself to a drink for which he would not pay.

Jack agreed, and slid the demon shilling into waistcoat pocket, right next to his crucifix.

Satan, cheek by jowl with the crucifix, was an impotent demon, unable to use his powers.

He was trapped.

Empty curses flew at Jack from the coin in his pocket.

They struck a bargain: Satan would take possession of Jack’s soul, but only after a period of ten years. Satan agreed.

Ten years went by, and Jack’s drunken deceitfulness only worsened. His name became a byword for shameless manipulation. Soon anyone even suspected of putting on the poor mouth was called a Stingy Jack.

And so it was that ten years later on the last day of October, Shinny walked into the same Tavern to find Jack fleecing two gentlemen by the names of Blake and Forde. When Jack saw him walk in he knew his time was up.

The two of them stepped out to the lonely road outside to talk.

Jack allowed that Satan had fulfilled his promise and that it was his time to go, but he had another boon to ask of the Dark Lord of Hell. Would he mind fetching an apple or two from the orchard beyant to deliver to his family that they might not starve?

Satan said he would not, and so Jack and Satan walked through the darkness to the old orchard and, though it was late in the season, Satan climbed an ancient apple tree to pick a few fruits from its top. While he did so, Jack surrounded the base of the tree with crucifixes.

When Satan saw that he was again trapped by Jack’s guile, he was infuriated. 

Again, Jack struck a bargain with Satan, this time extracting from Satan a promise that he would never take Jack’s soul to Hell.

A year later to the day, Jack’s drinking ran him aground.

His soul travelled to the Gates of Heaven where he begged admittance, but God refused: No sinner so unrepentant would enter His Kingdom.

Jack’s ghost went to the Gates of Hell, but Satan, in his vengeance, denied Jack entry there, too, saying that he was bound by the promise made to Jack the year before, and could not let him enter.

But Stingy Jack did not leave the Gates of Hell empty handed, no. Satan gave him a single ember, which he placed in a hollowed turnip and used as a lamp to light his way as he wandered the void betwixt Heaven and Hell for all eternity.

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This is a retelling of an Irish folktale. The modern Jack-O-Lantern may very well be derived from this tale, though there are other possible origins, as well. As folklore has, in its nature, the beguiling tendency to deny easy categorization, the truth is most likely that the tradition came down from both the Stingy Jack tale and others through the call-and-response of time and telling. The turnip in the tale was probably a large rutabaga and has, in the American tradition, become a pumpkin. Happy Halloween!