The Shocking Ancient Pagan Origin of the Legend of Stingy Jack

Halloween is upon us once again. As I have mentioned many times before on this blog, the popular notion that Halloween is a superficially Christianized ancient pagan holiday and that the practices associated with it today are of ancient pagan origin is largely a misconception. In reality, there is very little about Halloween as it is celebrated in the United States in the twenty-first century that can reliably be traced back to any ancient pre-Christian culture or belief system. There are, however, a few concepts and stories associated with Halloween that do have genuine, well-attested, pre-Christian, pagan origins.

Notably, as I discuss in this blog post I made in October 2021, many of the monsters that have become associated with the holiday—including ghosts, werewolves, and revenants—are really of ancient pre-Christian origin. In this post, I will discuss another such example: the traditional Irish Halloween legend of Stingy Jack, which is a Christianized version of a very ancient and widely attested folktale in which a clever human trickster manages to trap a malevolent or threatening supernatural being who has come to take him away to an undesirable afterlife location. Older, expressly pagan versions of this legend are attested as far back as ancient Greece in sixth century BCE.

Background on the folktale type

The Aarne-Thomson-Uther (ATU) index is a system that scholars in the field of folkloristics use for classifying folktales. Under this system, the legend of Stingy Jack is classified as a variant of the tale type ATU 330A “The Smith and the Devil (or Death).”

In stories of this type, a malevolent or threatening supernatural being (usually Death or, in some Christianized stories of this type, the Devil) comes to take a clever mortal man (who is, in many, but not all, versions of the story, a smith or some other kind of craftsman) away to an undesirable afterlife location (usually either the underworld or Hell). The mortal man, however, manages to bind or trap the supernatural being in some fashion through some form of clever trickery so that the being cannot take him away.

In many stories of this type in which the supernatural being is Death, while Death remains trapped, no one is able to die, thereby plunging the cosmic order into chaos. Eventually, a divine figure intervenes to free Death so that normal dying can resume. What ultimately happens to the man once the supernatural being is released varies from one version to another. In most versions of the story, he manages to extend his life by a number of years, but does not ultimately escape dying.

This tale type is widely attested throughout many Indo-European-language-speaking cultures and the earliest attested versions of it are pre-Christian. The scholar of ancient Greek and Roman folklore William F. Hansen in his book Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature, originally published in 2002 by Cornell University Press, devotes an entire section (on pages 405–408) to discussion of this folktale type as it relates to the ancient Mediterranean world. Hansen argues (in my view correctly) that the ancient Greek legend of Sisyphos is an ancient version of this folktale.

ABOVE: Image of the front cover of the book Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature by William F. Hansen

The legend of Sisyphos in ancient Greek sources

The most famous reference to Sisyphos in surviving Greek literature is also one of the oldest. It occurs in the Odyssey, an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter that most likely became fixed in something resembling the form in which it has been passed down to the present day sometime around the middle of the seventh century BCE or thereabouts.

In the epic, in Book Eleven, in an episode known to scholars of Greek literature as the nekyia, Odysseus, the main character of the poem, travels to the edge of the earth and summons up the spirits of the dead. He describes how, seeing into the underworld, he sees the spirits of various legendary malefactors being tortured for their transgressions. One of the spirits he sees is Sisyphos, who, in this telling of the story, is forced to perpetually push a giant boulder up a hill and, every time he is approaching the top, the boulder falls all the way back down to the bottom and he has to push it all the way back up again.

In addition to being described in the Odyssey, versions of Sisyphos’s punishment are also depicted in many surviving early Greek vase paintings.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing Side A of an Attic black-figure amphora by the Swing Painter dating to around 530 BCE or thereabouts depicting Persephone, the queen of the underworld, watching as Sisyphos is forced to push his boulder up a hill

The Odyssey describes Sisyphos’s punishment, but it is not until a source composed maybe about half a century or so later that we find the earliest surviving reference to the crime for which he receives this punishment. The lyric poet Alkaios of Mytilene (lived c. 625 – c. 580 BCE) was a perhaps slightly younger contemporary of the more famous lyric poet Sappho who, like Sappho, lived on the island of Lesbos, which is located just off the west coast of Asia Minor. He alludes to the legendary exploits of Sisyphos in his Fragment 38A, lines 5–10, which read as follows in the original Greek:

“καὶ γὰρ Σίσυφος Αἰολίδαις βασίλευς [ἔφα
ἄνδρων πλεῖστα νοησάμενος [θανάτω κρέτην·
ἀλλὰ καὶ πολύιδρις ἔων ὐπὰ κᾶρι [δὶς
διννάεντ᾿ Ἀχέροντ᾿ ἐπέραισε, μ[έμηδε δ᾿ ὦν
αὔτῳ μόχθον ἔχην Κρονίδαις βα[σίλευς κάτω
μελαίνας χθόνος· ἀλλ᾿ ἄγι μὴ τά[δ᾿ ἐπέλπεο·”

This means, in my own translation:

“For even Sisyphos, the son of Aiolos, a king, claimed
that, because, of men, he was contriving the most, he was the lord of death;
but, even though he was a very crafty man, at fate’s command, twice,
eddying, he crossed the Acheron, and the son of Kronos [i.e., Zeus], a king, devised
a hardship for him to bear beneath
the dark earth—but, come, don’t hope for these things.”

Alkaios’s allusion is vague and indirect, but another source, dating to about half a century later—the mythographer Pherekydes of Syros (lived c. 580 – c. 520 BCE) in his Fragment 119 (Jacoby), which is preserved through a highly abbreviated summary in a scholion or ancient scholarly commentary on the Iliad 6.15—gives the only surviving complete account.

According to the scholiast’s summary of Pherekydes’s account, after Zeus abducts and rapes the nymph Aigina, the daughter of the river god Asopos, Sisyphos tells Asopos about what Zeus has done. Zeus is furious, so he sends Thanatos, the divine personification of death itself, to apprehend Sisyphos and take him to the underworld. Somehow or another, Sisyphos manages to bind Thanatos in unbreakable chains from which he cannot escape. Unfortunately, the scholion does not explain exactly how Sisyphos does this, but we can safely surmise that he accomplishes it through some form of clever trickery.

While Thanatos is chained up, he cannot take anyone to the underworld and therefore no one is able to die. Ares, the god of martial slaughter and bloodlust, however, is evidently displeased with this situation (perhaps because all the people who should be dying in war aren’t dying), so he unchains Thanatos, apprehends Sisyphos, and hands him over to Thanatos so that he can take him away to the underworld.

This, however, is still not the end of Sisyphos’s trickiness. Unbeknownst to any of the deities involved in the story, Sisyphos has secretly told his wife Merope that, if he dies and goes to the underworld, she should mistreat his corpse and deny him the proper funeral rites. Merope does exactly as Sisyphos has instructed her. Sisyphos therefore points out his wife’s mistreatment of his corpse to Hades, the king of the underworld, and begs Hades to let him return to the land of the living for just long enough so that he may scold his wife for her mistreatment of him.

Hades allows Sisyphos to return, but, once he returns, he does not scold his wife for mistreating his corpse and instead remains on earth and lives out the remaining portion of his natural life. According to the scholiast’s summary of Pherekydes, it is for this crime of evading death twice that Sisyphos must face his notorious punishment in the underworld.

ABOVE: Ancient Greek relief carving from the drum of a marble column from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos, dating to between c. 325 and c. 300 BCE, depicting Thanatos, the Greek personification of death, as a nude young man with feathered wings and a sword at his waist

Christianization and combination with the ancient folkloric trope of theoxenia

As Hansen discusses in his chapter, even after the Roman Empire and eventually all of Europe converted to Christianity, people in many different cultures all across Europe continued to tell Christianized versions of this ancient folktale in which a clever mortal manages to trap Death.

Many Christianized retellings of ATU 330A incorporate messages about the rewards of good hospitality. Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, throughout West Asia and Europe, the relationship between a guest and host was widely seen as absolutely sacrosanct and inviolable. A host mistreating their guest or a guest mistreating their host were seen as among the most deplorable of crimes—crimes that just deities were certain to punish very severely.

As a result of this, one extremely widespread folkloric trope throughout ancient West Asia and Europe was that of theoxenia. The name of this trope comes from the ancient Greek words θεός (theós), which means “deity,” and ξενία (xenía), which refers to the sacred relationship between a host and a guest. The trope occurs when a divine or other supernatural being goes among humans disguised as a traveler in order to reward humans who display good hospitality and punish those who display bad hospitality.

Stories of theoxenia were extremely common in ancient pagan cultures throughout Europe. One very well-known pagan example of this trope, for instance, occurs in the story of Baucis and Philemon, which is most famously told by the Roman poet Ovid (lived 43 BCE – c. 17 CE) in his long narrative poem Metamorphoses 7.611–678, which he composed in the Latin language in dactylic hexameter verse in around the year 8 CE or thereabouts.

In the story, the gods Iupiter and Mercurius visit a town in the region of Tyana in Phrygia in northwest Asia Minor (i.e., what is now the Asian part of Turkey) disguised as a pair of weary human travelers searching for a place to stay the night. An impoverished elderly couple named Baucis and Philemon welcome them into their home and show them hospitality when no one else will. As a result, Iupiter and Mercurius destroy the town with a flood, sparing only Baucis Philemon, whom they reward by making them the custodians of a beautiful, miraculously-built temple.

The trope of theoxenia is also well attested in the northern Germanic pagan cultures. For instance, in the Old Norse poems, Eddas, and sagas, the Norse god Óðinn is frequently described as traveling among mortals disguised as a human traveler, usually wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a cloak. (For more discussion of Óðinn’s character, see this blog post I wrote in December 2021, in which I debunk the bizarre yet popular claim that Óðinn is somehow the inspiration for the modern folkloric figure of Santa Claus.)

Many Christianized versions of ATU 330A incorporate this trope of theoxenia by having the protagonist show hospitality to a Christian religious figure such as the Lord, Saint Peter, or an angel, in disguise and thereby acquire three wishes, which he then uses to wish for things that he later uses to trap Death or the Devil.

ABOVE: Painting from the workshop of the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, painted between 1630 and 1633, depicting the Greco-Roman myth of Iupiter and Mercurius in the house of Baucis and Philemon, a famous example of an ancient pagan story of theoxenia

The legend of the clever peasant and Death in the German Meisterlied

The earlier attested versions of ATU 330A from Christian Europe are only superficially Christianized; they have Christian figures inserted, but they do not reflect a particularly Christian message. For instance, Hansen notes that a German Meisterlied composed in around 1551 CE tells a version of this story, in which a peasant man gives shelter to Saint Peter. In return, Saint Peter promises to grant him three wishes.

The peasant wishes first that he be able to see and recognize Death, second that whoever blows on his coals be unable to stop blowing for as long as the peasant wants them to, and third that whoever sits in his chair be unable to get up for as long as the peasant wants them to.

When Death comes to take the peasant away, the peasant asks Death to build him a fire before he takes him, but, when Death blows on the coals, he finds that he is unable to stop blowing. While Death is trapped blowing, no one is able to die. Thirty years pass and, as a result of no one dying, the earth becomes crowded, so Saint Peter comes to the peasant in person and orders him to release Death. In return, he promises to grant the peasant one hundred more years of life.

A hundred years pass and Death comes to take the peasant again. This time, the peasant tells him that he will go with him willingly, but, first, Death must allow him to write his will. He invites Death to sit in his chair while he waits for him to finish writing his will. As soon as Death sits down, however, he finds that he is unable to leave the seat. Thirty years pass and no one is able to die. The earth becomes crowded again, so Saint Peter again orders the peasant to release Death, promising him a hundred more years of life in return.

This particular version of the story seems to bear the message that, if someone is clever and they use their wits, then they can potentially outwit even Death for their own advantage and gain for themself many more years of life. The problem with this, of course, is that many more years of life isn’t something that a good, theologically orthodox Christian believer is supposed to want.

At least in theory, good, theologically orthodox Christians aren’t supposed to care about how long their earthly lives last; instead, they are supposed to devote themselves to Christ to ensure that they will attain eternal salvation in Heaven. To live a longer life on earth is (supposedly) a pagan desire, not a Christian one.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a personification of Death as a human skeleton dressed in a shroud and carrying a scythe from the Trier Cathedral in Trier, Germany

The Grimm Brothers’ folktale of Gambling Hansel

Later Christianized retellings of this story deal with this problem by vilifying the mortal trickster and portraying him as an abandoned reprobate sinner with all manner of profane and vicious habits. Thus, his desire to live a longer life on earth can be explained as simply the natural extension of his more generally un-Christian character.

In the early nineteenth century, the German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected many German folktales that had been passed down mainly through oral tradition and published them in a book titled Kinder- und Hausmärchen, which means Children’s and Household Tales. They published the first edition of this book in 1812, but they greatly revised and expanded their collection over the course of many subsequent editions. In many cases, they intentionally edited their stories to make them more Christian and give them acceptable Christian messages.

One of the folktales the Grimm brothers collected and published is titled “De Spielhansl” or “Gambling Hansel,” which is a variant of the ATU 330A tale type. The main character of the story is a man named Hansel who spends all his time gambling and has therefore received the nickname “Gambling Hansel.”

One evening, the Lord and Saint Peter show up and ask Hansel for a place to stay the night. Rather uncharacteristically, he grants them hospitality in his home. The next morning, as a reward for his hospitality, the Lord tells Hansel that he will grant him three wishes, expecting that, as one of those wishes, Hansel will ask to go to Heaven. Instead, to the Lord’s surprise, Hansel foolishly asks that he give him a deck of cards with which he will always win, a set of dice with which he will always win, and a tree that grows every kind of fruit that a person who has climbed it can never come down from until Hansel wants them to. True to his word, the Lord grants Hansel these wishes.

As soon as the Lord and Saint Peter leave and return to Heaven, Hansel immediately runs out and begins gambling even more prolifically then before—but now, with the aid of the magic cards and the magic dice, he can never lose, so he wins everything. Soon, through his magic, Hansel has become the richest man alive. He is so wealthy that the Lord and Saint Peter become afraid that he may become the owner of the whole world. They therefore send Death to take Hansel’s soul.

Death appears just when Hansel has sat down to gamble and orders him to come with him. Hansel tells Death to wait until he has finished gambling and suggests that, while he waits, he should climb up into his tree to pick some fruits so that he can eat them on their way to the afterlife. Death follows Hansel’s suggestion, but finds that, once he has climbed up into the tree, he cannot come back down.

Hansel leaves Death trapped in the tree for seven years, during which time no one is able to die. The Lord and Saint Peter grow so worried that they go to Hansel themselves and order him to release Death so that people may die again and the natural order of the cosmos can be restored. As soon as Hansel has let him down from the tree, Death takes him.

Hansel goes up to the gates of Heaven, but they refuse to open for him and a voice from the other side tells him that he is not allowed to come in. Next he goes to the gates of Purgatory, but these gates are locked and refuse to open as well. Finally, he goes to Hell, where Satan lets him in.

Hansel immediately starts gambling with Satan and his demons. Satan has nothing to wager other than his demons, so he wagers them. With the magic cards and the magic dice given to him by the Lord, Hansel wins every game and thereby gains ownership of all the armies of Hell. Hansel takes his demonic legions to Hohenfurth (modern-day Vyšší Brod in the Czech Republic). There, they pull a pole used to support a hop vine out of the ground. Then they go to Heaven and begin to pound the pole against it. Heaven begins to crack. The Lord and Saint Peter, frightened, decide to let Hansel into Heaven.

As soon as he is let in, Hansel immediately begins to gamble. His playing causes so much noise and consternation that no one can hear anything anyone is saying. Saint Peter tells the Lord that they must throw Hansel down from Heaven or else he will make all the inhabitants of Heaven rebellious, so they hurl him from Heaven. His soul breaks apart into many fragments, which fly into the itinerant gamblers who live all over the world even today.

ABOVE: Illustration for an edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales published c. 1890 showing Death coming to Hansel while he is gambling

A version of the Irish legend of Stingy Jack from 1836

Very similar to the Grimm brothers’ story of Gambling Hansel is the story of Stingy Jack, a traditional Irish folktale that is often told as an etiology to explain the tradition of carving Jack-o’-Lanterns for Halloween. Many different versions and retellings of this story exist, but the following is a summary of a version of the story that is told in an edition of the weekly Dublin newspaper The Dublin Penny Journal (3–4: 229–232), published on 16 January 1836.

The main character of the story is an absolutely good-for-nothing, reprobate farmer named Jack, who never says a kind word to anyone and never shows anyone even the slightest hospitality. One night, as Jack is riding home in dark and he is passing through a particular glen that is associated with rumors of murder and evil, he hears three terrible groans of agony. Then an extremely aged man with a long white beard emerges from the darkness and begs him for hospitality. In an unprecedented and totally uncharacteristic turn of events, Jack agrees to let the man spend the night in his home. He gives the man food and a warm bed in which to sleep.

The next morning at dawn, Jack awakens to the sight of a blinding white light and finds that the old man he had welcomed into his home the night before has transformed into an angel in the form of an extraordinarily beautiful young man with white feathered wings. The angel, speaking with a voice like the sound of a harp, tells Jack that his blessing will remain upon his house and that he will grant him three wishes.

The angel expects that Jack will wish for eternal salvation, but, instead, to the angel’s great surprise, he foolishly asks that the angel make it so that anyone who touches the sycamore tree outside his house will be stuck to the tree for as long as Jack wishes, so that anyone who sits in Jack’s chair will be unable to stand up from the chair for as long as Jack wishes, and so that anyone who reaches their hand inside Jack’s toolbox will be unable to remove their hand and the box itself stick to the wall for as long as Jack wishes.

The angel, sighing, grants all three of Jack’s wishes. Jack, however, because he foolishly did not wish for eternal salvation, is from that moment onward excluded from all hope of ever going to Heaven. Even so, as a result of the angel’s blessing, Jack lives a blessed and happy life on earth. His crops flourish and his wife bears him many children.

Twenty years pass. Then, one night, as Jack is sitting in his chair thinking about his worldly affairs, he smells the scent of sulfur. Jack turns around to look for the source of the smell and sees a terrifying demon with horns, cloven feet, and a long tail standing there. The demon tells Jack that Satan himself has sent him to take Jack away so that he may suffer eternal damnation in the unquenchable fires of Hell.

Jack stands up and invites the demon to sit in his chair and drink some poteen while Jack goes to put on his Sunday clothes. The demon complies, but, when Jack returns, the demon finds that he is unable to stand up from the magic chair. Jack pulls out a whip and whips the demon hard, telling him that he will only release him if he promises that he will never come to the world of mortals again to take him away. The demon swears an oath and Jack releases him.

Satan then sends a second demon to apprehend Jack and take him away to Hell. Jack invites the demon to sit in his chair once again, but the demon, being more cautious than the first one, refuses. Jack tells the demon that he will go with him to Hell willingly, but, first, he must mend his shoe, since it is broken and he would hate to walk all the way to Hell without fixing it first.

The demon agrees to let Jack mend his shoe, so Jack asks the demon to reach into his toolbox and hand him an awl. Once the demon has reached into the toolbox, however, he finds that he is unable to remove his hand. Jack once again pulls out his whip and whips the demon, telling him that he will only release him if he promises that he will never come back to take him to Hell again. The demon promises and Jack releases him.

Finally, none other than Satan himself, the awful Prince of Darkness, arrives in person to take Jack away to Hell. Satan pounds on Jack’s door and demands that he come with him to Hell at once. Jack insists that he must fetch his cane first. Satan refuses to let him fetch his cane, but Jack insists that, if he goes without it, he will certainly fall and break his bones and then Satan will have to carry him. He suggests that, if he is not allowed to fetch his cane, then Satan should at least break a limb off the nearby sycamore tree for him to use as a walking stick.

Satan grabs a limb of the tree intending to break it off, but finds as soon as he touches it that he is unable to let go and that he is stuck to the tree. Jack grabs his favorite whip and whips Satan brutally. He whips him so hard and so mercilessly that the whip breaks and he has to fetch a new one twice. Jack forces Satan to promise that he will never come to take him to Hell ever again or allow him to enter Hell. Finally, having exacted this promise, he releases him.

When Jack finally dies, he finds that the gates of Heaven are closed to him and Satan refuses to open the gates of Hell to let him in there either, so he is forced to wander the earth as an aimless ghost, carrying a lantern to light his way until the Day of Judgement. Thus, he is known as “Jack-o’-the-Lantern.”

A version of the legend of Stingy Jack that is more widely told today

The 1836 version of the legend of Stingy Jack that I have just summarized is made theologically palatable through the vilification of Jack as a good-for-nothing, un-Christian scoundrel. The alteration of the protagonist’s character without any corresponding changes to the actual plot of the story, however, directly results in numerous glaring narrative inconsistencies. Jack is supposedly a cruel, vicious person who is not inclined to show others hospitality, but yet, for some reason, he shows hospitality to the angel. Furthermore, he is supposedly foolish for not asking the angel for eternal salvation, but yet he is somehow clever enough to outsmart all the demons and eventually Satan himself.

More recent versions of the Stingy Jack legend alter and remove various plot elements in order to make Jack’s character more consistent. In the version of the story that is most commonly told today, Jack is a notorious, good-for-nothing scoundrel and drunkard who does nothing but lie, cheat, steal, gamble, and drink.

One night, Satan comes to take Jack’s soul away to Hell. Jack tells Satan that he will go with him willingly, but, before he goes, he wants to have one last drink at the local pub. Satan agrees to let Jack have one last drink. After he is done drinking, though, and Jack is expected to pay, he tells Satan that he doesn’t have any money and that he can’t pay the bill, so he asks Satan to pay it for him. Satan explains that he doesn’t carry cash, so he can’t pay the bill.

Jack, however, points out that Satan can change his shape at will and suggests that he turn himself into a coin, Jack use the coin to pay for the drinks, and then Satan can turn back into himself and take Jack away to Hell. Satan thinks this is a brilliant scheme, so he turns himself into a coin.

Instead of using the coin to pay for the drinks, however, Jack immediately thrusts the coin into his pocket along with a crucifix. While he is in contact with the crucifix, Satan is unable to transform, so he remains trapped in Jack’s pocket. Satan begs Jack to release him, but Jack insists that he will only release him if Satan promises that he will not come to collect Jack’s soul for another ten years. Satan, having little choice, makes this promise and Jack releases him.

Exactly ten years after their first encounter, Satan comes to take Jack’s soul yet again. This time, Jack swears that he will go with him to Hell willingly, but, before he goes, he says that he wants Satan to pick an apple for him from a nearby apple tree so that he can munch on it along the way to Hell. Satan, seeing that Jack isn’t asking him to transform himself into anything this time, thinks there is no way Jack could possibly trap him, so he climbs up into the tree to pick an apple.

As soon as Satan climbs up into the tree, however, Jack swiftly sets up a bunch of crucifixes all around the tree so that Satan will not be able to come down. Once again, Satan begs Jack to release him, but Jack declares that he will only release him if Satan promises that he will never come to collect his soul ever again, nor allow him to enter his kingdom. Satan, again, not really having any choice, swears this oath.

Thus, Jack lives out a full life on earth. He is not immortal, however, and, eventually, many years later, he dies. Upon entering the next world, Jack immediately runs up to the gates of Heaven, but he finds that they are closed and locked and that Saint Peter, standing at the gates, refuses to let him in.

Unable to enter Heaven, Jack goes to the gates to Hell, but Satan, honoring his promise to Jack that he would never allow him to enter Hell, refuses to let him in. As a parting gift and as a token of respect, however, Satan does give Jack a tiny glowing ember to light his way. Jack places this ember inside a makeshift lantern made from a hallowed-out turnip.

Thus, Jack, rejected from both Heaven and Hell, is forced to wander the earth until the Day of Judgement as an aimless spirit, carrying his little lantern with him wherever he goes. It is said that, when people are out in the woods or in swamps and they see strange lights hovering ahead of them, it is the light from Jack’s lantern that they are seeing.

This story is usually told to explain the supposed origin of the tradition of carving Jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween, since, in the original Irish tradition, Jack-o’-lanterns are made from carved turnips. Later, when Irish immigrants came over to the United States, they found that pumpkins, which are native to North America, are somewhat easier to carve into lanterns, since they are generally larger. Eventually, in North America, the practice of carving pumpkins replaced the older, more traditional practice of carving turnips.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a plaster cast of a traditional Irish Jack-o’-lantern made from a carved turnip, originally carved in the early twentieth century, on display in the Museum of Country Life in Turlough village, Ireland

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a traditional Cornish Jack-o’-lantern made from a carved turnip, photographed in 2012

Conclusion

The ATU 330A folktale type retains an enduring appeal across many different historical cultures and time periods because it speaks to a very widespread human desire: the desire to escape death. Nonetheless, as one can plainly see from the many different variations of the story that I have summarized and examined here, each version of the story is discernably influenced and shaped by the historical and cultural context in which that particular version of the story was told and written down and by the values of the person telling the story. As cultures change, the story changes as well.