[Jon S.]

I just read a newspaper article on Halloween myths and it included this one. Read the penultimate paragraph - does the Jack-O-Lantern remind you, also, of the myth of the grateful dead?

In Ireland and Scotland, jack-o’-lanterns have traditionally been made out of large turnips. They are hollowed out, carved with a face, carried as lanterns and set in spooky places, such as graveyards. European settlers first encountered the pumpkin in the New World. Because it is already hollow, it is much easier to carve. So pumpkins replaced turnips in America.

Why have a jack-o’-lantern at all? The symbolism goes back to an old European folk tale. A blacksmith named Jack scoffed at Saint Peter and tricked the devil, and so was denied entrance to both heaven and hell. He scooped up a coal from the embers of hell in a turnip and uses it to light his way as he wanders, endlessly, between two worlds.

So the jack-o’-lantern symbolizes a marginal creature, a trickster, dangerous but fascinating, like so much else in this ancient and modern tradition of Halloween.

[TI4-1009]

"Caught up with Jack O'Lanterns in a town called Make It Hurt
Preaching three card Monte in the Live And Let It Church"

- Robert Hunter - Cruel White Water

[aiq]

Yes, the wandering dissatisfied spirit does resonate with the GD myth.