literature

Jack Of the Lantern

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Literature Text

Jack, the Irish say, grew up in a simple village where he earned a reputation for cleverness as well as laziness. He applied his fine intelligence to wiggling out of any work that was asked of him, preferring to lie under a solitary oak endlessly whittling. In order to earn money to spend at the local pub, he looked for an "easy shilling" from gambling, a pastime at which he excelled. In his whole life he never made a single enemy, never made a single friend and never performed a selfless act for anyone.
One Halloween, as it happened, the time came for him to die. When the devil arrived to take his soul, Jack was lazily drinking at the pub and asked permission to finish his ale. The devil agreed, and Jack thought fast. "If you really have any power," he said slyly, "you could transform yourself into a shilling."
The devil snorted at such child’s play and instantly changed himself into a shilling. Jack grabbed the coin. He held it tight in his hand, which bore a cross-shaped scar. The power of the cross kept the devil imprisoned there, for everyone knows the devil is powerless when faced with the cross. Jack would not let the devil free until he granted him another year of life. Jack figured that would be plenty of time to repent. The devil left Jack at the pub.
The year rolled around to the next Halloween, but Jack never got around to repenting. Again the devil appeared to claim his soul, and again Jack bargained, this time challenging him to a game of dice, an offer Satan could never resist, but a game that Jack excelled at. The devil threw snake eyes—two ones—and was about to haul him off, but Jack used a pair of dice he himself had whittled. When they landed as two threes, forming the T-shape of a cross, once again the devil was powerless. Jack bargained for more time to repent.
He kept thinking he’d get around to repentance later, at the last possible minute. But the agreed-upon day arrived and death took him by surprise. The devil hadn’t showed up and Jack soon found out why not. Before he knew it Jack was in front of the pearly gates. St. Peter shook his head sadly and could not admit him, because in his whole life Jack had never performed a single selfless act. Then Jack presented himself before the gates of hell, but the devil was still seething. Satan refused to have anything to do with him.
"Where can I go?" cried Jack. "How can I see in the darkness?"
The devil tossed a burning coal into a hollow turnip and ordered him to wander forever with only the turnip to light his path.
But this isn’t the end of Jack’s story.   As the next few Halloweens rolled around, Jack, being doomed to wander forever and unable leave the wood wherein he “died,” passed his time by playing pranks on passersby.  They started simply enough, with roped tied across a road, or making strange noises as carts rolled by, but soon, they became horrid things, with people being injured and even killed.  
On one particular Halloween, Jack had set up his most vicious prank yet.  He was going to spook the mayor’s horses so they ran his carriage off a cliff.  The horses stopped in the nick of time, and Jack was apprehended.  Jack was sentenced to death by beheading, despite his inability to die, and left for dead.  Later that night, as Jack awakened, he soon realized he was without a head.  Unable to find it, in its place, he decided, he would put a pumpkin from a nearby patch, carved with a face and lighted by a coal from his cursed lantern so that he may see though it.  Henceforth, he would always be known as “Jack of the Lantern, the man with the pumpkin head.”
The Legend of Jack O' th' Lantern, an Irish folktale as told be me.
© 2006 - 2024 megatron992
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Enoch-1's avatar
This has always been one my favorite stories