Stingy Jack, the Irish folktale behind the jack-o'-lantern

the gist

The legend of Jack O'The Lantern, also known as Stingy Jack, Jack the Smith or Drunk Jack, is a folktale from Ireland told around All Hallows' Eve to explain the origin of jack-o'-lanterns. Many versions exist and none is canonical; it is still a wandering folktale that differs between retellings. In one telling, Jack is a drunkard known throughout the land as a trickster, and he outwits the Devil twice. First he persuades the Devil to turn himself into a silver coin to pay for their drinks, then keeps the coin in a pocket that also holds a crucifix, until the Devil agrees to spare his soul for ten years. When the Devil returns, Jack asks for an apple, and while the Devil is up the tree Jack surrounds its base with crucifixes, releasing him only when he promises never to take Jack's soul to Hell. When Jack dies he is refused entry to Heaven because of his deceitful life, and the Devil, bound by his promise, cannot take him either. He gives Jack an ember, and Jack is doomed to roam the world, lighting his way with the ember inside a hollowed turnip.

how it works

In the legend, Jack's trickery leads to a deal with the Devil that leaves him barred from both heaven and hell. The ember inside the carved turnip stands in for a light that never goes out. Real lanterns worked the same way: a candle set inside a hollowed vegetable with a face cut into it, which made light glow through the openings.

so what

The story and its lanterns carry such symbolic weight that Jack has become a kind of mascot for the holiday in the areas where the tradition is strongest. In the traditional telling, the lantern is a hollowed turnip, in this sense a large rutabaga, holding a glowing ember.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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