The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155557   Message #3661761
Posted By: Thompson
19-Sep-14 - 06:37 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
Subject: RE: Folklore: Is this an urban myth?
Lighter, this link www.iwm.org.uk/upload/package/2/.../azmak.pdf doesn't work. Could you add it as a blue clicky please?

The 'Jacky Lantern' (jack o' lantern) story has got a bit mixed up; normally that belongs to the fields of hungry grass. You're walking and you take a short-cut across a field, only to feel a ravenous hunger coming over you, while you can't find the exit from the field, no matter how you search. (They are generally supposed to be forgotten mass graves from the Famine.)

The solution is to stop and sit down, turn your waistcoat or jacket inside out, and take "a thrawneen from the east of you and a thrawneen from the west of you" - which is to say, a handful of grass from in front of you, and a handful of grass from behind you - and then stand, and holding the two thrawneens, walk in a straight line, and you'll find the field's gate or stile.