Will-o'-the-wisp

the United Kingdom
the Fens and the Lincolnshire carrs; with the Welsh and European frame

Will-o'-the-wisp — the pale light that appears at night over the Lincolnshire and Fenland marshes and leads astray whoever follows it

Variants and names

Latin ignis fatuus, «foolish fire» (ignis and fatuus), in English from the 1560s. English will-o'-the-wisp begins as Will with the wispe, Will with a wisp, in the 1590s: Will is the man's name, a wisp is the twist of straw lit to give light; from the 1660s it also means «anything that deludes». Jack-o'-lantern appears as Jack with the lanthorn in the 1650s and is shortened by 1750; the sense «carved pumpkin» is recorded only in 1828, in American English. The dates and forms come from the Oxford English Dictionary entry as Etymonline reports it. The list of local names is in the second volume of the Denham Tracts: hobby-lanthorns, hob-and-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tails, Jinny-burnt-tails, kit-a-can-sticks, Jack-in-the-Wads, friars' lanthorns, Meg-with-the-wads, spunks, Jemmy-burties. In the Fens and the Lincolnshire carrs it is the Lantern Man and the will-o'-the-wyke; in the south-west the hinkypunk; in the Highlands the spunkie. In Wales the ellylldan is the bog light, while the canwyll corff (Sikes in 1880 spells it canwyll corph) is the corpse candle. Off the island: feu follet, Irrlicht, Irrwisch, Heerwisch, dwaallicht, lygtemand, fuoco fatuo.

What is told

The English sources describe a light low over the water, pale or bluish, that shows itself at night above the peat bogs and moves in jerks. Whoever follows it always finds it a little further on, and in the tales he ends in the mire or in a dyke. Milton, in 1667, calls it a wandering fire that «misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way to bogs and mires».

In the Fens and the Lincolnshire carrs the name is Lantern Man or will-o'-the-wyke: in Marie Clothilde Balfour's 1891 version a will-o'-the-wyke stands guard on the stone that keeps the moon buried. Elsewhere the light has a precise identity. In the Netherlands and northern Germany it is the soul of a child who died unbaptised, coming up to the traveller to be carried to water and given a name. In Mecklenburg and in Denmark it is the dishonest land surveyor, condemned to measure for ever the boundaries he had falsified. In Wales the canwyll corff, the corpse candle, is not a bog light but a death omen, running the road of the funeral to come.

What it was forthe author’s reading

It served to mark the ground that kills. In an undrained peat bog the difference between a path and a pit of black water cannot be seen at night, and the belief fixed the working rule: if you see the light, stop, do not follow it, lie face down with your mouth in the mud. It also served to keep people indoors after dark, and to make a disappearance tellable without accusing anybody.

Where the light is the soul of an unbaptised child, the belief kept a place in the world for the dead whom the rite had not been able to receive. Where it is the dishonest surveyor, it was a sanction on the most disputed thing in a farming community: whoever moves a boundary stone stands guard over that boundary for ever.

Where it is attested

The earliest dated attestation I have found is from 1596: Richard Johnson, The Most Famous History of the Seauen Champions of Christendome, which speaks of «a going fire called Ignis fatuis, the fire of destenie, or some Will with the wispe». I take it from the Oxford English Dictionary entry as Etymonline cites it: the OED is behind a paywall and I have not opened the 1596 edition.

In 1667 Milton gives the phenomenon nine lines of the ninth book of Paradise Lost, with an explanation already physical: an unctuous vapour that the night condenses and that agitation kindles. The list of English local names is in the second volume of the Denham Tracts, gathered by Michael Aislabie Denham before 1859 and reprinted by the Folklore Society.

For Lincolnshire: Marie Clothilde Balfour, «Legends of the Cars», Folk-Lore, II, 2, June 1891, pp. 157-165, taken down from old people of the Ancholme valley. For western England: Richard Parry, The History of Kington, 1845, pp. 205-206, which gives Will-with-a-Whisp and Jack-with-a-Lanthorn in churchyards and marshy ground. For Wales: Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, London, Sampson Low, 1880, pp. 18-24 for the ellylldan and Book II chapter IX for the canwyll corph. For the Continent: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, 1816, no. 284; Benjamin Thorpe, Northern Mythology, III, 1852, p. 220; Ludwig Bechstein, Deutsches Sagenbuch, 1853, no. 57.

Caution

Grade B and not A for one reason only: the 1596 text that serves as the first attestation I have not opened. I read it in the quotation Etymonline takes from the OED, and the OED itself answered me with a paywall. Nor have I opened Blesson's original article in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, XIV, 1832-33, nor volume V of County Folk-Lore on Lincolnshire, nor Mills's two articles, of which I have seen the catalogue record and other people's bibliographies. Of Balfour I read the introduction in transcription, not the issue.

Three things that circulate and do not hold. First: jack-o'-lantern does not come from the Halloween pumpkin. It is the other way round: the name means the bog light from the 1650s, and the carved pumpkin appears only in 1828, in America. They are two different histories, and the second is mentioned here and no more. Second: not all sightings are the same phenomenon. The Welsh corpse candle is seen on a road or indoors and announces a death, the Brown Mountain and Min Min lights have optical explanations of their own, and putting them in one list is a short cut. Third: I found an article attributed to A. A. Mills under the title «Will-o'-the-wisp and the chemistry of bioluminescence». I did not find it. Mills has two papers, cited below, and neither carries that title.

The grade says how well the entry is documented, not how interesting it is. How the grades are assigned.