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Punkie NightA variant of a Jack O'Lantern carried on a string is a feature of Punkie Night, celebrated the fourth Thursday of October in the village of Hinton St. George, Somerset. (In England, old Celtic customs and language have lingered longest in the southwest.)
For Punkie Night, children carry lanterns made from hollowed-out mangel-wurzels (these days pumpkins are used) with faces cut out of them around the village boundary, collecting money and singing the punkie song. Punkie is derived from pumpkin or punk, meaning tinder. Though the custom is only attested over the last century, and the mangel wurzel itself was introduced into English agriculture in the later 18th century, "Punkie Night" appears to be much older, older even than the fable that now accounts for it. The legend tells that the wives of Hinton St. George went looking for their wayward husbands at the fair held nearby at Chiselborough, the last Thursday in October, but first hollowed out mangel wurzels in order to make lanterns to light their way. The reaction of drunken husbands to the eerie lights is perhaps predictable: they immediately identified the lights as "ghoulies," the restless spirits of children who had died before they were baptized — and fled in terror! Children carry the punkies now.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Halloween" and from www.ShiningRise.com
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