Observations on Isrnis Fatuus. 249 



'ti 



bad wholly disappeared. His motions had dissipated the 

 vapor, or perhaps his foot had closed the orifice from which 

 it issued. To this instance another may be added. A young 

 man and woman, walking home from an evening visit, ap- 

 proached a light which they took for a lantern carried by 

 some neighbor, but which on actually passing it, they found 

 to be borne by no visible being ; and taking themselves to 

 flight, burst into the nearest house, with such precipitation as 

 to overturn the furniture, and impart no small share of their 

 fright to the family. 



The circumstance that these lights usually appear over 

 marshy grounds, explains another popular notion respecting 

 them ; namely, that they possess the power of beguiling 

 persons into swamps and fens. To this superstition Parnell 

 alludes in his Fairy Tale, in which he makes Will-o'the-wisp 

 one of his dancing fairies ; 



" Then Will who bears the wispy fire. 

 To trail the swains among the mire," &c. 



In a misty night, they are easily mistaken for the light of a 

 neighboring house, and the deceived traveller, directing his 

 course towards it, meets with fences, ditches, and other ob- 

 stacles, and by perseverance, lands at length, quite bewil- 

 dered, in the swamp itself. By this time, he perceives that 

 the false lamp is only a mischievous jack-a-lantern. An ad- 

 venture of this kind I remember to have occurred in my o\^n 

 neighborhood. A man left his neighbor's house late in the 

 evening, and at daylight had not reached his own, a quarter 

 of a mile distant ; at which his family being concerned, a 

 number of persons went out to search for him. We found 

 him near a swamp, with soiled clothes and a thoughtful coun- 

 tenance, reclining by a fence. The account he gave was, 

 that he had been led into the swamp by a jack-a-lantern. 

 His story was no doubt true, and yet had little of the mar- 

 vellous in it. The night being dark, and the man's senses 

 a little disordered withal, by a glass too much of his neigh- 

 bor's cherry, on approaching his house, he saw a light, and 

 not suspecting that it was not upon his own mantel, made 

 towards it. A bush or a bog, might have led to the same 

 place, if he had happened to take it for his chimney top. 



Vol. XVI.— No. 2. 



