280 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



gather. It glides or bounds along at a variable speed, sometimes maintaining 

 the same vertical level, but at other times rising, falling, and overleaping hedges, 

 trees, etc., and may often be tracked to a distance of a couple of hundred yards 

 from the spot where it originates, or rather where it is first observed. It is re- 

 corded as in many cases moving toward a pool or swamp, and there disappearing. 

 The light is said to be sometimes globular, spheroidally elongated, or pear-shaped, 

 about the size of "two fists," and varying in color and brilliance, being some- 

 times visible even in the light of a full moon. 



So much for points authenticated by the accordant testimony of trustworthy 

 observers. Popular tradition adds much more. The spectators are said to have 

 sometimes received sudden blows or shocks. According to an old German story, 

 some village children having irritated a Wisp by crying out — 



" Heerwisch ho, ho, ho! 

 Brennst wie Hafer stroh ! " 



it pursued them into the house, and stunned every person present by blows with 

 its fiery wings. Folk-lore, indeed, distinctly personifies the Wisp, and ascribes 

 to it the intention to mislead the solitary traveller and entice him into a swamp or 

 pond. 2 This view or superstition is by no means extinct, as \vill appear from 

 the following extract from "Light" (June 24th, 1882, p. 296). A contributor 

 of that journal, who uses the nom de plume "Miror," gives the following account 

 as narrated to him by an old cottager: — 



" 'When I was a ploughboy, at Purbeck, I was sent to the blacksmith, who 

 lived some distance off, with some harness to be mended. The blacksmith was 

 at chapel; this delayed the work, and it was not till half-past nine in the evening 

 that I could start for home. It was pitch dark, and as I went along a Jack-o'- 

 Lantern came hopping before me. It was not above the size of your two fists. I 

 was quite aware that Jack-o'-Lanterns came to lead you out of your path, so I 

 kept my foot in the rut all along the country road, till he, the Jack-o'-Lantern, 

 hopped over a gate where there was a pond close by, and tried to entice me 

 there. ' 



"At the above very evident testimony of evil intention the boy was over- 

 whelmed with fright, and taking to his heels rushed, he knew not where, till he 

 came to a house. There they took him in, and one of the inmates accompanied 

 him over the fields, and put him on his way home. 



" ' I had not gone far,' continued the old man, ' before another Jack-o'-Lan- 

 tern came hopping before me, and tried to entice me to a swamp which lay on 

 one side of my way ; but I knew where I v/as, and went straight for home, half 

 dead with fear. Never again would I go to that blacksmith's of an evening.' 



" ' If he had not kept his foot in the rut,' broke in the old woman, his wife, 

 'it might have been all over with him. When a Jack-o'-Lantern gets you in the 

 water, then he sniggers ; he laughs, you know. I've heard my father say that 

 scores of times.' 



2 We cannot help here remarking that mediseval tradition personified certain phases of the nightmare, 

 as the terms Inculus and Succuba sufficiently testify. 



