AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
11 
evening, had to cross a strip of marsh. As he approached 
the causeway, he noticed a light towards the opposite end, 
which he supposed to be a lantern in the hand of some 
person whom he was about to meet. It proved, however, 
to be a solitary flame, a few inches above the marsh, at 
the distance of a few feet from the edge of the causeway. 
He stopped some time to look at it; and was strongly 
tempted, notwithstanding the miriness of the place, to get 
nearer to it, for the purpose of closer examination. It was 
evidently a vapour, [phosphuretted hydrogen ?] issuing 
from the mud, and becoming ignited, or at least luminous, 
in contact with the air. It exhibited a flickering appear- 
ance, like that of a candle expiring in its socket; alter- 
nately burning with a large flame and then sinking to a 
small taper; and occasionally, for a moment, becoming 
quite extinct. It constantly appeared over the same spot. 
With the phenomena exhibited in this instance, I have 
been accustomed to compare those exhibited in other in- 
stances, whether observed by myself or others; and gene- 
rally, making due allowance for the illusion of the senses 
and the credulity of the imagination in a dark and misty 
night, (for it is on such nights that they usually appear,) 
I have found these phenomena sufficient for the explanation 
of all the fantastic tricks that are reported of these phan- 
toms. 
They are supposed to be endowed with locomotive 
power. They appear to recede from the spectator, or to 
advance towards him. But this may be explained with- 
out locomotion — by their variation in respect to quantity 
of flame. As the light dwindles away, it will seem to 
move from you, and with a velocity proportioned to the 
rapidity of its diminution. Again, as it grows larger, it 
will appear to approach you. If it expires, by several 
flickerings or flashes, it will seem to skip from you, and 
when it re-appears you will easily imagine that it has as- 
sumed a new position. This reasoning accounts for their 
apparent motion, either to or from the spectator; and I 
never could ascertain that they moved in any other direc- 
tion, that is, in a line oblique or perpendicular to that in 
which they first appeared. In one instance, indeed, I 
thought this was the fact, and what struck me as more sin- 
gular, the light appeared to move, with great rapidity, di- 
rectly against a very strong wind. But after looking some 
time, I reflected that I had not changed the direction of 
my eye at all, whereas if the apparent motion had been 
real, I ought to have turned half round. The deception 
was occasioned by the motion of the wind itself — as a 
stake standing in a rapid stream will appear to move 
against the current. 
It is a common notion that the ignis fatuus cannot be 
approached, but will move off as rapidly as you advance. 
This characteristic is mentioned in the Edinburgh Ency- 
clopedia. It is doubtless a mistake. Persons attempting 
to approach them, have been deceived perhaps as to their 
distance, and finding them farther off than they imagined, 
have proceeded a little way and given over, under the 
impression that pursuit was vain. An acquaintance of 
mine, a plain man, told me he actually stole up close 
to one, and caught it in his hat, as he thought; — “and 
what was it?” I asked. “It was’nt nothin.” On 
looking into his hat for the “ shining jelly,” it had 
wholly disappeared. His motion had dissipated the 
vapour, 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, approached a light, which they took for a lantern 
carried by some neighbour, 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 respect- 
ing them; namely, that they possess the power of beguil- 
ing 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 neighbouring house, and the deceived traveller, directing 
his course towards it, meets with fences, ditches, and other 
obstacles, and by perseverance, lands at length, quite be- 
wildered, in the swamp itself. By this time, he perceives 
that the false lamp is only a mischievous jack-a-lantern. 
An adventure of this kind I remember to have occurred 
in my own neighbourhood. A man left his neighbour’s 
house late in the evening, and at day-light had not reached 
his own, a quarter of a mile distant; at which his family 
being concerned, a number of persons w r ent out to search 
for him. We found him near a swamp, with soiled 
clothes and a thoughtful countenance, 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 marvellous in it. The night being 
dark, and the man’s senses a little disordered withal, by a 
glass too much of his neighbour’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. — lb. 
