A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1068 entries
will-o’-the-wisp
A will-o’-the-wisp is the pale flickering light seen at night over marsh and bog. The likeliest explanations involve gases produced by decaying vegetation, chiefly methane along with compounds of phosphorus that can ignite in air, though the phenomenon has been reported far more often than it has been recorded and no single mechanism accounts for every account.
Etymology
The name means Will of the torch: A wisp is a twist of straw used as a light, and Will is the man carrying it. The parallel name jack-o’-lantern is built the same way and meant this light long before it meant a carved pumpkin. Both belong to a European habit of giving the light a man’s name and a story about why he is out there with a lamp.
Notes
The stories are consistent across a surprising number of languages. A man is condemned to walk with a light for some offense, often for moving a boundary marker, and he leads travelers off the path. The site carries corpse candle for the Welsh version and ignis fatuus for the Latin. Reports have become far rarer since the nineteenth century, which is generally attributed to the draining of wetlands.