A DEVIL IN THE CHURCH-YARD AT AWRE?

With Halloween approaching, the nights getting darker, what more atmospheric place could there be to get a spooky chill than the Forest of Dean? A slight quickening of your step walking down the lane - a slight start at the cough of  sheep or the high pitched scream of a fox? There's some great Forest ghost stories too, Harry Beddington's poem The Mon in White for one. And with spooky connections to real historical events there's the haunted houses described by Sue Law in her Ghosts of the Forest of Dean (1982). But many of the best ghost  stories turn out to be not quite what they first seem - though scary all the same! The ghost in The Landlord's Story, in Charles Grindrod's Tales In the Speech House, turns out to be....well that would be spoiling it! So, in William S Wickenden's A Rum Story  from his A Queer Book (1850), is it really the Devil himself that popped up in Awre church? Here's a clue and a question - is this the earliest English literary mention of a Jack O'Lantern?? Enjoy...

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                                     PASSAGE V.
 
                                   A RUM STORY. 
 
            “ It was a pig,” said Miss Scraggs.
            “It was a donkey,” said Jack Prosser.
            “ It was the devil,” said Bill Proctor, “for I saw his horns and tail.”
            “ It made its appearance in 1832,” said Miss Soraggs.
            “ It was in 1833,” said Jack Prosser.
            “ It was in 1831,” said Bill Proctor.
            Here the trio set up such a confounded chattering, all speaking together at the top of their voices, that I could compare the horrid hullabaloo to nothing earthly, the nearest resemblance to it was a concert of midnight cat music, interlarded with the squalling of monkeys, and the rough bass of innumerable razor grinders. At length the immense superiority of Miss Scragg’s lungs bore off the bell, and she reduced her competitors to a sullen silence. They still, however, cast occasional sulky, dagger-like envious looks, at their conqueror, or rather conqueress, as she thus wound up her own particular strand of the discourse.
            “ I say it was a’ pig !” continued Miss Scraggs, “and that it appeared in the year of our Lord, 1832." (Here Jack Prosser and Bill Proctor growled dissent.) “It was in the churchyard at Awre, and it was on Christmas Eve. The oxen were all at prayers, and the rosemary tree had just blossomed, when the ghost of a pig arose from the grave at the foot of the old yew tree.” (Here Jack Prosser, who had by this time gathered fresh wind, vociferated—“ It was a donkey!” and Bill Proctor gasped out “It was the devil, for I saw his horns and tail !”) “ It had large saucer eyes!” continued Miss Scraggs, bearing down all opposition ; “and a mouth as wide as a cathedral door, and smoke and flames issued therefrom. It whizzed and pufl'ed in a strange round-a-bout way. The vicar and several other religious old ladies came at a canter into the churchyard, fell on their knees and commenced a series of extempore prayers. ‘What the deuce are you all praying there at?’ said the‘ ghost; ‘give me a glass of rum!’ ‘ Anathema Maranatha !’ shouted the vicar, who was a tee-totaller. ‘None of your hard words here, Mr. Parson ;’ said the ghost, ‘hold your jaw!” ‘ Get thee behind me Satan,’ said the vicar. ‘Ill see thee hanged first ;’ said the ghost ‘ I always like to face my enemies.’ ‘ Cased in the armour of faith, I fear thee not,” said the vicar. ‘Come on then old Armagedon,’ said the ghost, ‘let us have a bout together, only first of all tip me a glass of rum.’ Here the ghost drew nearer and nearer to the parson, who suddenly took to his heels and ran incontinently out of the churchyard, followed by the other old ladies. And now, oh Jack Prosser, and oh Bill Proctor, was not this a rum story?”
            Gentle reader the above was another of the juvenile freaks of that unlucky dog, the Bard of the Forest, and it was achieved by means of a lighted candle placed in a large hollow pumpkin, with holes cut in it to represent the mouth, nostrils, and eyes. The Bard himself was hidden behind, or rather within the yew tree, from which tripod, he uttered the responses which so confounded the person.
            The above passage occurred in my mad juvenile days, and the estimable vicar to whom it relates has been long gathered to his fathers. However various opinions may be respecting his intellectual powers, there can be but one on his benevolence and kind-heartedness. I loved him as a father. It may then be asked “how I came to play him such a pliskie?” To this all the answer I can give is by stating that those I loved the best were ever the first objects of my mischievous propensities. It was an anomaly in my idiosyncrasy which I cannot and never could unravel.

William S. Wickenden, A Queer Book (1850)