Jack-o'-lanterns

Published Oct 23, 2023, 1:00 PM

Jack-o’-lanterns have become one of the most iconic symbols of Halloween. Their origin story isn’t exactly well documented, so tracing their roots involves some folklore, some agriculture, and literary influence. 

Research:

  • Bachelor, Blane. “ The twisted transatlantic tale of American jack-o’-lanterns.” National Geographic. Oct. 27, 2020. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/the-twisted-transatlantic-tale-of-american-jack-o-lanterns?rnd=1696858487928&loggedin=true
  • Ellis, Hurcules. “The Rhyme Book.” Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans. 1851. https://books.google.com/books?id=1DxcAAAAcAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
  • Fox, Frances. "Waialua Children Use Papaias for Pumkins to Scare on Hallowe'en." Honolulu Advertiser. Oct. 31, 1931. https://www.newspapers.com/image/258961518/?terms=jack%20o%27lantern&match=1
  • Christofi, N. “BIOASSAYS | Microbial Tests.” Encyclopedia of Analytical Science (Second Edition). Elsevier. 2005. Pages 265-271. https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-12-369397-7/00044-3
  • “How did the squash get its name?” Library of Congress. Nov. 19, 2019. https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/agriculture/item/how-did-squash-get-its-name/
  • Lang, Cady. “What Is Samhain? What to Know About the Ancient Pagan Festival That Came Before Halloween.” TIME. Oct. 30, 2018. https://time.com/5434659/halloween-pagan-origins-in-samhain/
  • National Park Service. “The Three Sisters.” https://www.nps.gov/tont/learn/nature/the-three-sisters.htm
  • “London, Oct. 2.” The Bath Journal. October 4, 1779. https://www.newspapers.com/image/975623103/?terms=jack-o-lantern&match=1
  • “Paris, November 30.” The Freeman’s Journal or The North American Intelligencer. Feb. 15, 1792. https://www.newspapers.com/image/39395048/?terms=jack-o-lantern&match=1
  • “For This Gazette.” The Portland Gazette. Sept. 17, 1798. https://www.newspapers.com/image/904401967/?terms=jack-o-lantern
  • Gish, Hannah. “Stingy Jack: The Origin of the Jack-O-Lantern.” Carnegie Center for Art & History. https://carnegiecenter.org/stingy-jack-the-origin-of-the-jack-o-lantern/
  • Grannan, Cydney. "Why Do We Carve Pumpkins at Halloween?". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Oct. 2017, https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-we-carve-pumpkins-at-halloween
  • Oliveira, Rosane. “10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Pumpkins.” University of California. Oct. 25, 2018. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-pumpkins#:~:text=Scientists%20believe%20that%20pumpkins%20originated,food%20staple%20among%20Native%20Americans.
  • “Will-o’-the Wisp: Monstrous Flame or Scientific Phenomenon.” Monstrum. PBS. October 5, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/video/will-o-the-wisp-monstrous-flame-or-scientific-phenomenon-dsugln/
  • Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Samhain". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Samhain
  • Irving, Washington. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41/41-h/41-h.htm
  • Allen, Ida Bailey. “Try Jack-o’-Lantern Halloween Supper.” Quad-City Times. Oct. 31, 1952. https://www.newspapers.com/image/301873757/?terms=jack%20o%27lantern&match=1
  • Huntley, Andrew. “The Jack-o-Lantern’s Origins.” Carnegie Museum of Natural History. https://carnegiemnh.org/the-jack-o-lanterns-origins/
  • Ott, Cindy. “Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon.” University of Washington Press. 2013.
  • Traynor, Jessica. “The story of Jack-o’-lantern: ‘If you knew the sufferings of that forsaken craythur.’” Irish Times. Oct. 29, 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/the-story-of-jack-o-lantern-if-you-knew-the-sufferings-of-that-forsaken-craythur-1.4065773

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy. Pumpkin carving is one of my very very favorite Halloween activities. Oh hooray. I love it like I love it, and I'm talking about that on Behind the Scenes Forever Halloween Season, Halloween Halloween. I'm excited about it. Jack o lanearns have become one of the most iconic symbols of Halloween, but their origin story is not super well documented because it's not as though someone just invented them, or even a culture invented them, or if they were part of a specific event and then became popular, although they are associated mostly with one culture. But we'll talk about all of that. So tracing their roots. I think I had told you a while back while I was working them this, I'm trying to figure out the shape of it because it does involve some folklore, some agriculture, there's some literary influence that all come together to sort of make the jack lantern as important visually to Halloween season as it is today. So we're going to talk about all of that now. So the history of jack lanterns starts with an Irish folk story about a man called Stingy Jack. There was a poem to tell the tale of Stingy Jack that came out in eighteen fifty one, written by Hercules Ellis. This was included in a book called the Rhyme Book, which collected a number of folk tales and told them in verse. The story of Stingy Jack is a lot older, though, and there are many variations. This eighteen fifty one poem opens with a rather unsavory depiction of Jack and his unkind ways, and it calls him by his more formal name of John rather than Jack. Quote greater Charle was never known on this earth than Stingy John. From his door, the poor were turned, unrelieved and cursed and spurned. But as this version of Stingy Jack's story plays out, while he is traveling home one night, Jack encounters a poor stranger who claims that they are near death, and they ask for help, and surprisingly Jack offers aid. He picks the stranger up, and he puts him on his horse and brings him to his home, where he feeds this man and gives him a place to sleep. But then the next morning, Jack awakens to find that the poor traveler that he helped was actually an angel, who says to him in the poem quote though called a churl by all around, mercy in your heart, I've found ask three gifts. I'll give them you and my blessing ad there too. After contemplating this offer, Jack asks for the following quote, I wish whoever takes my chair maybe fastened firmly there he to chair and share to ground till my leave to go be found. Next, I pray whatever fools metal with my box of tools may be fastened to the wall till to let them go I call. Thirdly, sir, I would implore that who breaks my sycamore may be fixed fast to the tree till I choose to set him free. And so the angel, sighing, grants these three wishes. But this seals Jack's fate because in not asking for heaven when offered anything by the angel and instead making wishes that are intended to trap people in his control, he has doomed himself to never enter the pearly gates. But Jack doesn't really realize that anything bad is going to happen. To him at this point, because his life goes pretty well. He's healthy, his flocks flourish, and he gets really rich. But eventually, like everyone old and his end of life nears. And because he has doomed himself to Hell with these wishes, the devil sends one of his servants up from Hell to fetch Jack. And when that servant comes to Jack's door, Jack invites him in and offers him a seat, and that seals the devil's servant to it because of that first wish. Jack then beats the servant. This is all a pretty violent story, I will say, and then makes him a deal that if he promises to never come back, he will be set free, and the servant of the devil agrees to this. Of course, the devil has other servants and sends another one, and that servant is aware of what happened to the first. This emissary is adamant that Jack has to report to Hell, and Jack says that he'll go, but he has to fix his shoes first or he won't be able to make the journey. So he asks the Devil's servant number two to hand him an all from his toolbox that, of course traps that servant. Once again, Jack beats the devil's servant and offers him freedom for the promise that he will not return. There is another uh. The third visit that Jack gets is from the devil himself, who is tired of his minions being tricked, and, according to the poem, quote said Jack, my lord, I'm ready quite but dead lame is old. Jack. You must go get me a good stout stick, or take me on your back. So the devil goes to Jack's nearby sycamore tree to get a walking stick from it, and is then fastened tight to the tree, where Jack flails him for a long time. He flails him so much that the devil's roars are heard as far away as Germany, Italy, and Spain. According to this poem, the devil is finally freed by Jack after he promises that he will never take Jack to Hell. But that means that when Jack dies, his soul has nowhere to go. So this poem concludes at length, Jack died, and when his soul was from his body riven, it could not get through Hell's wide gate, nor yet through those of Heaven. By his free choice, he lost the last and Satan did not fail his oath to keep and Jack to sweep from Hell's gates with his flail. Then, since Jack is unfit for heaven and Hell won't give him room, his ghost is forced to walk the earth until the day of Doom. A lantern in his hand, he bears the way by night to show and from its flame he got the name of Jack. A lantern. Now, so, there's a more common version of this folk tale that pre dates the poem. In that version, Jack invites the devil to drink with him at a pub, but he does not have the money to pay to cover the bill. He makes a deal with the devil, offering his soul for money. The devil agrees and turns himself into a coin. So the plan is Jack will use the coin to pay for the drinks and then the devil will return to his normal shape and leave. But Jack does not pay his bill with the devil coin. Instead, he walks out on the bill and puts the coin in his pocket along with the cross that keeps the devil from assuming his true form, and eventually Jack decides to let the devil free from this trap. For a reason that is usually determined by the teller's choosing like guilt or fear, and he makes the deal with Satan at this moment that in exchange for freedom, the devil cannot bother Jack for ten years. That seems like a foolish deal to make, but whatever. When the devil sees Jack again after that allotted period has passed, he gets tricked again. This time, Jack says he will go willingly after he has an apple from a tree that is not too far off from where this conversation is taking place, and he asks the devil if he will climb up into the tree to fetch an especially good apple. The devil obliges. Clearly, the devil is kind of a ding dong in these stories because he just gets tricked over and over. And while Satan is out this tree, Jack carves across on the trunk and that prevents the devil from getting down once again. Jack frees the devil this time makes a deal that his soul cannot be taken to Hell when he dies. The devil agrees and his freed, and both of them just go about their business until Jack does finally die of old age. At that point, he's refused entry into heaven and sent by Saint Peter to Hell, but the devil can't take him either per their previous arrangement, so instead he gives Jack a small flame from the fires of Hell. Jack puts the flame into a carved out turnip to use as a lamp, and because his soul can't go to heaven or Hell, he just wanders the earth until Judgment Day with this little turnip light. Yeah, sometimes that's described as a flame, sometimes as a burning charcoal from the fires of Hell, or a spark. It comes up a little bit differently, but no matter the details. The story of Stinjack in his lantern is really not connected to Halloween initially, but was a way to explain the idea of floating lights that people saw at night, the same thing you may have heard called will of the Wisp or some other thing. So those floating lights associated with bogs are said to lower travelers off course and to their doom. They are described as being perpetually out of reach, so as a person approaches, they seem to move away, and there is a scientific explanation for this phenomenon. They're a couple, actually, So it's believed that marsh gas, which is high in methane, sometimes produces light as the flora around it decomposes and creates a chemical reaction. That's a process called chemoluminescence. The other explainer is bioluminescence, which happens when a chemical reaction produces light in living organisms and is not a decomposition thing. But before that science was understood, the various myths and lore were used to explain those boglines and other cultures have completely different explanations for this phenomenon. But this Irish folk tale is the one that gives rise to the Jack o' lantern. This also reminds me of the make a Light which we just talked about. Yes, uh so, how did this tale of the doomed, untethered soul of Stingy Jack lead to kids carrying plastic pumpkins around during trick or treat time. We're going to talk about the history of the pumpkin before we get to that, and we will do that after a sponsor break. Pumpkins are native to North and Central America. In the book Pumpkin, The Curious History of an American Icon, author Cindy Ott makes the case that the pumpkin may have been the first plant that was transitioned from wild to cultivated by people living in the Americas, making them a keystone of the transition to agricultural versus foraging society. The oldest cultivated pumpkin seeds we know of came from the Wahaca Highlands in Mexico, and they're somewhere between eight and ten thousand years old. That, according to Ott, makes them two thousand years older than any known corn or bean seeds. But those early pumpkins were nothing like the behemoths you can find today at a supermarket. They were small, their range was pretty close to a modern regulation baseball or a softball in range. The reasons that pumpkins became so popular among early American cultures is one that's debated. They would not have been the very fleshy, sweet version that we have today, but a lot more bitter with a thinner wall of flesh until they were selectively bred for having a bigger size and sweeter flavor. But they were consistent and reliable as a crop. One of the reasons that sprouting punkumpkin seeds as a popular classroom activity today is because it is really easy to do. Pumpkins grow quickly, and they would have added variety to the diet of early agrarian groups. Yeah, if you're like me and you dump all your stuff in your composter without a whole lot of thoughts, sometimes you get surprise gift pumpkin vines. They're just so easy to grow, they just want to sprout. By the twelve hundred's, indigenous peoples on the eastern seaboard of North America had a really established practice of growing pumpkins, and they had been standard crops even earlier than that in other areas of the continent, so well before Europeans made their way across the Atlantic, the pumpkin was pretty plentiful. Exact varieties and specific timelines of them are really difficult to trace because those things were shifting year to year as sweeter versions were sought out for eating, and other members of the Kukubatacea family were cultivated for other uses, for example, gourds that could be hollowed out and used as vessels, and these were grown alongside corn and beans in what is known today as the Three Sisters method of planting. It's also called companion planting, and in this arrangement, the corn serves as a trellis for the beans to grow up the beans, stabilize the corn, and add nitrogen to the soil, which helps support the pumpkins and the corn, and the pumpkins or their close relatives, because it's not always a pumpkin, protect the soil and roots of the other plants while suppressing weed growth. Pumpkins are a good source of vitamin A, with potassium, iron, and vitamin C also included in their nutritional profile, so their benefits make it pretty clear why they became an important part of early North American agriculture. The word pumpkin doesn't come from the languages of these indigenous peoples, though. Field pumpkins, like the big orange ones that are so closely associated with autumn and its holidays. Those were grouped with a lot of other varieties of crops under the name squash. That word, according to the Library of Congress, as from the word a scuta squash, which is a Narragansett word referring to something that's eaten raw. The word pumpkin has roots in the Greek word pepin, which means large melon. I feel like I said that as though it were French. When this was adopted into French, that word was transitioned to Pompon, and then that became Pumpion and Great Britain before evolving into Pumpkin. So when Europeans came to North America, they eventually adopted the pumpkin into their own diet as a staple food for all of the reasons it had already been popular with indigenous peoples. In addition to the benefits we've already mentioned, there is the bonus that pumpkins can be used just about in their entirety right. You can roast and eat the seeds, the blossoms can be eaten, the skins can be eaten. You can so treat the skins for other uses like weaving. So clearly it's a great crop. So now that the pumpkins place in North American agriculture is established, we're gonna jump back to the story of Stingy Jack. Because Jack's spirit, wandering the world, unable to enter heaven or hell, carried a turn up lantern. Became known as Jack of the Lantern or Jack o lantern, But he wasn't the only one called that name. The term jack lantern was also used to describe night watchmen who carried lanterns as they patrolled their areas. The use of the name jack o' lanterns interchangeably with will of the wisp or other names to describe that eerie and uncatchable light we talked about, was well established by the late eighteenth century. I found it very easy to find numerous newspaper articles that reference them by the jack lantern name. One appearing in the Bath Journal in October seventeen seventy nine, is about I writ Paul Jones, and it states, quote Paul Jones resembles a jack o' lantern to mislead our mariners and terrify our coasts. He is no sooner seen than lost. Another printed in February seventeen ninety two in the Freeman's Journal or the North American Intelligencer, included a criticism of the French nobility, which read, in part quote, Unfortunately, in their search of light, they turn their backs upon the steady luminary reason and follow certain jacka lanterns that lead them astray. Accordingly, they have lost themselves in the public opinion. One article that appeared in the Portland Gazette in September of seventeen ninety eight begins as though it's an etymology of the word jacobin, suggesting that the final syllable was really lynn, which was an evolution from land as an abbreviation of lantern, and that jacobin and jack o lantern are the same word. This is, in actuality, a criticism of the Jacobins, comparing them to a thing that seems appealing but is in fact not. The article includes a list of characteristics of the jackalantern and concludes with quote to all appearances, it is an angel of light, but in reality it is an angel of darkness. In short, it is the very devil all over. And so my good reader is the Jacobin. So the idea of a jack lantern was well established before that eighteen fifty one poem that we mentioned in the first segment of the show, and some versions of the Stingy Jack story also account for the idea that other people started carving their own turnips and potatoes to have scary faces, and they put these creatures in their windows to scare off the wandering Jack or any other creature. This actually becomes a little bit confusing because it appears that they're in telling this story there has been a co mingling of two ideas. So the explainer of the Boglin light known as Ignus Thoughtuus or fools Fire that we've been talking about, and the Celtic Sawen celebration. Sawen, which means end of Summer, was a festival that marked the transition to autumn. This was also the Celtic New Year and was associated not just with the changing of the seasons, but also with death and rebirth. The end of harvest and the preparation for winter has come to be associated with a lot of concepts, and some of them are on the spooky and scary side. Although we don't really have a lot of reliable information about the actual historical practices, it's believed that the Celtic festival, which marked the delineation between the light and dark parts of the year, also marked a time when the living and the dead might have contact. There may have been a time when the world of the supernatural and of deities was believed to be accessible or at least visible to mortal humans. So, based on what we know they're there are some pretty easy to recognize similarities between historical Swen activities and modern Halloween, including dressing up in costume. So while today's costume party might be about finding the funniest or most impressive ensemble. The participants in Sooyen were more likely selecting disguises to confuse evil spirits. Bonfires are also believed to have been a common practice as a way to protect the gathered celebrants, and fortune telling may have been part of the festivities because this was a time of looking to the year ahead. After the Romans defeated the Celts in the first century, Celtic paganism was subsumed into Christian ideology through a careful rewrite of the narrative of the meanings of various practices, kind of along the lines of oh, no, no, no, that thing you've always done has actually been a Christian thing all along. This was especially the case when All Saints Day was declared in the year six o nine, and then it was handily moved a couple centuries later to coincide with sawm And this is when the day before All Saints' Day, known as All Hollows Eve, started to develop the identity that we would come to recognize as the holiday of Halloween. Coming up, we'll talk about how this braiding together of folklore and holidays led to the jack lantern being a symbol of the season. We'll do that right after we hear from some sponsors that keep the show going. So all of this talk of stingy jack of pumpkin crops and sawn brings us back to jack lanterns. There are historians who believe that vegetables may have been carved to look like heads as part of the Celtic celebration, and the Celts of the pre Roman era did have a lot of mythology about the importance of the head, and these carvings may have represented the heads of vanquished enemies, but that is just theory. But a completely different explanation is that people used root vegetable lanterns for sawn because they were going around their villages searching for libations, that was another part of the celebration, and they just needed lights. It wasn't necessarily symbolic, and that simple need may have evolved into the lanterns carved to have faces on them. Whether that was the case or not, we do know that carving turnips and potatoes with faces and putting a candle inside had become a common practice in Ireland by the eighteenth century, and it does make some sense that the story that explained the strange Marsh lights and the traditions of Sawyn had become intertwined because both of those stories are tied together geographically. So by the time Irish immigrants made their way to North America starting in the early eighteenth century, they brought this vegetable carving tradition, which had already been part of the autumn celebrations with them, and then they discovered that the pumpkins that were plentiful in their new home were a lot easier to carve than the other vegetables and were more plentiful as well. Before long, pumpkins carved into lanterns with faces were common in the autumn, and not just in Irish homes. One of the cultural moments that helped make jack O'Lanterns popular in the US did not actually feature any jack o lanterns. That was the eighteen twenty publication of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. So if you're thinking of that story and spoiler alert if you have somehow managed to never read it or see an adaptation of it, you may recall the headless horseman throwing a jack o' lantern at Ichabod Crane near the end of the book, but Irving never wrote that it was a jack lantern, just a pumpkin. The moment where Ikabad is attacked culminates in this excerpt quote, Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him, Ikabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late it encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash. He was tumbled headlong into the dust, and gunpowdered the black steed, and the goblin writer passed by like a whirlwind. And then at the end of the next paragraph quote, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close behind it a shattered pumpkin. Just a pumpkin, not a jack lantern. But illustrations of that scene have almost always included a pumpkin with a face carved into it, starting very shortly after it was published, and that helps cement the idea that jack lanterns had been an integral part of white European culture in North America from just about the very beginning and a jack o' lantern was explicitly mentioned fifteen years later and the text of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Great Carbuncle. The titular carbuncle is a gem that a band of adventurers are just dicussing what to do with. One of the character's plans to conceal it under his clothes, and another replies, hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou why it will gleam through the holes and make thee look like a jack o lantern. It's unclear whether this reference means the carved pumpkin or the glimmering lights over a marsh. Hawthorne also describes a pumpkin jack of lantern, but doesn't use that phrase. In his eighteen fifty two story Feathertop, the character Feathertop is a scarecrow with a carved pumpkin for a head, and he comes to life. Yeah, I favor the side that it in the carbuncle he means a carved pumpkin jack lantern, but it's up for debate from there. The jack of lantern started making appearances throughout poetry, stories, and art. In the United States. You can find it on woodblock prints starting in the mid nineteenth century, and it was frequently seen on magazine covers during Halloween season by the nineteen twenties. By the nineteen thirties, his trigger treating became part of the standard Halloween fun. Jack lanterns were considered an essential part of the festivities, so much so that an article in the Honolulu Advertiser from October thirty first, nineteen thirty one, appeared with the headline Whyalua children use papayas for pumpkins to scare on Halloween. This article explains it because Honolulu did not have pumpkins, they still had to have jacka lanterns, and so they used papayas. This write up includes several stories of kids using them to scare people, including one where a kid hid in a hibiscus bush with his papaya jack a lantern and scared passers by with it. Early trigger treaders used jack o lanterns to light their way as they walked the neighborhood's streets for their candy halls. This meant that the lantern was just that it was a light source, not a candy receptacle. Often these are made of materials like paper mache instead of actual pumpkins to make them easier to carry. These transitioned away from candles as the light to simple batteries with bulbs as safety concerns arose, and by the nineteen fifties plastic battery powered pumpkin lanterns started to appear. Over time, the plastic jack lantern transitioned from guiding light to candy receptacle. In nineteen fifty two, the Quad City Times of Davenport, Iowa suggested a series of party ideas that one might stage for Halloween, all of which included one or more jack lanterns as decor. One was an apple and nut party for teenagers. Feel like if you pitch that today you might get some shrugs, and another was a jack lantern supper that included sandwiches made with bread cut to look like jack lanterns. A look through almost any town's papers around Halloween season from the mid twentieth century on shows loads of similar articles, although I never found a single one that mentioned stingy jack or warding away evil spirits. It was all just in fun. Today, of course, you can buy plastic jack lanterns and all kinds of colors and realistic looking fake pumpkins for carving or already carved. Real pumpkins remain an important part of US agriculture. In twenty twenty and estimated one point five billion pounds of pumpkins were grown in the US. Illinois has long been the country's top producer, with Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Michigan, California, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia as the other big pumpkins states. And if you want to carve a real pumpkin but you're not that confident about it, you can also buy all kinds of special pumpkin carving tools and kits to get that job done. And now the jack of lantern is everywhere, and I'm a happy little ghoul. I have two pieces of listener mail and they're both brief, which is why I'm including two, and they feature apples, so that seems still in our autumnal zone. The first is from our listener, Tabitha, and it is titled Honey Fungus Hunting. Tabitha writes, Hello, I just wanted to share that I was listening to your podcast about the Bramley apple tree being infected by honey fungus right as I was out hunting for honey mushrooms because they are edible. I am a certified wild mushroom forager, and I teach people how to safely id and eat the honey fungus and how it does infect trees. Your podcast is my favorite. Thank you for all that you both do. Thank you for that because I had not seen in any of my research on the tree. Yeah, you could eat those. I will say, please do not go eat some mushrooms from near a tree based on this audio description. You need someone like Tabitha to guide you who has done all of the training and research. Yeah. Any mushroom identification requires like several different not just oh this is growing near the tree and is honeycolored. That is bad enough. There are some honey color mushrooms that grow near trees that can kill you. So yeah, don't do that, don't. I'm terrified of wild mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, unless they have been gathered by someone lake that is at a farmer's market that I know is certified. Yeah. I follow some foragers on TikTok whose work I really enjoy. But I also we grew a lot of things in a garden growing up, but my mother was very clear on the direction that we were not to eat anything we found in the wild because we would immediately die, which is an overly conservative look at things that grow in the wild. But like all of the foragers that I watch are super like, you have to do these multiple things you cannot just look at like the color of the mushroom or whatever. Yeah, I kind of I'm with your mom. That's a better safe than sorry when it comes to kids who maybe don't always exhibit a plus judgment. Sure, I know I didn't. My other email cost from our listener, Becky, who writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, your latest eponymous foods episode on the Macintosh and Bramley Apples gave me a craving for apple pie. Of course that calls for a trip to the orchard. As I wanted to make both pie and apple salad, and remembering the episode, I put the Macintosh apples down and bought Cartland's so far too delicious apple pies. The best part of a visit to our local orchard is apple cider slushes with caramel syrup. Incredible. That sounds amazing. Here is a photo of our rescue pup, Rocky, wearing a hoodie. Yes I heard the end of the Anne Radcliffe episode and clothing on animals. Rocky is not a fan. Rocky is so precious, so precious. And then Becky mentions that she met both of us in the before times at the live show in Indianapolis, which hopefully we'll do again sometimes soonish Matya is so cute. I want to kiss that face seven thousand times, like he just has one of those faces. Thank you for writing us, both Tabitha and Becky. We hope anybody that's enjoying pumpkin or appley or anything autumnal yummy right now is having the very best time of it. You can write to us at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us on social media as Missed in History, and if you haven't subscribed yet, you can go ahead and do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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