O’er hills and sinking bogs.”
“Let night-dogs tear me,
And goblins ride me in my sleep to jelly,
Ere I forsake my sphere.”
—Thierry and Theodoret. Act 1. Sc. 1.
Le Faeu Bélengier.
That singular meteor, known by the English as Jack o’Lantern or “Will o’ the Wisp,” by the French as “Feu Follet,” and by the Bretons as “Jan gant y tan” (John with the fingers or gloves of fire), bears in Guernsey the appellation of Le Faeu Bélengier—the fire of Bélenger. According to Mr. Métivier “Bélenger” is merely a slight variation of the name “Volunde” or “Velint”—Wayland, or Weyland Smith, the blacksmith of the Scandinavian gods. Bélenger was married to a Valkyrie, daughter of the Fates, so runs the old Norse legend. He was, for the sake of some treasures belonging to him, or under his guardianship, carried away by a certain king as prisoner to an island, where the tyrant cut the sinews of his feet so as to prevent his running away, and then set him to work. Too clever, however, not to be able to compass his revenge, Bélenger managed to kill the two sons of the despot, and fashioned their bones into vessels for the royal table. And then, having maltreated the princess, daughter of his quondam master, he flew away through the air, and the name Bélenger has become identified in popular mythology with any especially clever worker in metals. In English popular tradition the name of Bélenger becomes contracted into Velint, or Wayland Smith, and, according to Sir Walter Scott, “this Wayland was condemned to wander, night after night, from cromlech to cromlech, and belated travellers imagined that they then beheld the fire from his forge issuing from marshes and heaths.” The natives of Iceland, descended from our own paternal ancestors of the tenth century, say still of a clever craftsman that he is a “Bélengier” in iron.
In Guernsey they say it is a spirit in pain, condemned to wander, and which seeks to deliver itself from torment by suicide.[113] Its presence is also supposed to indicate in very many cases the existence of hidden treasures, and many a countryman is known to have made a fruitless journey over bog and morass in the hope of locating the flickering flame. It is also firmly believed by all the country people that if a knife is fixed by the handle to a tree, or stuck in the earth with the point upwards, the spirit or demon that guides the flame will attack and fight with it, and that proofs of the encounter will be found next morning in the drops of blood found on the blade.[114]
[113] See Métivier’s Dictionary,—Art: Bélengier.