Meet the turnip lantern, a vegetable with very little interest in looking friendly.
A pumpkin can look delighted to see you. Give it round eyes and a wide grin, and it becomes a cheerful neighbor with a candle inside.
The older turnip lantern offers a different welcome.
In Ireland, people hollowed out turnips, carved faces into them and lit them from within. Galway City Museum describes lanterns placed on walls and gates, or hung from trees to startle people after dark. Picture coming upon one at eye level, with no porch display around it to announce that the fright is supposed to be fun. [H1]
There is a particularly good example in the National Museum of Ireland’s collection. In 1943, a schoolteacher working near Fintown in County Donegal sent the museum a turnip lantern. She explained that it represented the kind made locally around 1900. Museum artist Eileen Barnes created and painted a plaster model of it. The object preserved today is that model, not a root vegetable that has somehow survived for eight decades. [H2]
That small distinction makes the object more interesting. Someone thought this fleeting, homemade Halloween face was worth keeping after the turnip itself could no longer last.
The name jack-o’-lantern also carries a story. In the folklore recounted by Galway City Museum, Jack tricks the Devil, eventually finds himself unwelcome in both Heaven and Hell, and wanders with an ember inside a hollowed-out turnip. It is a legend explaining the lantern, rather than a documented account of its invention. [H1]
The familiar pumpkin version developed in America. The National Museum of Ireland identifies it as an adaptation of the Irish turnip tradition. The vegetable changed; the glowing face remained. [H2]
Once you know about the turnip, the pumpkin on a doorstep looks a little different. Its roundness can seem almost reassuring. There is room for a smile, a silly tooth, a pair of raised eyebrows.
The turnip looks as though it would prefer you kept walking.
SOURCES AND CREDITS
H1: Brendan McGowan, “Turnip Lantern Tradition,” Galway City Museum, October 20, 2026. Lantern placement and Jack folklore.
https://galwaycitymuseum.ie/blog/turnip-lantern-tradition/
H2: National Museum of Ireland, “Ghost turnip,” collection F1943.350. Acquisition, local tradition, Eileen Barnes and plaster-model identification.
A face worth preserving: Eileen Barnes made and painted this plaster model after a turnip lantern received by the National Museum of Ireland in 1943. Photograph of the museum display, not a surviving turnip.
Image: Rannpháirtí anaithnid. CC BY-SA 3.0. Resized and JPEG re-encoded; full composition retained.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Traditional_Irish_halloween_Jack-o%27-lantern.jpg
