A will-o'-the-wisp (/ˌwɪləðəˈwɪsp/), will-o'-wisp (/ˌwɪləˈwɪsp/), or ignis fatuus (/ˌɪɡnᵻsˈfætʃuːəs/; Medieval Latin: "foolish fire") is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. It resembles a flickering lamp and is said to recede if approached, drawing travellers from the safe paths. The phenomenon is known by a variety of names, including jack-o'-lantern, friar's lantern, hinkypunk, and hobby lantern in Englishfolk belief, well attested in English folklore and in much of European folklore.
Etymology
The term "will-o'-the-wisp" comes from "wisp", a bundle of sticks or paper sometimes used as a torch, and the name "Will": thus, "Will-of-the-torch". The term jack-o'-lantern "Jack of [the] lantern" has a similar meaning.
In the United States, they are often called "spook-lights", "ghost-lights", or "orbs" by folklorists and paranormal enthusiasts.
Folk belief attributes the phenomenon to fairies or elemental spirits, explicitly in the term "hobby lanterns" found in the 19th century Denham Tracts. Briggs' A Dictionary of Fairies provides an extensive list of other names for the same phenomenon, though the place where they are observed (graveyard, bogs, etc.) influences the naming considerably. When observed on graveyards, they are known as "ghost candles", also a term from the Denham Tracts.
Will o' the Wisp - A song by the Swedish Folk Metal band WEB OF WYRD and fourth track on the band's second demo-CD "By an Image Graven an Offering Burnt" released in 2007.
Will O' the Wisp (French:Le feu follet) is a 1931 novel by the French writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. It has also been published in English as The Fire Within. It tells the story of a 30-year-old man who after military service followed by a few years in international jet-set life has become burned out, addicted to heroin and tired of living. The author's source of inspiration for the main character was the surrealist poet Jacques Rigaut (1898–1929).
Alain Leroy is 30 years old. He has served in World War I and taken part in international jet-set life for a few years, before being admitted to a mental institution for depression, fatigue and heroin addiction. He is unable to adapt to the regulated life of the institution, but the doctor does not think his stay needs to be extended.
Alain visits several old friends in Paris. He is presented with several opportunities to return to a regular life, but is unable to find any satisfying human connection, and other people have a hard time to sympathise with his situation. Alain returns to his room at the hospital where he commits suicide.
(Her) Nights spent succumbing to the brilliance of Blackeyes, feeling the warm embrace of your hand, memories like salt on a wound, dominate my new found spirit land. Seeking wisdom in the darkness hovering helplessly around our pain crying with absence of real tears, like a child born in vein. I can no longer bear to watch you cradling my form. Wrenching out bloody drops of desperation's futile storm. Welcome to the Willothewisp my love. Deaths arduous game. Mocking times insanity foreshadowing years of reign. Male: Oh my perfect princess, hard and cold as stone. I shall trace your lips with crimson. I'll protect you; they can't have you to bury, to leave me. Slay all who dare touch my pretty doll, it will be bloody paradise, a misanthropes ball. Female: I hear you and beseech you, find a way to understand. Kill them for my body and be left with grains of sand. Do not waste your life in vain, protecting that which feels happiness nor pain. Willothewisp my love, is forever now what be. Willothewisp my darkened darling can not be taken away from thee. Male: I feel your essence all around me, and see you dead on our floor. Realize it would kill me to see you dragged out like a rotting whore. The dead are not theirs to take, fuck their reality.I seek revenge. Fuck their stupidity, your death will be avenged. My princess is not their dead slave, to tear apart and fit inside a holy lonesome grave. Female: Ahh! You torment me with endless worry. A doll is what is left of me, to kill it, insanity! Wake up live your life. Do not waste it in my name. Male: No! Why? Your body comforts me. Please understand. It is a Willothewisp my love, but at least I would have command. Help! Help! Ahh! I can not take this, my heart was black to all but you, and now you're dead. I need you in any form. I want you. Separation is what permeates the fear of death. Ahh! Ahh! Come back! Female: My essence is always with you. Hovering over you and what was I of my love and perfect self, I never meant to die. It's all right, do as you wish. I want my body to be with you. Male: I see them coming, my pulse quickens, my long blade smiles. Get away from her! Bastards, pawns! Die, you are worth nothing, Die!!! They are dead as well, now bags of worthless flesh. How dare they try and take you, Ha! Ha! Ha! We are free together. Female: You shiver like a broken child before me, clutching my cold hand wet with tears, you kiss my hand and lips, and I feel nothing. Male: A presence looms about me, whispering like morning dew. My perfect death doll princess, I stay here forever with you. Female: He has won my body, but now he is insane. I reach out to dry his tears, only to find I am like wind to rain. Both: Willothewisp is torture, deaths arguous game.
Will-o’-the-wisp ... Will-o’-the-Wisp and Snake by Hermann Hendrich (1823) ... This article was originally published under the title, ‘The curious origins of four English expressions – including ...
(MENAFN - The Conversation) The origins of English expressions are often obscure and require deep linguistic and documentary research to be explained. Being phrases, not single words, their ... .
Will-o’-the-wisp. The expression “will-o’-the-wisp” indicates something unattainable – an elusive goal ... of the 17th century as “Will with the wisp” ... Will-o-the-Wisp and Snake by Hermann Hendrich (1823).
She believed we should go out looking for Louisiana's legendary atmospheric ghost light or, as it's known in some cultures, a will-o'-the-wisp ...First, the three couples willing to go on the wild goose ...
There’s plenty of political commentary to unpack in the brisk whirlwind of erotic ... Like the fiery folklore entity that lends it its name, “Will-o'-the-Wisp” burns bright with idiosyncratic ambition.
Telegraph Herald
06 Feb 2024
Telegraph Herald
06 Feb 2024