The Turnip That Crossed the Ocean

Eileen had been in Boston for three months and still found many things strange: the electric trams, the din of the harbour, the hurry everyone was in. But nothing as strange as the enormous pumpkins her neighbours hollowed out in October to put a candle inside. “In Ireland we used turnips,” her grandmother Bríd told her, as she carved a tiny face into one the size of a fist.

“What for?” “A very long time ago, our ancestors celebrated Samhain, the night when the harvest ended and the dark half of the year began. People said that on that night the border between the living and the dead grew as thin as a veil. Bonfires were lit, and people dressed up so the spirits wouldn’t recognise them.”

She also told her the story of Stingy Jack, who tricked the Devil so many times that, when he died, neither Heaven nor Hell would have him. The Devil threw him an ember to light his way, and Jack put it inside a hollowed-out turnip. Ever since, he has wandered the roads with his lantern. “That’s why we carve faces on them: so the wanderers take fright and pass us by. Over the centuries, the Church put the feast of All Saints on those dates, and its eve was called All Hallows’ Eve. That’s where Halloween comes from.”

Before she finished, Grandmother carved a small half-moon on the turnip’s forehead. “It’s the mark of the Byrnes of Ballyvaughan,” she explained. “Your great-grandfather carved it, your grandfather carved it and your father carved it. That way, any of our own knows that home folk live in that house.”

Eileen’s father had left for America two years earlier to look for work, promising to send for them. His letters arrived regularly for a year, the last one from Boston, and then they stopped. When the money ran out, Grandmother sold the cow and bought two passages. Now they lived in an enormous city where he didn’t know they were and they didn’t know where he was.

That afternoon, Eileen put the turnip on the front step, with a candle inside, among the neighbours’ gigantic pumpkins. It looked like a mouse among elephants. The next morning, the turnip had gone. In its place was a huge pumpkin, carved with a crooked smile with a single tooth.

Eileen thought some child in the street was making fun of her. But when Grandmother saw it, she put her hand to her mouth. On the pumpkin’s forehead there was a half-moon. She rummaged in the trunk and took out a folded photograph of a young man smiling and showing a slightly crooked tooth. “Your father always carved that smile,” she said. “His own.”

Eileen ran out into the street. By the railings stood a thin man, his cap in one hand and the little turnip in the other. “Pumpkins are easier to hollow out here,” he said, his voice breaking, and he held up the turnip the way you show someone a letter. Eileen hugged him so hard that the cap fell to the ground. That day she understood that traditions cross the ocean and change their shape, and that not every October light is there to frighten off the wanderers. Some are there to help them find their way home.