Vanished from the fen when the pools growed up

Marsh White (1975) by Margaret Mellis

" Hob-o'-Lantern," or the " lantern-man," seems to 
have vanished from the fen when the pools "growed up," 
No one appears to regret this, for he is supposed to have 
been a dangerous sprite to encounter, and only foolhardy 
persons went out of their way to make his acquaintance. 
As old Ben once said, "If so be as how you went a-nigh 
him, he would 'come for you' like as though he wor a- 
goin' ter knock you down." This had not been his own 
experience, for he had always kept away from the fen 
when the lantern-man was in possession ; but he had 
known a man to go down into the fen at night with a 
lantern, and have a lantern-man " go right tru him and 
take his breath right away." He had heard people say 
that the lantern-man was only a kind of marsh gas ; but 
he did not believe it, for no matter in what direction the 
wind might be blowing, there were times when the light 
was seen going against it ; in fact, it used to " mamder 
around" in all directions, and then suddenly go "a- 
slidderen orf as though it wor a flash o' lightnin'." 
Confirmation of this habit of the lantern-man may be 
found in the Rev. J. Denny Gedge's interesting 
"Experiences of a Fen Parson," where Mr. Gedge 
states that it was no infrequent thing for him to see, 
while taking lonely walks in the fens at night, "the 
ignus fattus come dowm long dim lanes of water, swimming 
towards one on the air, as it were, generally to make a 
sudden upward movement and vanish before they had 
approached closely enough for intimate inspection." A 
correspondent who contributed some notes on Will-o'-the- 
Wisps to the East Anglian Daily Times said that an old 
man who saw one in a fen between Fakenham and 
Euston in north-west Suffolk, remarked that it "flew like 
an owl," and he believed it to be " the reflection of that 
bird's eye !" Many years ago this puzzling phenomenon 
was often seen on some low swampy ground in the parish 
of Syleham, in the upper part of the Waveney Valley. 
There the lantern-men were known as the "Syleham 
Lights " ; but they are not to be seen now, though I have 
met an old man who could remember having watched 
three lantern-men 

"Hovering and blazing with delusive light" 

over the boggy ground not far from Syleham Mills. 
The neighbourhood of Homing on the Bure, where there 
is still a good deal of fenny land, was also one of the 
lantern-man's haunts, and he is said to have been very 
troublesome to farmers, whom he would dismount from 
their horses — presumably by frightening them — while 
they were on their way home from Norwich market. 
Nowadays he appears to be as extinct as the " farisees " 
who frolicked among the fairy rings in the moonlight ; 
but I have a dim recollection of having once seen what 
may have been a Will-o'-th'-Wisp suddenly illumine a 
roadside ditch in a parish between Norwich and Bungay. 
I was a small boy at the time, and was riding home 
from Norwich in the heavy tilted van of the Bungay 
carrier, which at that time was what Mr. Hardy calls a 
"moveable attachment" of the Norwich and Bungay 
road. Half asleep, I was crouched in a dark comer of 
the hooded van, when a gleam of bluish light appeared 
in a ditch by the roadside, and I heard an old country- 
man who was one of my travelling companions exclaim : 
" Look there be a lantern-man" I was wide awake 
in an instant ; but the sudden glimmer of what may or 
may not have been ignis fatuus was all I saw before I 
lost sight of the ditch in consequence of the progress of 
the van. 

from Wild Life in East Anglia (1906) by William Alfred Dutt.