THE WILL O' THE WISP
| The feux follets (will o' the wisp) were little lights that could be seen at
night in the woods and marshes. Often travellers, believing them to be lights
from a camp or a house, would follow them and get lost in the forest. The closer
one got, the more the lights receded. Other times the feux follets would fly around people's head like a swarm of mosquitoes, dizzying and disorienting them until they sank into bogs and swamps. |
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To get rid of a will o' the wisp, one had
to stick a knife in a post and bend the blade; the spirit, attracted to iron,
would try to pass between the blade and the post and would get stuck there. Today, people believe will o' the wisps were in fact luminous gasses given off by rotting vegetation. |
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