The Surprising History of “The Jack in the Box” (IP)

Many of you are, no doubt, familiar with the popular children’s toy called the ‘Jack- in-the box’; many of you may even have owned one as a small child and felt the joy of winding up the handle at the side of the box and seeing the little clown with a mischievous grin pop out from under its brightly painted lid.

But how many of you know the Jack-In-The-Box’s true origins; of how it was inspired by a catholic Saint named John Schorne who performed a rather remarkable exorcism with only the aid of an old boot.

It was a long, long time ago; the 14th Century to be exact, in a place called North Marston in the English county of Buckinghamshire where John Schorne was a rector.

Hearing of Schornes shining reputation for being a good and virtuous Christian, a local devil, named Bootstraphus decided that he would do his best to take his soul and, appearing one night, in a burst of flame and cloud of smoke, before St John, the demon said to him,

“Sell to me thy soul, John Schorne and I will give thee powers beyond thy wildest imaginings, I will make thee a worker of wonders; the greatest wizard the world hath ever known”.

Goodly Saint John’s first thought was to use his boot to kick the devil out of his house but then a cunning thought came into Schorne’s head; a way in which he might trick the devil out of magic and yet keep his soul.

You see, looking down at his boots, John Schorne had thought of their leather soles and how ‘Sole’ sounded just like ‘Soul’ and so he replied to the devil,

“Aye, for the power that ye promise, you may indeed have my sole”.

Grinning because it was sure that it had won, Bootstraphus then made John Schorne the greatest wizard in all the six continents, with power to control earth, air, fire and water.

However, when the devil asked John Schorne to give him his soul in return, Saint John told him, laughing and taking off his left boot.

“As I said. You may have my sole; my sole to my boot and you are welcome to it”.

Angry that he had been cheated, the devil then leapt into John Schorne’s boot to take the sole but, when he did, Saint John covered the top of it with a crucifix and trapped the devil inside, saying a prayer that the devil may never escape from it and though the devil tried to crawl out of a hole in the sole of the boot, John sealed it up with wax from a church candle.

Time and time again, the devil leapt and bounced with all its might, even curling up its spiky tail like a watch spring to gain more force but, no matter how it tried, it could never leap up out of the boot leg.

And it was this image of the leaping devil popping up out of St Johns boot, so they say, that inspired the first ever Jack-In-The Box which is also the reason why the very earliest Jack-In-The-Boxes contained not clowns or jesters but little grinning wooden devils.

Now, I bet that surprises you, doesn’t it?