Punkie Night is a traditional West Country holiday practised on the last Thursday of October in Somerset.
As Cooper and Sullivan (1994) explain, this relates to the tradition of children would begging for candles on this night, and threaten people who refused to give them anything (compare the custom of Trick or Treat).
The custom originated in the village of Hinton St George in Somerset when the menfolk had gone to a fair in Chiselborough a few miles away.
Men who would come back late from the fair would often need candles as lights to guide them home, in late October, which, as Cooper and Sullivan explain, would lead either to women making a jack o'lantern for their husbands, or men making the jack o'lantern, according to different versions of story.
The festival has been celebrated at various sites including Castle Neroche in the Blackdown Hills,[3] Long Sutton, Drayton, Somerset and, more commonly, at Hinton St George and the neighbouring village of Lopen.