A Flickering Lantern This Way Comes

   This tale was first told more than a century ago. As with many old stories ushered up through time, solely via voices vulnerable to distortion, the elements of truth and those of fiction, or story telling license, are buried in the graves of those who were part of this story.

     My grandparents told this story to my mother when she was a child in that bygone decade of time and in the rural community of the story's setting.

     While the measures of truth and fiction in this story are unknown, certainly the story stemmed from a true event and the message of the story is nevertheless relevant. Stories have carried meaningful value, regardless of their ingredients of fiction, throughout human history, such as the Wooden Horse of Troy and Jonah and the Whale.