Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/508

 502

NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. VIIL DEC. 27, 1913.

it in the wailing of new-born babes. For, asked he :

"Pourquoi Dieu, envoyant un etre ici-bas pour y souffrir, n'aurait-Il pas mis sur ses levres tout le Pater, com me une esprance sublime de retour vers la patrie ? " P. 144.

A Christmas log of Spanish chestnut wood burnt on the o'd priest's hearth, and his poorer parishioners crowded round his table. It was lighted partially, at any ra t e by the six - branched candelabra which had been glowing on the altar, and it was laden with mutton, turkeys, chocolate cream, tarts, or at least tourtes (which are not to the palate the exact translation of tarts), and other items of popular fare. Almost everybody had his or her bottle of wine to take away, and there was wine to promote song. Here is the last verse of a probably ancient lay sung by a very old man in the language of the country, and now given as it is when rendered into modern French :

Noel, la fete de 1'annee ! Tirons notre vin du tonneau, Et buvons a 1'Enfant si beau Qui nous sauve de la danmee ! It is pleasant to linger all unseen among the guests of Abb6 Fulcran.

Mistral's ' Memoires et Recits,' p. 32, reads as though in his country supper pre- ceded the Mass ; but that is unthinkable when one does think. ST. SWITHIN.

THE CANDLE.

THE following historical notes respecting candles when their manufacture was " inno- cent of science " may be acceptable to the readers of ' N. & Q-'

The earliest known means of lighting seems to have been the torch. It was used largely of old in Northern countries a pine splinter, sticky with exuded resin the crude idea of a link, even of a candle. A link, properly, is a rope instead of a splinter saturated with pitch or resin. ' Torch" is evidently the Late Latin tortium (from tortum, a twisted thing), more properly now applied to the link ; while our pine torch finds its Roman equivalent in the tcedce (slips of the tceda t or Italian pitch-pine), the usual out- door light of Rome. The "funalia" with which, Virgil tells us, Dido's palace was lighted

dependent lychni laquearibus aureis Incensi, et noctem fiammis funalia vincunt.

('^Cn.,' i. 726)

were probably flambeaux, a finer kind of link.

The link, giving an eager, smoky flame r was held by running footmen or linkboys, who quenched their light in the large ex- tinguishers still to be found on houses of aristocratic antiquity. The flambeau has a centre of oakum surrounded with alternate layers of resin and crude beeswax, finished off with a coating of the latter ( bleached } f which gives it a very expensive appearance. This description of torch was more costly,, and gave a cleaner flame than the other kinds, and so was principally employed in- lighting halls, staircases, &c. At what period the torch was superseded, and whether by lamps or candles, is uncertain. The Greeks and Romans, regarding lighting as of minor importance, were loose in their nomen- clature. Pliny* makes no distinction between torches and candles when he states that the pith of " brittle rushes " (which grow in marshy districts), separated from the rind,, was used for making watch-candles and funeral lights to burn by dead bodies white lying above the ground. Even in our trans- lation of the Scriptures the words " candle " and " candlestick " are used indiscriminately with " lamp." A candle, as we understand it, was then unknown. In Exodus xxv. 31 we have " a candlestick of pure gold," but the after text surely refers to a " lamp -stand." Again, in Matthew v. 15, " Men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick," would attest the use of both did we not know that the Latin cande- labrum and Greek Av^Wa, Latin luchnuchus (Cic. ), meant ' ' lamp-stand. ' ' Also in Matthew xxv. 1-5, the parable of the Virgins,, where oil is a specified condition, the word Xvyvos is rendered " lamp." The confu- sion of names seems strange now to us, with whom lamp and candle enjoy such distinct individuality, but in old times no doubt the- terms were interchangeable. The * N.E.D.,' s. ' Candle,' remarks :

"One of the Latin words introduced at the English Conversion, and long associated chiefly with religious observances even in the 15th century."

Beckmannf has recorded that the Emperor Constantine (4th cent.) caused the city of Constantinople to be illuminated with lamps and wax candles on Christmas Eve.

According to mythology, the lamp suc- ceeded the torch. Ceres in the legend sought her daughter in Hell with a torch ; Apuleius makes Psyche drop hot oil on Cupid from a lamp. But information is

' Natural Hist.,' xvi. 37.

+ 'Hist, of Inven.,' Bohn's ed., ii. 174.