Lighting Experiments at Kilmurry
Well, today has been another fairly quiet day, although the howling winds are providing a nice haunted feeling. Which, I guess, is appropriate to a 200 year old house. At least with the boiler fixed, we have a nice warm house, though the temperature is starting to fall outside and a chill is starting to creep in under the old doors and windows. But its nothing like it was until last week, when we all felt like ice cubes. I'm keeping the turf ready though, because the way the winds are blowing, the power might cut out any time. Two years in a row my husband and I sat in the dark, while house-mate was at his parents house. The second time for four days running. By the end of that one I was making lamps out of olive oil and my husband and I were entertaining each other pretended to be "Flavious and Presilla" a Roman couple left behind when the Romans left Britain. Flavious (aka The Wolf) was surprised at just how much light a lamp made from a custard dish, old screw, cotton cord and a bit of olive oil could give out. The Roman role-playing game got started because I mentioned that this was the oil that gave light to the entire classical world. I think modern people are just so used to decorative candles, they don't realize that there are much brighter forms of primitive lighting. Most are not as bright as an electric bulb (so some oil lamps come close) and some of them smell funny. Not quite as funny as real tallow candles...
This was something we discovered a few years ago when we still had sheep. The Wolf discovered that while olive oil may have made the Roman world go round, sheep tallow candles lighted most of the Middle Ages (in Northern Europe anyway). Sheep tallow (i.e. rendered sheep fat) is a very hard fat and will stay together when you mold it. If you tried this with say, pig fat, you would have a bacon grease lamp. It might work in a pinch, but it wouldn't stand up on its own, although your house might smell like bacon. Which might be an improvement over tallow....When we started this adventure, we first had to..well...butcher a sheep. That part down, I got the fun job of chopping all the little pieces of fat up and putting them in a bit pot on the solid fuel stove. That done, you let it cook very slowly for three or four days. All the while your kitchen has a powerful smell of sheep fat, its not all that terrible, but you do notice it. You notice it even more if the fat gets a bit too hot and the little pieces of meat in it start to burn. Which is what you don't want to happen, but is likely to occur anyway. After about three days of this, you pour the hot fat through a cloth-lined colander and remove the pieces of sheep flesh. The result it: TA DA! Rendered sheep fat otherwise known as tallow. At this point, the husband takes over, because he has decided to make dipped candles. In the kitchen. This is the first and hopefully last time we did this in the kitchen itself. I quickly discovered the reason 18th century American colonist are always dipping candles outside or at least on the front porch. The tallow gets everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. The table, the floor, the walls, the stove (all of them) clothing, dishtowels you name it, its there. Not much gets on the newspaper wife has put down for drips, but it sure gets on everything else. And its nearly impossible to get off. A friend helping clean up was nearly reduced to tears trying to find it all. But, husband was elated. He did, in fact, manage to get some really good looking candles. The only problems are that they smell when you light them and the old fashioned wicks mean they burn down very fast. Another experiment using glass jars, instead of dipping candles worked better from a lighting point of view. Although its a matter of opinion if the result is a true candle or an oil lamp. If we ever make dipped candles again, I've convinced husband to look up the 18th century method of twisting candle wicks, which made them last a lot longer. In fact, it made it affordable for common people to use candles. Before then, a lot of them used rush lights. Thankfully The Wolf has never wanted to experiment with making these, at least not indoors...
Most of the time when the power goes out, we use kerosene lamps. The only challenge here is keeping enough lamp oil and wicking in the house. They are the sort of item that you don't think about much, until you need them. Running out of modern lamp oil was what set off the great olive oil lamp experiment. And we had a good amount of oil to start out with. The last time the power went out, I discovered we didn't have any oil at all, now we have two bottles. That should last a little while, but won't go very far if we have a big blackout. The weather here is so dark during the day (when its stormy) that you need a lamp to read, even in the day time. We do have a couple of high powered flash-lights (locally called torches) and I have my wind up light, that's attached to my Bejin radio. I use this when I'm in my room reading, you have to wind it every 30 minutes but it works without batteries. Another thing we tend to run out of.
Then, there is fire light. I am always surprised when the house goes dark, just how much light a good blazing fire can give off. Reading by its light can be iffy, but it helps me remember that generations of people had no other way of doing it. I also discovered why many traditional knitting patterns are in very contrasting colors. And it is not just because sheep tend to come in either white/ecru or black/brown. Its also because the only way you can see what you are doing by fire light is to use very different colors of wool. Otherwise, you pattern will be a mess. Trust me on this one...
But, so far tonight, we still have good old electric bulbs. More and more of them are the energy efficient kind. With a few false starts. The discount ones from the "Cheap" store give off a weird blue glow. We have one in the kitchen and if you sit under it you may start looking for the giant squid 20,000 leagues under the sea. But if you move over just a touch, the effect fades. The more expensive ones give off a golden light, though some brands take a few minutes to warm up. During which the uninitiated have been known to turn the light switch on and off to see if its working. Unfortunately this is also the signal to start the smoke alarms. We can always tell when we have a new guest....In future we are trying to avoid using this brand in lights that also have a smoke alarm. Especially since husband can not always figure out how to turn them off. One time house-mate and I realized one was missing and went looking for it. We found it in the flour barrel when husband had put it with the lid on tight. Because he got the main siren off, but couldn't get it to stop beeping. If you can't stop it, smother it! It will run out of batteries at some point...
Anyway, we now have lamp oil, wicks, candles (even a few tallow ones left), and turf; just in case we need them this weekend. They say it might even snow on Saturday, that would be nice, since we don't have to go anywhere. But whatever happens, I'd just as soon the electric lights stay on. Its nice to choose to light a candle for "ambiance" less fun when you are trying to use it to light your way to the fridge!
Hope everyone out there (including the US states that are getting all the snow) is able to stay safe, warm, well lighted and dry this holiday season.
Disaster Cat