Tallow and wax candles, primitive though they seem to us now, were by no means the earliest method of shedding light in house and hall. Torches were used in early times, and in small homes the cruisie lamp did good service with a rush-pulp wick fed by crude oil.

In farmhouse and cottage a “rosity-stick” was much used, this being called a “peer-light.” The rosity sticks were held aloft by the herd-loon (or lad) or, for that matter, by anyone who could be pressed into service.

If there were peat-mosses nearby, roots and stumps of ancient trees were often found, and though the wood had been buried in the sodden peat for a thousand years and more, it would still burn like a torch when dried, for the peat had preserved it from decay and allowed the pinewood to retain its oils and resin.

These ancient roots were used for lighting many a highland shieilng. When the shepherd had gathered his flock into fold, he would return to his thatched cottage with some pieces of these rosity roots to dry before the fire. Next day he would break them into bits of finger size. In the dark winter evenings it was his duty to keep one of the small torches flaring while his wife sat spinning at her wheel in the ingle-neuk.

The method of burning these roots is worth recording.
From the crook in the chimney hung an iron implement like a girdle, but ribbed more like a gridiron. One of the rosity sticks would be placed on these bars, and as it blazed it illuminated the whole hut. Then, as soon as the flare began to die, the shepherd would put on another, while the whirr of the spinning-wheel went on without pause. Later on, paraffin-lamps came in, and were used in various forms for both domestic and street-lighting. Paraffin lamps were superseded by gas-lamps. This was a great blow to the whaling industry, but the whaling fleet was given a new lease of life by the oil requirements of a new spinning and weaving fibre named jute.

Gas-lighting was in turn superseded by electric-lighting, and now the street-lighting of a whole district can be put on by pressing a button. The flaring torches, the candle-lanterns, the oil-lamps with their glass funnels, the “leerie” who went round the streets lighting the gas-lamps, all these belong to the past.

Footnote: At one time householders had to pay, not only for their lamps, but for their daylight-this by means of a “window-tax.” This is the reason for those “blind” or dummy windows still to be seen on many old houses.

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