FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTURE 225 



In several parts shells were used as natural lamps, an oyster shell 

 at Gower, Wales,®" and a fusus shell in the Shetlands and Orkneys. 



The crusie is a spoon-shaped iron lamp with handle and hook for 

 hanging and a drip catcher, formerly used pretty generally by the 

 folk in England. It is an ancient form of spout lamp much used in 

 north European countries. 



A hand lamp shaped like a gravy boat with handle was in use near 

 London years ago. Bakers in Oxford had a cast-iron lamp of this 

 kind for lighting the ovens. ^ The wick was of canvas, and mutton 

 fat was burnt. This lamp appears to have descended from the Anglo- 

 Saxon lamps, which were like the Roman examples of metal or earth- 

 enware.^ Wright also shows mediaeval lamps, cup lamps with knob 

 on the bottom carried on a pole, and men carrying a turnip-shaped 

 lamp (p. .254). Kitchen lamps of a much later period consisted of 

 vessels with an upcurving spout^ like the Flemish lamps or the Cor- 

 nish kyal. 



Tin lamps of "petticoat" shape, with two tubes for burning fish 

 oil, are illustrated in Crowquill's Baron Munchausen, and belong to 

 the era of the glass and pewter whale-oil lamp which became common 

 in America from colonial times. 



Occupational lamps, as the baker's lamp, miner's lamp, etc., were 

 no doubt of a number of varieties in England. One of these from 

 Oxford, through the courtesy of Henry Balfour, consists of a brick 

 with a cup-shaped cavity cut in the broad side, fitted with fat and 

 supphed with a wick. Under occupational lamps of America forms 

 presumably of English derivation are described. 



SCOTLAND 



Antiquarian interest has long been stimulated in Scotland and 

 Wales, and much data on the phases of home life has been recorded. * 

 The oldest as well as the most-developed domestic lamp of Scotland 

 was the crusie. The Scotch crusies are particularly interesting on 

 account of their excellent ironwork and the completeness of this type 

 of lamp. In old Scotland the crusies had become the lamp par ex- 

 cellence, and as typical in form and finish as the lamp of any country 

 Sometimes the crusie was cut from stone, and there has been some 

 conjecture that the original northern crusie was of this material. 

 Crusies were hammered out in a stone matrix by the Scotch smiths. 

 Later domestic lamps begin to show the variations due to exchange 

 of ideas. Spout lamps of tin mounted on a base appear, two-spout 



M Archeologia Cambrensis, October, 1895, p. 323. 

 1 Information by Henry Balfour. 



« Thomas Wright. Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages, p. 253. 

 • Encyclopsedia Brittanica, 8th ed., vol. 13, p. 170. 



'Northern Notes and Queries, or the Scottish Antiquary. Edinburgh. Handbook of the National 

 Museum of Wales to the Exhibition of Welsh Antiquities, June-October, 1913. Cardiff, 1913. 



