1901-1902.] .57 



tion. I show a specimen of the Cain, a vessel in which the 

 tallow was melted for the rush-lights and the resin for the 

 slits. Cam is an Irish word, meaning crooked, and this vessel 

 answers to the description. The rush is prepared by stripping 

 most of the skin off, just leaving a thin rib on, and drawing it 

 several times through the melted tallow, sometimes tallow 

 and bees' wax, or tallow and resin. A well prepared rush will 

 burn for about three-quarters of an hour. About Doagh and 

 Ballyclare they had a saying when the rush was burning too 

 near the iron, " It is time you were flitting the goat." Eliza 

 Cook devotes a poem of eight verses to the song of the rush- 

 light. I shall, with your permission, read the first verse— - 



" O ! scorn me not as a fameless thing, 

 Nor turn with contempt from the lay I sing ; 

 'Tis true I am not suffered to be 

 On the ringing board of a wassail glee, 

 My sickly beam must never fall 

 In the gay saloon or lordly hall. 

 Yet many a tale does the rush-light know, 

 Of secret sorrow and lonely woe." 



The Rev. Gilbert White, in his ever popular Natural History 

 of Selborne, devotes a long and interesting letter to the pre- 

 paration of rushes for lighting purposes. The method of 

 procuring a light is a subject for a paper in itself, and several 

 learned and scientific papers have been devoted to it. Charles 

 M. Tidy, M.D., F.C.S., in the '' Romance of Science Series," 

 has written a small volume on the story of a Tinder Box. 

 A local antiquary, the late Mr. W. Bell, in 1881 wrote an 

 excellent and humorous paper on '' Recollections of Matches 

 and Matchmaking Fifty Years Ago," and by the kindness of 

 his son, Mr. James Bell, I am enabled to demonstrate the 

 method of procuring a light by putting the sulphur-tipped 

 match into the live tinder in this tinder box, which he used 

 to illustrate his paper. This piston or fire-syringe was also 

 made for his paper, similar to those he remembered in use. 

 The heat is procured in this by compressed air, which lights 



