of the old chiefs fled the land rather than submit; but one, Herlaugi,
in Naumudal, went alive with twelve of his men into a cairn that
contained a kist, and had it closed upon him.
In the saga of Egil and Asmund is a queer story of two men who swore
brotherhood with each other, that he who survived the other should
spend three nights in the cairn with his dead brother, “and then depart
_if he liked_.” The saga goes on to tell how that one of these, Aran,
was slain, then his fellow, Asmund, “threw up a cairn, and placed by
the dead man his horse, with saddle and bridle, and all his harness
and his banner, his hawk, also, and his hound; Aran sat in the high
stool in full armour. Then Asmund had his chair brought into the cairn
and sat there, and the cairn was closed on them. In the first night
Aran rose from his stool and killed hawk and hound, and ate them both.
In the second night Aran stood up and slew his horse, and tore it in
pieces, rending it with his teeth, and he ate the horse, the blood
running over his jaws. And he invited Asmund to eat with him. The third
night Asmund felt heavy with sleep, and he snoozed off, and was not
aware before the dead man had gripped him by both ears and had torn
them off his head. Asmund then drew his sword, hewed off the head of
Aran, took fire, and burned him to ashes. Then he went to the rope and
was drawn up, and the cairn was closed. But Asmund carried away with
him all the treasure it contained.”[20]
The Norsemen were buried seated in their chairs or in their boats, but
the builders of the megalithic monuments were interred lying on their
sides, with their hands folded, as though in sleep. Their great dolmens
and covered avenues were family cemeteries. The slab at the east end
was movable, so as to allow of admission into the tomb on each fresh
death in the family. A hole in the stone at the foot is very usual. Of
that elsewhere. The latest interments in a dolmen are always nearest
the opening; sometimes the more ancient dead have been removed farther
back in the monument to make room for the new-comers. There is an
allusion in Snorn’s Heimskringla to these holes in the kists containing
the dead: “Freyr fell sick and his men raised a great mound, in which
they placed a door with three holes in it. Now when Freyr was dead they
conveyed him secretly into the mound, but told the Swedes he was alive;
and they kept watch over him for three years. They brought all the
taxes into the mound--through one hole they thrust in the gold, through
another they put in the silver, and through the third the copper money
that was paid.”[21]
It is probable that the Scandinavians followed to some extent the usage
of the race that preceded them, and used their megalithic monuments,
much as we know that tumuli were employed for later interments, and by
races different from that which raised the tumuli. That the idea of
sleep was connected with death in many cases of burials, is certain,
from the position given to the corpse, the hands are folded and the
knees drawn up.
We cannot say for certain that the dolmens, as the French call the
monuments which we term cromlechs, were reproductions in stone of
the closed beds of the men of the polished-stone age, but it is
probable. The great family dolmens were cemeterial big Beds of Ware
to accommodate a number, and the small kistvaens were single beds for
old bachelors. Some of the largest dolmens contain as many as forty
sleepers. Under Brown Willy, the highest point of the Cornish moors, is
one long kistvaen, and beside it a tiny one for a baby--the mother’s
bed and the cradle, side by side, for the long night of death.
[Illustration: _Fig. 24._--DOLMEN, GABAUDET, NEAR GRAMAT. DEP. DE LOT.]
It has been supposed that the cromlechs, or dolmens, and the kistvaens,
represent the ancient dwellings of the neolithic men. I do not think
so. The position of the bodies shows that they were intended, not as
dwellings, but as beds. If they resembled anything used in life, it
was the bed-compartments in the huts, not the huts themselves. These
bed-compartments were backed, walled, and roofed with stone.
I was once offered in Antwerp a very beautifully carved oak bed; it was
but an oblong box, with an opening on one side only, which could be
closed with a curtain, and very much like a berth in an old-fashioned
steam-packet.
The reader will remember the graphic description, in “Wuthering
Heights,” of a very similar close-bed of boards as used in Yorkshire.
That Yorkshire bed was a lineal descendant from the _lokhvila_ of the
Scandinavian colonists of Northumbria.
When danger of assassination in bed ceased, men began to sleep easier,
breathe freer, and dispensed with the door and its bolts. They shut
themselves in with curtains instead; and as there were practical
inconveniences in making beds, where the bed maker could not go round
to the wall side, cautiously and with hesitation suffered the bed to
be pulled out, so that it might stand free on all sides save the head.
Then head and top alone remained of board, two sides and foot were
left open, or partially open; they could be closed with curtains, and
the sleeper could and did convert his bed into a sort of box when he
retired to rest.
So beds remained throughout the Middle Ages and to last century. Some
ancient beds had gabled roofs over them, and many remained fixed in
on all sides save one. But at the same time there was the truckle-bed
for the servant; even the iron bedstead without tester, precisely
like those turned out by every ironmonger. Viollet le Duc gives an
engraving of one such in his “Dictionnaire du Mobilier Français,”
from a miniature of the tenth century. He gives also a representation
of an iron bed thrust under a roof-like covering, with curtains, and
ventilating windows, on which Solomon is shown asleep, from a MS. of
the twelfth century. It would almost seem that in the Middle Ages a
contest raged between the four-poster and the bed without tester, and
in the MS. from which the illustration just mentioned is taken the
wisdom of Solomon is represented as combining both fashions.
Anyone who has taken lodgings in Germany is aware of the alcove-bed;
the curtains are let fall that conceal a recess, and, lo! the chamber
has ceased to be a bedroom and has become a reception-room. This is
another adaptation of the Northern conception of a bed. In the London
houses of Gower Street, and of streets built at the same period, the
same idea is carried out in a somewhat pretentious form. In front,
looking out on the street, is the sitting-room, opposite the window are
folding doors, and behind them the bedroom. The little back room behind
these doors is the _lokhvila_ somewhat enlarged.
[Illustration: _Fig. 25._--HUT, TREWORTHA MARSH, WITH STONE BED.
(_By kind permission of “The Daily Graphic.”_)]
Indeed, the two ideas of bed, the open and the closed, go back a long
way. I have mentioned in the preceding article the exploration of an
ancient settlement--date early but unfixed--on the Cornish moors. One
hut had in it both types of bed. We saw in the article on “Ovens” how
that in the Hebrides, in the bee-hive huts to this day, a portion of
the floor is marked off by curb stones, and this portion is converted
into a bed at night and a seat by day. So was it in one of the stone
huts on Trewortha Marsh. A set of granite blocks in a curve parted one
portion of the earth floor from the rest. That was the bed according
to the Keltic ideal. But, and this was curious, in the depth of the
wall at the farther end of the hut, was a hole seven feet deep in the
thickness of the wall, with a great slab of granite at the bottom
smoothed to serve as mattress. It was about 2 feet 3 inches wide at
the foot, as much at the head, but widened to 3 feet 4 inches in the
middle. The height above the floor was 4 inches. It adjoined the
oven--it was a bed according to Scandinavian ideas, with this sole
difference, that access to it was obtained at the foot, which alone was
open, and not at the side.
[Illustration: _Fig. 26._--A RUINED HUT, TREWORTHA.
_a._ Chamber, 11½ ft. × 10 ft.; _b._ Bed; _c._ Locker; _d._ Entrance, 2
ft. 3 in. high; _e._ Sunkenway leading to the door and beyond to water.]
Do those two types of bed in one hovel 10 feet square signify that men
of two nationalities occupied it, each with his bed-ideal, which he
would not abandon? We cannot say; probably it means no more than this,
the confluence of two streams of tradition.
The wooden coffin is neither more nor less than the wooden four-poster
or rather closed bed reduced to the smallest possible dimensions.
Among the megalithic people the stone grave was gradually reduced in
dimensions from the mighty dolmen to the small kistvaen. The great
tumulus or cairn is now represented by the little green mound in the
churchyard, and the menhir or long stone, rude and uninscribed, has its
modern counterpart much altered in the headstone. The enclosed box-like
stone tombs that were erected during last century were survivals of
the kistvaen, as were also the sarcophagi of the ancients. The wooden
coffin is but in small the wooden chamber of the dead of our Norse
ancestors, which was itself but a reproduction of the closed bedchamber.
For myself, when I think how much that is great and vigorous and
noble comes to us through our Norse ancestry, I regret that by the
abandonment of the four-poster we are casting aside one of its most
cherished traditions, and yet there remains matter of consolation in
the thought that, for the last sleep of all, we revert to the fashion
of bed _a la Scandinave_.
V.
Striking a Light.
“Please, sir, the rats be a rampagin’ in the lumber-room as makes the
blood curl!”
For fifty years I had never been into that lumber-room. It is situated
up a steep flight of steps in the back kitchen, and had once been
inhabited by a button-boy. Here is an extract from my grandmother’s
account-book for the year 1803:--
Footman £14
Page 4
Cook 12
Housemaid 7
Verily prices have risen since 1803.
However, to return to the four-pounder. He inhabited this room some
ninety years ago: then it was abandoned, finally locked up, and the key
lost. About fifty years ago, as a boy, I did explore the place, through
the window, after nests. My grandfather died. Then my father succeeded,
and the room remained unopened during his reign. My father died, and I
succeeded to the old house. I had been in it some years, when the other
day the kitchen-maid complained that the rats in this lumber-room over
the back kitchen made her blood “curl,” by which she meant, presumably,
“curdle;” till then I had never thought of an exploration.
To abate the nuisance, however, I broke open the door and entered the
long-abandoned room. Since the four-pounder had occupied it, for some
years that room must have been employed as a place for lumber, because
it proved to contain a quantity of old, disused articles in iron and
tin, and amongst these were two stands for rushlights, a tinder-box,
and a glass phosphorus bottle.
Such a find carried one back, as few other things could, to early days,
and showed one the enormous advance we have made in this century in the
comforts of life.
Some of us can remember the rushlight, a few the phosphorus bottle,
fewer the tinder-box.
Of the rushlights I found, one was familiar to me; the other, probably
an earlier type, I had never seen. The former consisted of a cylinder
of sheet-iron, perforated with round holes, the cylinder about two feet
high. This contained the rushlight. At the bottom was a basin for a
little water, that the sparks, as they fell, might be extinguished.
Well do I recall such rushlight lamps! One always burned at night in
my father’s bedroom, and when I was ill I was accommodated with one as
well. The feeble, flickering light issued through the perforations and
capered in fantastic forms over the walls and furniture.
The other rushlight lamp was of a different construction. It consisted
of a long spiral of iron wire, and was probably discarded for the newer
and safer invention of the lamp with perforated holes. The spiral coil
would prevent the lanky rushlight from falling over and out of the
lamp, but not the red-hot dock from spluttering on to the carpet or
boards of the floor.
[Illustration: _Fig. 27._--RUSHLIGHT-HOLDERS.]
There was in use, formerly, in England another sort of
rushlight-holder. It consisted of an iron rod planted in a socket of
wood that stood on the floor. To this rod, which was round, was affixed
a sliding contrivance that upheld a socket for the rushlight, which
might be raised or lowered as suited convenience. Connected with the
holder was the snuffer. The candle had to be taken _out_ of its socket
to have its wick pinched between the upright unremovable snuffers.
Conceive the inconvenience! The drip of tallow about fingers and floor!
We have indeed advanced since such candle-holders were in use. They
stood about four feet from the floor.
It was necessary in former times for a light to be kept burning all
night in one room, for to strike a light was a long and laborious
operation. There were little silver boxes that contained amadou, the
spongy texture of a puff-ball, and some matches dipped in sulphur,
also a flint. One side of the box was armed with a steel. In striking
a light the holder put the amadou in position to receive the sparks
from the steel as he struck the flint, then, when the amadou glowed,
he touched it with the brimstone end of the match and ignited that--a
matter of five to ten minutes. Why, a burglar could clear off with the
plate before the roused master of the house could strike a light and
kindle his candle to look for him.
The tinder-box employed commonly in kitchens and cottages was a
different application of the same principle. It consisted of a circular
tin or iron box, with the socket for a candle soldered on to the
top. This box contained a removable bottom. When opened it displayed
a steel and a lump of flint. These were taken out and the removable
bottom lifted up, when below was disclosed a mass of black tinder.
The manufacture of this tinder was one of the accomplishments of our
forefathers, or rather foremothers. It was made of linen rag burned
in a close vessel, completely charred, without being set on fire, and
the manufacture of tinder had to take place weekly, and consumed a
considerable amount of linen.
In the morning early, before dawn, the first sounds heard in a small
house were the click, click, click of the kitchen-maid, striking flint
and steel over the tinder in the box. When the tinder was ignited, the
maid blew upon it till it glowed sufficiently to enable her to kindle
a match made of a bit of stick dipped in brimstone. The cover was then
returned to the box, and the weight of the flint and steel pressing
it down extinguished the sparks in the carbon. The operation was not,
however, always successful; the tinder or the matches might be damp,
the flint blunt, and the steel worn; or, on a cold, dark morning, the
operator would not infrequently strike her knuckles instead of the
steel; a match, too, might be often long in kindling, and it was not
pleasant to keep blowing into the tinder-box, and on pausing a moment
to take breath, to inhale sulphurous acid gas, and a peculiar odour
which the tinder-box always exhaled.
[Illustration: _Fig. 28._--A TINDERBOX.]
[Illustration: _Fig. 29._--STEEL FROM A TINDERBOX.]
Here is a curious passage from an article on “The Production of Fire,”
in the _Penny Magazine_ for 26th July, 1834:--“The flint and steel,
with the tinder and match of some kind or other, have long been the
instruments of getting a light in the civilised world.... Within the
present century the aid of chemistry has been called in, ... and
instantaneous lights have become quite common, under the various names
of Promethians, Lucifers, etc., although, from its superior cheapness,
_the tinder-box will probably always keep its place in domestic use_.”
This article was published in the very year in which I was born, and
now it is extremely difficult to obtain an old tinder-box. I have
sought in the cottages and farmhouses in my own parish and those
adjoining, and have been unsuccessful in discovering more than one. A
generation has grown up that has never even heard of the tinder-box.
In or about 1673 phosphorus was discovered, and its easy ignition
by mere friction made known, and this opened the prospect of more
easy means of obtaining a light. But phosphorus was costly, and a
century and a half elapsed before the phosphorus match came into use.
Phosphoric tapers were employed; these were small wax tapers, the wicks
of which were coated with phosphorus; they were enclosed in glass tubes
hermetically sealed, and when a light was required, one end of the tube
was removed with a file, when the taper became ignited by exposure to
the air.
The plan was, however, clumsy, besides being dangerous and costly, and
never took hold of public estimation. The next attempt was to put a
piece of phosphorus into a small phial, and dissolve it at a moderate
heat, then keep the phial corked. The bottle was about the size of one
of smelling salts, and was kept at the head of the bed. When a light
was required, the glass stopper was removed, and a match coated with
sulphur was dipped into it, and worked about till a flame was produced,
when the match was withdrawn, and the phial hastily corked. Another
method was to rub the match, after dipping it in the bottle, against
a piece of cork or soft wood, the friction more certainly or less
dangerously promoting the combination of the sulphur and phosphorus,
and the consequent production of flame.
Another method of kindling a match was by means of Homberg’s
phosphorus, or fire-bearer. It was a black powder compound of flour,
sugar, and alum, which took fire on exposure to the air. But it never
came into general use. It remained in the hands of the curious. None of
these inventions displaced the old tinder-box, which maintained itself
to within the memory of many of us who are over fifty years.
Of all the ingenious attempts to get rid of the tinder-box, the
oxymuriate matches were the most successful. From them our present
lucifers are lineally descended. The oxymuriate matches were composed
of chlorate of potash and sugar coating a strip of wood. The match was
dipped into a bottle containing a piece of asbestos soaked in oil of
vitriol. The bottle and a number of these matches, with tipped ends
downwards, were put into a neat little case, and this was called the
“phosphorus box.” On their first introduction, these boxes sold as high
as 15s. each; they gradually fell to 10s., then 5s., but never went
below half-a-crown. But they were not altogether successful. The oil of
vitriol lost its force after a while, owing to the readiness with which
it absorbed moisture from the air, and then the matches smouldered
instead of bursting into flame.
The next advance was the lucifer-match, with phosphorus and sulphur
combined at the end. But this was dangerous, and frightful accidents
attended the manufacture. I spent some winters at Pau, in the south
of France, and near our house were the cottages of poor people who
worked at match-making. The pans of melted phosphorus into which the
heads of the matches were dipped would explode suddenly, and scatter
their flaming contents over the match-girls. My mother, as an angel of
goodness, was wont to visit and minister to many and many a poor little
burnt girl, who had thus been set fire to.
But the phosphorus match-making had another objection to it, besides
the accidents produced in the melting of phosphorus. It brought on a
frightful disease in the jaw. The bone was attacked, and rotted away.
In the “Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science” for 1852, the
nature of the disease is thus described:--“An affection ensues which is
so insidious in its nature that it is at first supposed to be common
toothache, and a most serious disease of the jaw is produced before
the patient is aware of his condition. The disease gradually creeps on
until the sufferer becomes a miserable and loathsome object, spending
the best period of his life in the wards of a public hospital. Many
patients have died of the disease; many unable to open their jaws have
lingered with carious and necrosed bones; others have suffered dreadful
mutilations from surgical operations, considering themselves happy to
escape with the loss of the greater portion of the lower jaw. In the
Museum of the Manchester Infirmary is the lower jaw of a young woman
who is now at work. Her face is much disfigured by the loss of her
chin, and, on looking into her mouth, the root of the tongue is seen
connected with her under lip, the space formerly occupied by the jaw
being obliterated by the contraction of the cheek.”
Thus, in the advance of civilisation, great agonies have been gone
through. Our present conveniences have been purchased at the cost of
throes and tears in the past. We should not forget that civilisation
has had its martyrs.
Lastly came the match made without phosphorus. When we think of the
toil and trouble that the lighting of a fire occasioned, we can
understand what store was set on never letting a fire on the hearth go
out. An old woman on Dartmoor, recently dead, boasted on her death-bed:
“I be sure I’se goin’ to glory; for sixty-three years have I been
married, and never in all them years once let the hearth-fire go out.”
But there the fire was of peat, which will smoulder on untouched for
many hours.