rushlight

plural rushlights

1. historicalA type of inexpensive candle formed by soaking the dried pith of the rush plant in fat or grease, which emits light for a relatively short period of time.

   The rushlight was her friend, and aided her to pass the long, long hours before midnight, for it was enclosed within its accustomed tin cage; […]

   1842, [Katherine] Thomson, chapter XI, in Widows and Widowers. A Romance of Real Life., volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 198–199

   3 more examples

   After supper Sir Pitt Crawley began to smoke his pipe; and when it became quite dark, he lighted the rushlight in the tin candlestick, and producing from an interminable pocket a huge mass of papers, began reading them, and putting them in order.

   1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Crawley of Queen’s Crawley”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 61

   As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought me in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rushlight of those virtuous days.

   1861, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

   The nights were almost at their longest now, and the cold was very great; but the watchers piled fresh logs upon the fire, and talked quietly to each other as they sat in the dancing glow--for the rushlight had long since gone out.

   1901, Evelyn Everett-Green, In the Wars of the Roses