How Did Medieval PEASANTS LIGHT their HOMES?

Jason Kingsley OBE, the Modern Knight, investigates medieval domestic lighting. #medieval #lighting #peasant

Follow Jason on Twitter @RebellionJason

Credits:

Talos, Silver, Hawkeye,
The Mighty Kaiju, Professor Fawn De Pom Pom
Direction, Camera, Sound, Editing Kasumi
Presenter Jason Kingsley OBE

Music licensed from PremiumBeat.

[ModernKnight]

In my ignorance I gathered up both rushes and grasses, and some sedges too probably! I was mostly failing to get the rushlight to work, and that's why! It just goes to show how much knowledge people back then actually had, and I've learnt from my mistake, which is, hopefully, how we all progress!

[Overlord]

Love how this lad is a millionaire (ceo of a gaming company) and instead of doing the typical CEO stuff he decided to basically do what History Channel should've done.
Godspeed and stay healthy, my guy, appreciate your work.

[nathantaaron]

Botanist here! The reason there was disappointing results regarding pith is because that’s actually a grass, perhaps the genus Poa or Agrostis. The stems of graminoids (grasses, sedges, rushes) can all look quite similar so it’s usually easier to ID by the inflorescence (flowery part). The grass you harvested has a pyramidal “Christmas tree” like structure to the inflorescence, classic sign of grasses in the Poas group.

Rushes (the common name of plants in Juncaceae, the rush family) are incredibly dissimilar to grasses and sedges when looking specifically at the flowers. Most of their flowers look exactly like tiny lily flowers. Juncus effusus is a worldwide species of rush that was most used for rush lights. Each stem from that plant is a long sharp spike (with no nodes), and the inflorescence emerges from the side of the stem towards the tip. Those plants will give you a much better result for pith!

(Going deeper, the “pith” you pulled out of the grass was actually the rolled up immature leaf sheaths. Grasses are hollow and have no pith. I think this is cool though because it likely proves that rush lights could be made out of a larger variety of plants than previously thought!)

[KhromTX]

Feels like I'm watching what History channel should have been.

[troutfisher]

I visited Sri Lanka in the 1970's, i stayed with a family in a village with no electricity. Everyone lit their homes at night with homemade coconut oil, poured into a half coconut shell with a wick. The aroma was delightful.

[nintribble]

The Vikings were really good at lighting people's homes. As a matter of fact they traveled town to town providing that courtesy service to everybody.

[brandingrindstaff]

“Sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have knees that bend to the ground.” Rushes have round stems, sedges have triangular shaped stems, and grasses are round, with “knee” or joint-like nodes. Grasses also have hollow stems, where rushes and sedges have solid stems. Remember that little rhyme next time you have to distinguish between the 3. Cheers!

[polygonalmasonary]

It would appear from many comments that 'Rush Lights' were made and used right up to the beginning of the 20th Century.
My Grandad was born in 1897, he had shown my dad as a boy how to make rush lights. I remember my Dad showing me the soft spongy center of the rushes down on the banks of the River Trent near where we lived, we didn't actually make rush lights out of them but I knew what they had been used for in the past. I'm 62 now.

[MegCazalet]

Wax candles were a luxury for a long time. In Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford novels of the mid-19th century, she describes the “elegant economy” of one household, where they had two candles displayed on the mantle, but only burnt one at a time, switching them out so they were level, and thus it appeared to daytime visitors as if they could afford to burn both candles at the same time, an impressive luxury to them.

It was quite humbling to read by the light of my lightbulb with a ten-year lifespan, burning a huge scented candle just for the pleasant fragrance. Life is so different in tiny ways we often don’t even think of, and it fascinates me!

[davidlarson]

You would rest the rushes as you would for flax. And you make them in autumn because
A. The plants are mature,
B. You need them for winter, and
C. You’ve done your fall butchering so there’s ample supply of rendered fats for riches, candles, jar covers, preserves, and soap making

[Quicksilver_Cookie]

They obviously used massive torches that burn suspiciously without any black smoke for hours and hours. Haven't you seen any Hollywood movies? TORCHES. Everywhere. Even outdoors. Medieval life was pretty lit...

[tracimetcalf]

45 years of reading historical fiction and I finally know what a rush light is .

[WhisperWolfe]

Writer here, I absolutely love all of the information I get here and in the comments. There is nothing quite like having the living research library I can curate on YouTube. Thank you for making these videos!

[KumaBean]

I think that I may be able to help you with the water conundrum,

When harvesting certain species of plants, sometimes they go through a process known as 'water curing'.

This helps to remove volatile compounds (terpenes, terpenoids) etc, as well as reducing chlorophyll content

The still-wet freshly harvested plant material is placed in a vat of clean water and left to sit for a few days.

Once the water starts to turn green, replace it with fresh.

Rinse and repeat until water remains clear.

Thoroughly dry, and your done.

Now, if you heat that plant material up, say, with a lighter, it will no longer smell 'green', or like a bonfire, or whatever, and it will smoke less.

Maybe they water cured the rushes to keep their homes from smelling like bonfires and filling with too much smoke? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Excellent video by the way, thank you, information well and truly stored 🙂👌

[BS-vxdg]

I *deeply* admire your willingness to film yourself while you are experimenting and learning. This seems so genuine and so real. Thank you. As others have said, *THIS* is what they should have been doing on the so-called History Channel.

[janetmackinnon]

The pre-soaking of plants is called "retting".This uses the action of bacteria and moisture to dissolve or rot away much of the cellular tissue surrounding the fibre of the stem. Usad for flax, hemp---and nettles.

[timpsk]

I made some rushlights using an 18th century recipe I found which I followed to the letter. First I soaked them in water for a few days then peeled off the outer skin while still wet, leaving one sixth of it in place in a narrow strip along the entire length of the rush. I’m not sure of the purpose of this but I assume it acted as some sort of wick. I then left them to dry before soaking them in thoroughly rendered mutton fat which I’d also put through a sieve. When lit they burned slowly with a very even clear flame, without any spluttering at all and each rush lasted about twenty minutes to half an hour. I was surprised and impressed with how good they actually were!

[audhildbenjaminsen]

Greetings from Norway, in my area we used wooden sticks, they were about the thickness of arrows and about thirty centimeters long, if you made the sticks thinner they burned down too quick.The trick was to not make them dry completely but if you had pine tar you dry them completely and then let them soak in tar for days.The soaked sticks burned like standing candles, the unsoaked sticks were burned in a horizontal posisition preventing the flame to go out by itself.

[radialrothary]

In Finland the most common type of lighting (atleast in the countryside) from atleast the middle ages all the way up to late 19th century were shingles, thin strips of wood (typically pine) that you pull off the tree so that the grains remain intact and continuous from end to end. A single such shingle ("päre" in finnish) burned usually for about 15 minutes and you'd normally have several burning at a time for extra light. The shingles were typically attached horizontally to a simple shingle holder, oldest ones that have been found indeed originating from the middle ages.

Such shingles were obviously rather easy and quick to make, but according to some estimates a single countryside family would typically need 20 000 of them for a full year's supply.

To find images of various shingle holders you can search for "pärepihti".

[robinrichardson]

Botany tip: grasses, rushes, and sedges often live in similar habitats. Grasses are hollow (lacking a pith) and are round. Both rushes and sedges have a pith but rushes have a round cross section and sedges are triangular ("rushes are round and sedges have edges").