How Did Medieval PEASANTS LIGHT their HOMES?

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

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!)

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

It would appear that Denethor survived the Battle of Minas Tirith and is indeed thriving, now making excellent YouTube videos. Can you make one on how the soldiers of Gondor were trained and equipped please?

So, I guess soaking the rushes in lamb fat, one would make a "lambp".

“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!

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!

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!

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.

Apologizes for thirty seconds that he is using a modern dish... pulls out a heat gun twenty seconds later with no shame. Never change :P

This must be one of the nicest places on YouTube. Here we have Jason explaining, in a great way, what peasants would have done and we have people in the comments sharing their lovely stories from their experience with rush lights :-)

Notes: Rushes, for the non-Brit, are a specific plant genus, Juncus , that prefers cool, wet conditions. They were also used to make floor mats during this same period and on into Shakespeare's time. (And you can even buy some mats today.) They're a slow-growing plant, however, which is why the greener rushes have no pith, as our host discovered. Historically, rushlights varied a lot in quality. The light produced could be dim or bright, and the duration could be anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, depending on the rush. You could even sacrifice brightness for duration by leaving some of the outer layer intact, making for a slower burn that lasted longer. Rushes were also used in a cheaper model of candle, the rush-candle. Still not cheap enough to be common, though -- it only replaces the twisted fibers of a normal wick with the rush pith. Medieval peasants also used oil lamps fueled by vegetable oil. These were very basic -- literally just a tray or bowl with a wick in the oil -- and prone to accidental spillage, giving them the nickname of "spills" in-period.

Ah yes, the heat gun. An essential implement in any Medieval peasant household.

These are the types of videos YouTube was invented for. Thank you!

When I was a child I noticed that the pith of elderberry twigs was ideal for soaking up paraffin and using as a candle. Elderberry twigs of all sizes has a very nice uniform porous pith.

Back in Medieval times me and my dad made these, we used a tall thin clay pot with pig fat in the bottom next to the fire place , a quarter full, then stand a bundle of reeds in the pot, when the fat was hot it was drawn up inside the reeds, today you call it capiliary rise. Dad called it the drawing of the fire juice. True Story.