Re: Penny candle, part deux.

Posted by Smokey Stover on September 20, 2004

In Reply to: Penny candle posted by Smokey Stover on September 20, 2004

: : : : : : Does anyone know what the old (presumably english) phrase 'to light a penny candle' means? My understanding is that it was not a favourable comment to make and that one would leave a penny for the person to light the aforementioned candle with. I've searched everywhere for an answer- hope you can help me!

: : : : : I vaguely recall that in some Catholic churches it was possible to light a candle as a sort of prayer of sympathy for someone - perhaps even yourself. You'd put a coin in the box to pay for the candle. Perhaps the larger the candle the greater the cost. Maybe some of our contributors who grew up around that sort of thing could say.

: : : : : I'm guessing a penny candle wouldn't have lasted very long so to say that one is lighting a penny candle for something or someone is to say that he isn't really very concerned at all.

: : : : : Camel

: : : : In Catholic churches it is indeed the practice to light a candle as a form of prayer for the souls of the dead in Purgatory. (There are some Protestant churches which do it too, I believe.) I am not aware that there has ever been any price-range on these; all those I have ever seen have beent the same size, and there is no set price - one can pay as much or as little as one likes.

: : : : I would guess that the phrase derives from the days when such candles probably would have cost a penny to buy, and I am assuming (I hasten to add that I don't know) that it means to commemorate someone (something?)

: : : : DFG

: : : Ok, key of F, all sing:

: : : Galway Bay

: : : If you ever go across the sea to Ireland
: : : than maybe at the closing of your day
: : : you can sit and watch the moon rise over Claddah
: : : or watch the sun go down on Galway Bay
: : : Just to hear again the ripple of the trout stream
: : : the women in the meadow makin' hay
: : : or to sit beside a turf fire in a cabin
: : : and watch the barefoot gossoms as they play
: : : Oh the breezed blowing o're the sea from Ireland
: : : are perfumed by the heather as they blow
: : : and the women in the uplands diggin' praties
: : : speak a language that the strangers do not know
: : : Oh the strangers came and tried to teach us their ways
: : : they blamed us just for bein' what we are
: : : but they might as well go chasing after moonbeams
: : : or light a penny candle from a star
: : : And if there's going to be a life hereafter
: : : and something tells me sure there's going to be
: : : I will ask my God to let me make my Heaven
: : : in the dear old land across the Irish Sea

: : : Another pint of Guinness, mate, and back to the Phrase Finders Pub.

: : Even my pet leprechaun cringes when he hears that song! Jaysus!!

: I found the poem, Galway Bay, interesting. It is sentimental, strikes a very popular note, and very carefully sticks to a rigid meter in which the lines end alternately with a two-syllable foot and a one-syllable foot. Robert W. Service had a similar modus operandi, taking great care with his meter and rhyme, in poetry sometimes of exaggerated ntimentality, sometimes of elaborate humor, but always striking a popular note. I don't remember Service ever using iambic pentameter, as in "Galway Bay," although he may have done. I think his favorite meter was probably iambic tetrameter.
: In "Galway Bay" there is nothing to indicate that the penny candle mentioned is a votive candle. The popular expression may refer to a very small, cheap candle costing but a penny. The image of lighting one on a star is an illustration of the fecklessness of the English (the strangers). All the votive candles that I have seen have been essentially of the same size, not graduated. But someone out there surely knows what the popular expression referred to. SS

Having refreshed my memory of Service's poems, I can say that he often uses steady trimeter lines, but at least as often alternates meters. For his long "ballads," like The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew, he likes alternating tetrameter and trimeter. For "Funk," one of the Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, he uses trimeter, trimeter, pentameter. Although he usually uses iambic feet, he throws in anapests wherever useful. More than you wanted to know, no doubt. SS

• Votive candles Lewis 21/September/04