or Flamboy, a luminary made of several thick wicks, covered over with wax, serving to burn at nights in the streets; as also at funeral processions, illuminations, &c.

Flambeaux differ from links, torches, and tapers.—They are made square, sometimes of white wax and sometimes of yellow. They usually consist of four wicks or branches near an inch thick, and about three feet long, made of a sort of coarse hemp yarn half-twisted. They are made with the ladle much as torches or tapers are; viz. by first pouring the melted wax on the top of the several suspended wicks, and letting it run down to the bottom. This they repeat twice. After each wick has thus got its proper cover of wax, they lay them to dry; then roll them on a table, and so join four of them together by means of a red-hot iron. When joined, they pour on more wax till the flambeau is brought to the size required, which is usually from a pound and half to three pounds. The last thing is to finish their form or outside, which they do with a kind of polishing instrument of wood by running it along all the angles formed by the union of the branches.

The flambeaux of the ancients were different from ours. They were made of woods dried in furnaces or otherwise. They used divers kinds of wood for this purpose; the wood most usual was pine. Pliny says, that in his time they frequently also burnt oak, elm, and hazel. In the seventh book of the Æneid, mention is made of a flambeau of pine; and Servius on that passage remarks, that they also made them of the cornel-tree.