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 hempen 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, then 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 a 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 usually 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.

**FLAMBOROUGH head**, in Geography, a cape or promontory on the eastern coast of Yorkshire, five miles east of Burlington, and 215 from London.—E. Long. 20°. N. Lat. 54. 15.—This was the Flambourg of the Saxons; so called, as some think, from the lights made on it to direct the landing of Ina, who in 547 joined his countrymen in these parts with a large reinforcement from Germany, and founded the kingdom of Northumberland. In the time of Edward the Confessor, Flamborough was one of the manors of Harold, earl of the West Saxons, afterwards king of England. On his death, the Conqueror gave it to Hugh Lupus; who, in perpetual alms, bestowed it on the monastery of Whitby.—The town is on the north side, and consists of about 150 small houses, entirely inhabited by fishermen; few of whom, as is said, die in their beds, but meet their fate in the element they are so conversant in. The cliffs of the Head are of a tremendous height and amazing grandeur. Beneath are several vast caverns; some closed at the end, others pervious, formed with a natural arch. In some places the rocks are insulated, and of a pyramidal figure, soaring up to a vast height. The bases of most are solid, but in some pierced through and arched. The colour of all these rocks is white, from the dung of the innumerable flocks of migratory birds, which quite cover the face of them, filling every little projection, every hole that will give them leave to rest.