Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A candle used at ceremonious watchings of a corpse before its interment, as at lich-wakes. Candles are set at the head and feet, and often one is set upon the corpse itself.
- noun The will-o'-the-wisp, or ignis fatuus, a luminous exhalation which, when seen in a churchyard, is supposed to portend death, and to indicate by its course the direction the corpse-bearers will take.
Etymologies
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Examples
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Llan Curig, not far from Plynlimmon, was struck down dead as a horse not long ago by a corpse-candle.
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The light around them faded again to the corpse-candle gleam above Antryg's head; he turned back to the stygian arch that led once more into the mazes and the hellish walk back to the outer air.
The Silicon Mage Hambly, Barbara 1988
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For the charm to be really effective one had to walk around the spot at midnight carrying a corpse-candle, but I found myself laughing at the thought - which suggested Drotte's mummery about simples drawn at midnight from graves - and decided to rely on the verse alone, though I was somewhat astonished to discover that I was now old enough not to be ashamed of it.
The Shadow of the Torturer Wolfe, Gene 1980
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Then he proceeded to examine the alcove -- the stairs, where the gleaming eye had wavered like a corpse-candle before Lizzie's affrighted vision.
The Bat Mary Roberts Rinehart 1917
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"Good Lord, Chase, you're not clinging to that corpse-candle straw, are you?" cried his lordship, beginning to pace the floor.
The Man from Brodney's George Barr McCutcheon 1897
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But the best of all was when Joe came home, the very next day, and when, the three of them sitting about the supper-table, Mira herself told the great story, from the first moment of Deacon Bassett's visit down to the triumphant close -- "And I see him coming back, shining like a corpse-candle, and I fell like dead on the floor!"
The Green Satin Gown Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards 1896
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At last the poor Giacomo came, half undressed and holding a lantern in his hand -- he seemed terrified, and trembled so much that the lantern jogged up and down like a corpse-candle on a tomb.
Vendetta: a story of one forgotten Marie Corelli 1889
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But when he saw in the moonlight, though far off, a tiny white figure of a woman drifting on some strange current in a small boat, on the prow of which rested a faint light (to me it looked like a corpse-candle!), he thought it might be some person in distress, and began to cautiously edge towards it.
The Lady of the Shroud Bram Stoker 1879
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She is a comet that has a strange fancy only to come forth like a corpse-candle, and dance over men's graves.
Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida Selected from the Works of Ouida 1839-1908 Ouida 1873
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A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse-candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away.
chained_bear commented on the word corpse-candle
"He seemed so much a part of the wood that I might have stumbled over him, had I not been stopped by the patch of brilliant blue.
Soft as velvet, the strange fungus spread its cloak over the naked, cold white limbs. It followed the curve of bone and sinew, sending up small trembling fronds, like the grasses and trees of a forest, invading barren land.
It was an electric, vivid blue, stark and alien. I had never seen it, but had heard of it, from an old soldier I had nursed, who had fought in the trenches of the first world war.
'We called it corpse-candle,' he had told me. 'Blue, bright blue. You never see it anywhere but on a battlefield—on dead men.' He had looked up at me, old eyes puzzled beneath the white bandage.
'I always wondered where it lives, between wars.'"
—Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber (NY: Delacorte Press, 1991), 867
See also saprophytic.
January 3, 2010