[87] Undoubtedly the use of the Roman _candelabrum_ was continued by the Spanish Visigoths. "_Candelabrum_," says Saint Isidore, "_a candelis dictum, quasi candela feram, quod candelam ferat_" (_Originum_, book xx., chap. x.). The Spanish word _candela_ is loosely used to-day for almost any kind of light or fire, or even for a match; but an ordinary candle is generally called a _vela_ or _bugía_ (_bougie_).
The Roman lampstands also varied in their height. When the stem was long they stood upon the ground--a fashion we have seen revived in recent years, and even where electricity replaces oil. When, on the contrary, the stem was short, the stand was known as a _candelabrum humile_, and rested on a table or a stool.
The Madrid Museum contains a remarkable bronze lamp in the form of an ass's head adorned with flowers and with ivy. The ass is holding in its mouth the _rostrum_ for the wick. The hole for the oil is shaped like a flower with eleven petals, under one of which is the monogram M[dagger]R. The back of this lamp consists of an uncouth human male figure, in a reclining posture, wearing a Phrygian cap and holding the ass's head between his legs.
[Illustration: XXVIII A _CANDIL_ (_Modern_)]
Other lamps of bronze, including several of an interesting character, are in the same collection. One of these represents a sea-deity; another has its handle shaped like a horse's head and neck; and in a third the orifice for the oil is heart-shaped, while the handle terminates in the head of a swan.
There is also a series of three pensile lamps--two in the likeness of the head and neck of a griffin, and the third in that of a theatrical mask; as well as a candelabrum fourteen inches high, terminating beneath in three legs with lions' claws (foreshadowing or repeating oriental motives), and above in a two-handled vessel on which to place the lamp. This vessel supports at present a fine _lucerna_ in the form of a peacock.
Probably no people in the world have kept extant, or rather, kept alive, their oldest forms of pottery or instruments for giving light more steadfastly or more solicitously than the Spaniards. Their iron _candil_[88] and brass _velón_ of nowadays (Pls. xxviii. and xxix.)--the one of these the primitive lamp that hangs; the other, the primitive lamp that rests upon a table or the ground--are borrowed with but a minimum of alteration from the lighting apparatus of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and possess, for all their coarse and cheap and unpretentious workmanship, a subtle interest and elegance attributable only to the inspiration of antiquity.