Tallow Dips

What follows is an excerpt taken from the book The Last Yankees: Folkways in Eastern Vermont and the Border Country, Scott E. Hastings, Jr. The book offers a detailed description of the last true Yankees and their crafts, tools, local industry, dialects, and daily life. This particular section describes candle making, burning, and such. See Vermont Folklore selections for more of Scott Hastings' fascinating portraits of Vermont Women on the Farm and Vermont Farm Families.

"Yes, we burned candles when I was a kid. Used to make them ourselves. 'Course we had kerosene lamps, too. We never had electricity. All our lights were tallow dips or kerosene lamps. You had to fill them up with kerosene and keep the wicks clipped, and wash the chimneys. There was one on each end of the dining room table when we were eating. And some of them hung up and had a reflector on the back. But we had candles, and we burnt them in metal candlesticks that had a little saucer built on the bottom to catch the hot tallow. Tallow made a good light."

"It was beef tallow. The only part of a beef that wasn't saved was the horns and hoofs. We heated the tallow to make the dips right on the stove. Had to be careful--you couldn't get it too hot. You had to keep dipping [the wicking] just enough so it would absorb and then let it harden and dip again. Seems as though we used to make them in the wintertime, or when it was cold. And I think after we dipped them we put them outdoors to cool. Then we could dip them faster. We got tallow at the butcher shop, too. They'd give it to you, glad to get rid of it."

"We'd have the wicking hung over light sticks so we could dip several at a time. Then hung the sticks between the backs of two chairs to harden. Had newspapers on the floor to catch the drippings. When they were done, and hardened, we laid them out in a wooden box to store them. That was so they could lay out flat and not become bent. I don't remember whether we put something on the outsides so they wouldn't stick to each other or not. Anyway, that's how we made them."

Source: The Last Yankees, Folkways in Eastern Vermont and the Border Country, Scott E. Hastings, Jr., Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990.

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