Note 71 — June 23.] MIDSUMMER EVE—St. JOHN’S EVE.
Reading edition
Cresset-light.—A kind of fire-basket let into an iron frame at the end of a long pole, and so contrived that the basket remained in a horizontal position, whichever way the pole was carried. These poles were usually borne on men’s shoulders. Cresset-lights were also used as beacons and served instead of lighthouses for signals along the coast. The badge of the Admiralty was anciently a cresset.—Shakspeare makes Glendower say, in “Henry IV.” (Act iii. s. 1):
“At my nativity, The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets.”
Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakspeare, imagines the word to have been derived from the French word croiset—a cruet, or earthen pot.