Candle wax winding sheet
A candle wax winding sheet is the old English folklore name for wax that spills over the rim and hardens in folds down the side. The antiquary Francis Grose, in a passage Brand reprints, counted it among warnings of a death.
What it may mean
A candle rarely overflows evenly. The pool of melted wax rises until one point on the rim is a little lower than the rest (from a draft, a slight tilt or an off-center wick), and then everything spills there, in one stream that hardens into folds as it runs. In Grose's day, that ridge of tallow against the wick was called a winding sheet, after burial cloth, and households read it as a warning that someone among them would die. Seen without fear, it shows how overflow works. When a week fills up, the excess rarely spreads politely across everything. It finds the lowest point: a short temper with one person, a skipped meal, the one task you always drop. Knowing where your rim dips first is useful, since that is the place to shore up.
Depending on how you saw it
Wax hardened in folds
The name comes from the cloth once wrapped around the dead, which the folds of cooling tallow resembled to people sitting up by candlelight. Which everyday sight did older relatives give a darker name than you would?
A dripless candle that drips
Tapers sold as dripless still run when a window is open or the candle leans, because the label assumes still air and a straight holder. Which promise on a label have you taken more literally than it was meant?
A wine bottle covered in old drips
In some old restaurants, candles stuck in wine bottles have dripped for years until the glass disappears under colored layers of wax. Which of your things grows more interesting the more layers of use it collects?
Why it happens in nature
A burning candle melts a pool of wax around the wick. When a draft, a tilt or an off-center wick makes one edge lower or thinner, the melted wax spills over at that point and cools as it runs, often in ridges and folds. Soft waxes and drafty rooms make it happen more often.
What folk beliefs say
England
Grose, quoted by Brand, wrote that a collection of tallow rising up against the wick of a candle is called a winding sheet and is deemed an omen of death in the family.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 181. View the page
To reflect on
When your days get too full, where does the overflow find its way out first?