The Mermaid Inn Candle Offerings

Ah, now you’ve found me — come in out of the weather, love, and mind that low beam unless you fancy a new dent in your halo. Pull up a stool by the fire, where the oak beams sag with age and good gossip. This is where The Mermaid Inn was first dreamt — or perhaps remembered, depending who you ask. I’d been stirring a pot of melted wax one stormy eve, the windows rattling like loose teeth, when the scent of snow and firewood began to flirt with the air. I thought of Rye’s old tavern — that crooked den of smugglers and storytellers — its stairwell slanting like a conspirator’s grin, and laughter spilling like brandy over the years.

The scent weave imagined embers that crackled from the inglenook fireplace, sending plumes of wood-smoke muddled with French cognac up through the chimney stack and into the rain-kissed night. A raucous erupted between swashbuckler and smuggler as brandy-wine flowed from crystal decanters. The traveler propped up her booted foot on a worn mahogany stool, puffing sweet tobacco from her pipe, and side-eyed the bravado as it unfurled. I reached for leather and brandied oak, a twist of citrus peel and a curl of pipe smoke — all the ingredients, you understand, of an evening best spent slightly off the books. Before long, the workshop itself began to hum with the hush of waves and whispered wagers, as though the inn’s ghosts had slipped through the keyhole to see how I’d captured their scent.

When its wick catches flame, The Mermaid Inn doesn’t merely perfume the room — it sings. Notes of leather bound books and cask wood, spiced rum and laughter rise together, and for a heartbeat you could swear you hear Kipling whisper the famous lines from his poem A Smugglers Song, "If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet, Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street." It’s a candle with a wink and a grin, warming the heart as much as the hearth. I like to think it carries the echo of every good story ever told after dark — the kind that begins with “you’ll never believe this, but…” and ends in a roar of laughter and a boozy refill. And when the last curl of smoke drifts away, it leaves behind that faint, sweet ache of nostalgia — as though the sea herself has leaned in to whisper, We’ll meet again at low tide, love.

The Scent Weave - Boozy, Resinous, Nostalgic

Fragrance Notes - Cassis, Grapefruit, Bergamot, Tobacco, Amber, Sage, Rosemary,  Smoked Birch, Myrrh, Guaiac wood, Clove