Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/314

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2s.iv. NOV., MS.

What Spanish word Col. Repington can .have been thinking of I cannot conjectitre, unless it were adobe, i.e., unbaked brick. Adobado means pickled pork.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

" MJEBUS," A GHOST WORD : " MEBUS " (12 S. iv. 268). " Msebus " may be a ghost word, but I am fairly certain that mebus is an abbreviation by the German soldiers for the German phrase or compound word for " machine-gun shelter of reinforced concrete." I think I saw it so explained in a captured copy of German orders in the autumn of 1917. Such abbreviations are not uncommon in the German army, and this one appears to have been officially .adopted. A. H. OLLIVANT,

Brig. -Gen. Royal Artillery.

There is no doubt that the derivation of mebus is as given by me ante, p. 87. The Germans are very fond of giving names to things from the initial letters of the words composing the name. Cf. Wumba, the Munitions Department of the War Ministry (" Waffen- und Munitions-Beschaffungs- iamt"); S togas, the Army gas officer (" Stabs-Offizier fiir Gas ") ; and there are countless others. F. M. M.

(The note ante, p. 268, did not question the explanation of mebus given by F. M. M., but was intended to show that the suggested derivation from a Mediaeval Latin mccbus was unsupported i"by evidence. SIR LEES KNOWLES also thanked for reply.]

DEVILS BLOWING HORNS OR TRUMPETS (12 S. iv. 134, 201). MR. LE COUTEUR may be glad to know of a passage in Thomas Wright's ' History of Caricature and Gro- tesque in Literature and Art ' (Virtue Brothers & Co., 1865), at pp. 69, 70 :

" The entrance to the infernal regions was -always represented pictorially as the mouth of a monstrous animal, where the demons appeared leaving and returning .... In the cathedral of Treves, there is a mural painting by William of Cologne, a painter of the fifteenth century, which represents the entrance to the shades, the mon- strous mouth, with its keepers, in still more grotesque forms. Our cut No. 42 gives but a small portion of this picture, in which the porter of the regions of punishment is sitting astride the snout of the monstrous mouth, and is sounding with a trumpet what may be supposed to be the call for those who are condemned. Another minstrel of the same stamp, spurred, though not booted, sits astride the tube of the trumpet, playing on the bagpipes ; and the sound which issues from the former instrument is represented by a host of smaller imps who are -scattering themselves about."

At p. 71, where cut Xo. 42 occurs, Wright lias labelled it, not inaptly, ' The Trum-

peter of Evil,' but it might be made a question whether the demon's instrument would not be described more correctly if called a horn.

As MR. LE COUTEUR asked for informa- tion about the origin of such representations, the following points may be 'mentioned here :

1. The trumpet (cra.\iriy, tuba) has always been regarded as the instrument with which the heavenly host will proclaim the arrival of the Day of Judgment. See Matt. xxiv. 31 ; 1 Cor. xv. 52 ; 1 Thess. iv. 16.

2. This idea probably derives from the Jews, to whom the trumpet (bazozerah), like the shofar (the ancient horn of Israel), was " not so much an instrument of music as one of teru'ah (noise), that is of alarm and for signalling." Its primary use was to give signals to the people to assemble or to break camp. See the ' Jewish Ency- clopaedia,' xii. 268. The shofar, the instru- ment with which the new moon, the new year, &c., were proclaimed, was also em- ployed, like the silver bazozerah, as " the signal-horn of war." See ibid., xi. 301. The coming of the heavenly host may be viewed either as the dawn of a new era or as a war, one of rapid movements and short duration.

3. The use of such instraments for purposes of ceremony or war was, of course, not confined to the Jews. It was widespread among the nations. As regards the Romans, for instance, one may quote :

Non tuba directi, nun seris cornua flexi, Non galeae, non ensis, erant. Sine militis usu Mollia securse peragebant otia mentes.

Ovid, ' Metam.,' i. 98.

Ipse vocat pugnas : sequitur turn csetera pubes, -35reaque assensu conspirant cornua rauco.

Virgil, '^En.,' vii. 614.

" Datur cohortibus signum, cornuaque ao tubae concinuere : exin clamore et impetu tergis Germanorum circumfunduntur, exprobantes ' non hie silvas, nee paludes, sed a?quis locis sequos decs.' " Tacitus, ' Ann.,' i. 68.

These quotations are none the worse if they seem somewhat descriptive of times through which we ourselves have been passing.

4. As the trumpet will be the angels' instrument at the Last Day, it seems reasonable to imagine that the demons, who had their prototypes in the fauns and satyrs of classical mythology, may be blowing bucolic raucous horns, suitable to beings to whom the less pleasing operations of the day have been popularly assigned. Moreover, they will be hunters (whose instrument is the horn), with lost souls for