In keeping with this intention, I’m seeding the new location with responses to some of Terry’s questions and will be doing the same with a pending response to another.Terry McGee wrote:I'd vote for that, stringbed, and I imagine Mad Max will be glad to see us go too. And we're seeing too much interesting material to give up now!stringbed wrote: I’ll gladly start a new discussion headed, say, From flageolet to tin whistle, if others see some utility in bringing the topic out from under its current Mad Max cloak.
Questions I want answers to, but you may disdain to address, include:
Why is it La Flûte, but Le Flageolet?
Are Flageolet beans called that because you can slip them into your tin whistle and blow them to hit the tenor banjo player behind the ear, while you appear to carry on playing normally?
Does anyone use the name flageolet today? Or have the French whistle players descended to Le Whistle?
The initial French word for flageolet was arigot which, just as flageolet also designates a bean. The apparent connection derives from the long slender shape, just as “string bean” is used in (at least in American) English to designate a tall slender person.
I believe that French whistlers refer to their instruments with the loanword “tin whistles.” Notwithstanding, Clarke and Generation continue to market their whistles as flageolets, which suggests that they feel doing so to be a successful approach. They serve a large neophyte clientele, further suggesting that the instrument names are more broadly regarded as interchangeable than the denizens of C&F might otherwise expect.