BUMBULUM

This article appears in Volume V04, Page 796 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BRI-BUN

BUMBULUM , BoMBULUM or BUNIBULUnt, a fabulous musical

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

described in an apocryphal

letter

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the alphabet; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

of St Jerome to Dardanus,1 and illustrated in a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of illuminated MSS. of the 0th to the 11th century, together with other instruments described in the same

letter

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the alphabet; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

. These MSS. are the Psalter of Emmeran, oth century, described by Martin Gerbert,2 who gives a few illustrations from it; the

Cotton

MS. Tiberius C. VI. in the British Museum, 11th century; the famous Boulogne Psalter, A D. 1000 ; and' the Psalter of Angers, 9th century.' In the

Cotton

MS. the

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

consists of an angular

frame

FRAME

, from which depends by a chain a rectangular metal plate having twelve bent arms attached in two rows of three on each side, one above the other. The arms appear to terminate in small rectangular bells or plates, and it is supposed that the standard

frame

FRAME

was intended to be shaken like a sistrum in order to set the bells jangling. Sebastian Virdung 4 gives illustrations of these instruments of Jerome, and among them of the one called bumbulum in the Cotton MS., which Virdung calls Fistula Hieronimi. The general outline is the same, but instead of metal arms there is the same number of bent pipes with conical bore. Virdung explains, following the apocryphal letter, that the stand re semb!ing the draughtsman's square represents the Holy Cross, the rectangular object dangling therefrom signifies Christ on the Cross, and the twelve pipes are the twelve apostles. Virdung's

illustration

ILLUSTRATION

, probably copied from an older work in manuscript, conforms more closely to the text of the letter than does the instrument in the Cotton MS. There is no evidence whatever of the actual existence of such an instrument during the middle ages, with the exception of this

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of fanciful pictures

drawn

DRAWN

to illustrate an instrument known from description only. The word bombulum was probably derived from the same root as the 0o,uOai Xios of Aristophanes (Acharnians, 866) ((3b0or and (tabs), a comic compound fora bag-pipe with a play on flo,u$uXu5s, an

insect

INSECT

that hums or buzzes (see BAG-PIPE). The

original

ORIGINAL

described in the letter, also from hearsay, was probably an early type of organ. (K. S.)

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