Folklore: Tambourine?

Subject: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,irishenglish
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:11 AM

If this has been addressed on here before I apologize. I was just playing Volume 7 of The Voice Of The People series, and on the final track, The Pigeon On The Gate, a set of reels by Jim and Seamus Donaghue,recorded by Reg Hall & Michael Plunkett in 1971, the instruments are listed as tin whistle and tambourine. Only problem is that it is no question about it, some fine bodhran playing from Seamus. It's going to take me awhile to look through the whole series,but is there a reason Reg Hall calls it a tambourine? Just curious because by 1971 certainly there were some quite distinguished players of the instrument, and I can't see any reason for calling it a tambourine!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,Nerd
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:28 AM

A guess, as I can't say what was in Reg's mind. Bodhran is a word essentially popularized by Sean O Riada in the 1950s. Before that, the instrument existed in various places in Ireland, sometimes as a ceremonial drum for wrenboys and so forth, sometimes as a winnowing-pan. It was called by different names in different places, and my guess is that Donaghue's family, who after all had been playing music long before O Riada popularized the term Bodhran, called it a tambourine themselves.   

You can go back to the 1920s, and find records of Irish music with Bodhran on them, and it was generally called a tambourine then by recording musicians. Reg knows this well, as that era's music is one of his areas of expertise.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:40 AM

For a long time, the word 'Tamboubine' has been used to mean a hand drum, either with or without jingles.

There seems to be a lot of variation, both regional and otherwise, in the names used for drums.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,irishenglish
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:42 AM

Thanks, and please dont let anyone think I was dissing Reg Hall! You are probably right that Reg called it what the Donaghue's called it, and not calling it by its "correct" name! Another reason to admire Reg. I did know about its earlier history with the wrenboys and such, but the regional names for it would make sense though. Thanks for keeping me from going back through 20 volumes!!!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: RTim
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:58 AM

I thought the same thing existed in English music (ie. a tamborine with no dingles), where it is called a "Riddle Drum"

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: greg stephens
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 10:58 AM

I don't think you can say that bodhran is its "correct" name. They were called tambourines then, and the recent coinage "bodhran" has spread throughout Ireland and beyond, but they were called tambourines before that, jingles or no jingles.It distorts history to try to send a modern word back into the past.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Ernest
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 11:09 AM

Maybe he used the word because "bodhran" is a maledictory gaelic word? ;0)

Since tambourines are usually played with the hand and bodhran usually using a stick - can someone tell when those sticks were introduced to the bodhran?

Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 11:19 AM

I recently visited the Vatican museum in Rome, and they had an ancient Roman or Greek statue of a seated woman holding a round drum vertically and playing it with a stick, just the way a person plays a bodhran.

The drum was smaller than a modern bodhran, but even if the ancients had played bigger drums, they wouldn't have carved them, because nothing as big as a bodhran would last long as part of a statue.

We took a picture of the statue.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,irishenglish
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 11:28 AM

Thanks again, and Greg, the reason I put correct in quotes is n ot to say historically that is the absolute proper word. I was saying that kudos to Reg for calling it what Seamus Donaghue himself may have called it, and not slipping in what would have been the more popular revivalist term (and please, lets not get into another debate about that!), as played by bands like Planxty,The Chieftains, etc. at that time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Ernest
Date: 05 Oct 07 - 11:49 AM

Can you post a picture of that vatican statue*, leenia?

There are frame drums like a bodhran in different cultures played with sticks, so the idea isn`t uncommon - still I wonder when the Irish started to use them..

Best
Ernest

* does this prove that St Patrick was a) a crossdresser or b) female?
....running for cover now...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 12:32 AM

it's conceivable that I could post the picture. It was taken with a digital camera. Trouble is, I have n idea how.

For future reference, it is our image 0595.

Can somebody tell me how to post a picture, if that is indeed still possible?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,albert
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 03:39 AM

I have long thought that the tambourine is one of the most underrated instruments in popular music!
albert

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 10:26 AM

Peter Kennedy makes referrence to a Dorset riddle drum and the source is 150 years or more back. Hence Sid Kipper's joke - Sid knows more about these things than his jokes reveal.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: BanjoRay
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 10:52 AM

Guest Leeneia - you can attach the photograph to an email - you'd have to get Ernest's email address by PMing him, and you'd have to get a cookie to do that.
Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 01:32 PM

The 'stick' used to play a bodhran as well as being sometimes refered to as a beater, is also called a tipper, or cipin, the latter being the word my mother in law used, God rest her soul, and we still use when refering to kindling to light the fire.

Rog

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Emma B
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 01:55 PM

An very ancient instrument also known as a timbrel

medieval picture depicting use in battle

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Emma B
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 02:05 PM

playing with the hand...

from the Haifa Museum.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 03:50 PM

Bodhran playing with a stick is I believe relatively recent
Everyone knows that it a pen knife is best.
Stephen Chambers ,always used to play it with his hand[late1970s].

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 07:14 PM

I repeat, tipper or cipin, please.

Thank you
Rog

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 11:22 PM

Actually. though I don't claim to be an expert of the matter, I have seen written references to the 'bodhran' being played with

1) the normal beater stick you mostly know
2) a short stick on a length of leather thong
3) the hand - various parts, fingers, palm, side, wrist, back of hand
4) other body parts (hey! - this is family site!) - elbow, knee, hip, chest

Not to be forgotten is the old word 'tambour' - thus 'tambourine' wold be a 'diminutive' form of 'tambour'.


Amusing note: my spellchecker wants to replace 'bodhran' with 'birdbrain'!   :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 03:58 AM

Interesting to hear it called a Riddle drum... is this in the thought provoking rhyme sense or the garden sieve sense?

Was it because the garden riddle was also used as a noise making implement or because the drum looks like the riddle?

LTS

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Ernest
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 06:27 AM

Your picture of the use of the bodhran in medevial warfare makes me think: could we ban them as weapons of war just like bagpipes have been banned?

Folkies are thought to be peaceniks, after all...

Getting my coat (of armour... ;0)

Ernest

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 08:57 AM

Liz - I was having a similar thought about naming of a riddle drum. A number of yeard back, I did happen across somebody playing a self constructed bodhran. He had removed the metal wire grid from a garden sieve or riddle and used the deep wooden reinforced hoop as a frame to stretch vellum across and then stapled or nailed the skin to the hoop.
I think it more than likely that a riddle drum WAS describing a drum made from a garden riddle.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: treewind
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 09:26 AM

"a riddle drum WAS describing a drum made from a garden riddle."
That's always been my understanding of the origin too.

Incidentally, I also don't think it's a coincidence that the word Bodhran is similar to the tail end of the word tambourine.

Anahata

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Emma B
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 09:42 AM

An "alternative" origin :)

In Dinneen's a bodhrán is defined as a deaf person or a drum!

The verb bodhraim means to make deaf or to stun                                                                                                   
ná bodhair mé - don't annoy me

......I'll get my cotá

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 10:34 AM

The similarity of many words meaning "deaf" and "drum" in Indo-European languages has been discussed on Mudcat and elsewhere.You need to study this in some detail, but examples include the name sordo for the samba bass drum(also means deaf in Portuguese)), and the word daff for bodhran like drums in the middle-east.There are a very large number of such examples, I understand.
It is also suggested(anahata mentions the connection earlier) that bodhran is not an old word(as applied to a drum) but is a recent coinage, a Gaelicised version of the word "tambourine".Doubtless someone nmore versed in the Irish language could supply the references(for and against).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 10:39 AM

Those medieval illustrations are apparently frame drums, but it is misleading to call them 'bodhrans'; that is a purely local name for something that has had a very wide distribution over the centuries. As has already been mentioned, 'bodhran' itself was apparently only a locally-used term within Ireland until fairly recently, and its wide usage now seems to be mostly down to fashion. The same is probably true of the use of 'tipper' and 'cipin' for the beaters; generically, pace Rog Peek, they are sticks.

It's also possible, as Anahata suggests, that there is a connection with the root word that also gives us 'tabor', 'tambour', 'tambourine' and so on (cf Persian 'tanbur', Arabic 'tunbur', etc.) which appears to relate to the cylindrical construction of the thing rather than the sound it makes. That might raise the possibility that the connection with the Gaelic word for deafness (English 'bother' may derive from Irish 'bodhair', incidentally) could just be one of those linguistic coincidences, the two words being etymologically unrelated homonyms. (It would not be the first time: a false correlation made between 'union' and 'uilleann' popularised by the now discredited musical historian Grattan Flood in the early years of the 20th century led to the Irish bellows-blown pipes receiving their new, now universally used, name). That's only a thought, though, and I am not a philologist. Does Dineen cite specific examples of usage?

Finally, Ernest repeats the popular myth that the bagpipes were once banned as 'weapons of war'. That isn't true (see previous discussions), and it's best to distinguish as carefully as possible between fact and fiction in any discussion that aims to achieve useful results; though of course that is not always easy in topics of this kind.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Emma B
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 10:43 AM

I thought a little humour was indicated by the tone of my post but in fact it was based on a generally accepted origin of the Irish word for this ancient instrument.

"The etymology of the word bodhran is a bit contested, given the uncertainty as to the instrument's origins. Those who believe the bodhran has a history dating back not much further than the twentieth century often hold that it is a shortening of the word tambourine to bourine, later shifted to bodhran. The word is properly pronounced BOW-rawn, though different dialects have slightly different pronunciations (BORE-on, boh-RAHN, and BOH-rahn, for example). A commonly accepted etymology for this word links it to the Gaelic word bodhar which means deaf or dull sounding, alluding to the dulled sound the bodhran makes when struck."


ref

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 10:46 AM

Here is a post I made while ago on the deaf/drum overlap in words:


"I've been looking up words for drums and words for deaf and the situation is too complicated for me. Professional linguistic historians neededon this thread. Irish bodhar and Urdu behra both mean deaf. Sordo means drum and deaf.The b-r pattern occurs in drum words(bodhran tamborine tambour tabor), and is sometimes p-r(eg kurdish tapper-phonetic spelling, I asked a kurdish friend).English deaf doesnt seem to fit in at all at first glance, until you relate it to linguistic neighbours androots: and you find doof(Dutch) toup(Old HighGerman)taub (German). Which connects straight to the t-p or t-b pattern you find in tabor,tapper,tambour Interesting, huh?"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 11:32 AM

Certainly; and issues of this kind always make me wish that I had paid more attention when I was actually supposed to be studying linguistic history. A single (notional) root word can branch out into a whole range of meanings that may seem entirely unconnected until you look at analogous forms (though these can be misleading as well as illuminating).

In the case of 'bodhran', it may be that, even if initially derived from '[tam]bourine' when used of a drum, the consonance with the existing Gaelic word for 'deaf' is no coincidence but that both words descend from the same distant ancestor and are here re-united after a long time apart. Etymology, depending as it does largely on logical speculation without possibility of absolute proof, is a problematic subject.

I don't know that we have many linguistic historians here; [Jonathan] Lighter is one, though his main field is English-language dialect and slang, I think.

Thanks for that reference, Emma. The first explanation given really does seem most likely given the known history of usage, but I hesitated to suggest it myself in so many words, the question being rather a vexed one. The second is always cited in discussions here relating to the bodhran (and not always with humour), but objectivity demands that both possibilities be presented, even if the matter cannot be settled one way or the other.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 01:03 PM

It is interesting to read all this discussion of similarity of names for drums and names for deafness. Is there anything to suggest that it could tie in to anatomy of hearing, and the fact that we (at least in english) hear as the results of vibrations passing through our Ear Drum?
Alternatively the fact that if you are too close to loud drums, you will experience (temporary) diminished hearing.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Emma B
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 01:20 PM

all I could find on ealiest usage of word....

"The earliest extant use of the word bodhrán (v. Dictionary of the Irish Language) comes from an Early Modern Irish (ca. 17th century) translation of a medical manual entitled Rosa Anglica (Irish Texts Society, vol.25). There the word is found glossed as "tabur (i.e. tabor), timpan (i.e. drum)". We have no idea, however, whether it referred to a particular type of drum, or if it did, what sort of drum."

Linguistics of Bodhrán-related Words

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: greg stephens
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 01:54 PM

tympanum: Latin for ear drum
tympani kettle drums

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 07 Oct 07 - 07:28 PM

bourg >

I think 'bodhran' came from the old word 'bourdon,' to wit:

bour·don    (brdn) KEY

NOUN:

The drone pipe of a bagpipe.
The bass string, as of a violin.
An organ stop, commonly of the 16-foot pipes, medium in scale but with dark timbre.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English burdoun, bass, from Old French bourdon

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 01:25 AM

"I think 'bodhran' came from the old word 'bourdon,' to wit:"

Unfortunately many people display little wit when banging on a Bodhran...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Tambourine?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 08 Oct 07 - 01:51 PM

Yes MalcolmDouglas, I agree with you, If you are going to call the instrument a frame drum, by all means call the beater a stick. If however the 'local name' is used for the drum, then it seems both logical and contextual to refer to the beater by the 'local name' also.

Rog