Damian
"Sonner le tocsin", meant roughly "to ring a peal of warning
bells ", but could also mean the bell used for such a warning. This
would have come from earlier "touquesain" from Provencal "tocaseneh".
It seems that "tocar" (or toquer), distantly related to "touch",
comes from Latin "toccāre" make a sound like "toc".
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O27-touch.html
and "senh" could be derived from Latin "signum" a sign - a signal,
giving ancient French "seing", later "sein", and which took on the
meaning of "bell".
My source is the historic dictionary of the French language, le
Robert, but etymology of a single expression, even backed-up by such
a dictionary is rarely safe.
Around 1570 and for a certain period, the expression apparently took
on a metaphoric meaning (Bossuet) to allert public oppinion.
Best wishes
Anthony
Le 28 déc. 08 à 02:51, damian dlugolecki a écrit :
You are quite right David. I just looked up 'tocsin' in my OED
where the earliest usage in English is in 1598. I just assumed it
was an earlier spelling of 'toxin' which led me to my incorrect
interpretation. Never encountered the word 'tocsin' with that
meaning. The OED reads, "an alarm signal, sounded by ringing a
bell or bells; used orig. and esp. in reference to France."
Thanks for clearing that up.
Damian
Subject: [LUTE] Re: le Tocsein de Gautier
I might have missed something here, getting into the discussion late
(I rejoined today---hellew everyone), but doesn't the English word
"tocsin" refer to the pealing of a bell? I always thought "tocsin"
came from an old form of French. Could some form of the word have
existed in French in the 17th century with a similar meaning? Used
perhaps in similar sense to Vallet's piece depicting bells in a
village church.
Davidr
dlu...@verizon.net
On Dec 27, 2008, at 7:48 PM, damian dlugolecki wrote:
At the moment this is only a guess, but I believe the 'tocsin' of
Mouton and that of D. Gautier have something to do with disease.
The word 'toxin' only come into the English language during the
19th century. My OED defines it originally as
"A specific poison...produced by a microbe which causes a
particular disease.' By this perhaps we can infer that this
was closer to the original French meaning than to our current
understanding of the word 'toxin' as some kinde of poison. There
were many diseases like typhus, smallpox, cholera etc. that wiped
out large numbers of
people. I need to find a French dictionary like my OED. My
Larousse does not have historical meanings or etymologies.
In any case, the pieces by Gautier and Mouton are very similar,
and it seems to me that the Mouton piece is transposition to f#m
of D. Gautier's piece in e minor. The repeated low 'B' has a
funerary feeling to me anyway and it appears throughout Mouton's
piece as a low C#. But even though it is possible these 'tocsins'
were about disease, they are gigues and should be played at faster
tempos. Played in the salons of Paris during recurrences of 'la
Peste' they were perhaps demonstrations of musical 'black humor.'
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