Hillebille
A Hillebille is a signal device and rhythm instrument that consists of a hardwood pickguard.
Signaling device
The Hillebille is suspended between two stands on the floor on a crossbeam, freely swinging with two ropes or leather straps. The pickguard is about 20 cm wide and 75 to 120 cm long. It is made to sound by hitting a clapper . In this way, messages could be transmitted from place to place.
history
Before the introduction of bells, wooden boards called naqus in Arabic have been used in the Christian Orient since the 4th century to call meetings, to announce devotions or to indicate times of day. From there they spread over Greece, where they are called Semantron or Symandron, further in Eastern Europe to the Harz region . In some Orthodox monasteries in Eastern Europe, pickguards are still in use today, which in Romania are called Toacă .
The Hillebille was already in use in Central Europe in the early Middle Ages . Hillebill was still used by loggers and charcoal burners in remote areas of the Harz and Thuringian Forest as an alarm and information instrument until the 20th century . Their light tone extended about two kilometers. There were agreed sounds to call the charcoal burners to dinner. In an emergency, the Hillebille sounded the alarm, e.g. B. when a charcoal kiln caught fire so that the assistants could hurry over. The name of a mountain ridge in the Harz Mountains still reminds us of those times . A “Hillebille rock” can also be found in the upper Oder valley in Brandenburg .
Craft custom
In some areas there was a custom among carpenters which they called "Hillebille", "Hillebillekloppen" or "den Stockfisch softly". On the evening before the topping-out ceremony , hatchets and axes were used to hit a thick board made of dry beech wood, the “stockfish”, so that a rhythmic noise that could be heard from afar was created. The "evil spirits" should be driven out of the house.
Musical instrument
In terms of instruments, the Hillebillen Aufschlag are idiophonic , i.e. directly struck self-clinkers. The Hillebill are similar to the Basque Txalaparta .
etymology
The origin of the word is unclear. One derivation is that the Hillebille is a combination of Hille (witch) and Bille (buttock), ie "witch's buttocks". This seems unlikely because “Hille” is not used as a name for witches and because of the use of the Bille in the singular, although the plural “Billen” would have been required for a whole buttock. Other derivations explain the term with the sound generation itself: According to one variant, Hillebille is a combination of the adjective hille (bright, far resounding) and the verbal noun bille (billen - to beat). In the Ore Mountains of the 15th century, the term Hellebille appears. According to another variant, “Bille” could also come from the Indo-European word for “Bohle”, according to which a Hillebille would be a Schall-Bohle.
There is no etymological relationship to the later American slang word hillbilly for (uneducated, simple) "man from the mountains", "hillbilly", "country egg" or to its rural hillbilly music .
literature
- Louis Wille: Hillebille and Köhler peal . Ed .: Karl Krause (= Goslarer Bergkalender . 367th year). Goslarsche Zeitung, Goslar 1985, p. 71-72 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Alfred Kirchhoff : Die Hillebille . Half-monthly publication for Thuringian folkism. In: Wartburg-Herold . Weimar / Eisenach 1896, p. 30 ( digitized version ).
- ↑ Kurt Kramer : Bells in the past and present . Advisory Committee for the German Bell System (Ed.), Karlsruhe 1986, p. 13
- ^ Anton Lübke: clocks, bells, carillon . Müller, Villingen 1980, ISBN 3-920662-03-2 .
- ^ Duden Online: Dictionary, sv Hillebille , last accessed: January 16, 2015
- ↑ Reinhard Dzingel: What does a Hillebille have to do with the rounded bottom of a young woman? (PDF; 1.4 MB) illustrated article, Moisburg 2015, last accessed: July 20, 2019
- ↑ Klaus Isensee: Hillebille or Hildebill ?, Critical comments on a mocking poem from the late days of the Harsefeld monastery . In: Geschichte und Gegenwart (Association for Monastery and Local History) 2005, pp. 186–193
- ^ Archie Green: Hillbilly Music: Source and Symbol . In: Journal of American Folklore . Vol. 78, No. 309 , 1965, pp. 204-228 , doi : 10.2307 / 538356 .