, St Bartholomew-the-Great. His rebus is sculpted in the centre panel, being a crossbow "bolt" passing through a "tun" (or barrel)]] A rebus is an allusional device that uses pictures to represent words or parts of words. It was a favourite form of heraldic expression used in the Middle Ages to denote surnames, for example in its basic form 3 salmon fish to denote the name "Salmon". A more sophisticated example was the rebus of Bishop Walter Lyhart(d.1472) of Norwich, consisting of a stag (or hart) lying down in a conventional representation of water. The composition alludes to the name, profession or personal characteristics of the bearer, and speaks to the beholder Non verbis, sed rebus, which Latin expression signifies "not by words but by things" (res, rei (f), a thing, object, matter; rebus being ablative plural)

Rebuses and heraldry

Whilst rebuses were used extensively as a form of heraldic expression as a hint to the name of the bearer, they are not synonymous with canting arms. A man might have a rebus as a personal identification device entirely separate from his armorials, canting or otherwise. For example Sir Richard Weston(d.1541) bore as arms: Ermine, on a chief azure five bezants, whilst his rebus, displayed many times in terracotta plaques on the walls of his mansion Sutton Place, Surrey, was a "tun" or barrel, used to designate the last syllable of his surname. An example of canting arms proper are those of the Borough of Congleton in Cheshire consisting of a conger eel, a lion (in Latin, leo) and a tun (another word for a barrel). This word sequence "conger-leo-tun" enunciates the town's name.

Modern word play

A modern example of the rebus used as a form of word play is: :H + = Hear, or Here. By extension, it also uses the positioning of words or parts of words in relation to each other to convey a hidden meaning, for example: :p walk ark'': walk in the park

Pictograms

The term rebus also refers to the use of a pictogram to represent a syllabic sound. This adapts pictograms into phonograms. A precursor to the development of the alphabet, this process represents one of the most important developments of writing. Fully developed hieroglyphs read in rebus fashion were in use at Abydos in Egypt as early as 3400 BCE.

The writing of correspondence in rebus form became popular in the 18th century and continued into the 19th century. Lewis Carroll wrote the children he befriended picture-puzzle rebus letters, nonsense letters, and looking-glass letters, which had to be held in front of a mirror to be read. Rebus letters served either as a sort of code or simply as a pastime.

The rebus principle

as child: Hieroglyphs: Ra-mes-su. ]] In linguistics, the rebus principle means using existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. Many ancient writing systems used the rebus principle to represent abstract words, which otherwise would be hard to be represented by pictograms. An example that illustrates the Rebus principle is the representation of the sentence “I can see you” by using the pictographs of “eye—can—sea—ewe.” Some linguists believe that the Chinese developed their writing system according to the rebus principle, and Egyptian hieroglyphs sometimes used a similar system. A famous rebus statue of Ramses II uses three hieroglyphs to compose his name: Horus (as Ra), for Ra; the child, mes; and the sedge plant (stalk held in left hand), su; the name Ra-mes-su is then formed.

Rebuses and game shows

Rebuses were central to the United States television game show Concentration. Contestants had to solve a rebus, usually partially concealed, to win a game.

Lone Star Beer has rebus puzzles under the crown caps of its bottled beer, as do National Bohemian, Lucky Lager, Falstaff, Olympia, Rainier, Ballantine, Mickey's, Lionshead, and Narragansett.

The United Kingdom also had a game show which required contestants to decipher a rebus. The show, Catchphrase, was a longstanding Saturday evening show, with Roy Walker as its most notable host. The Australian version of the show was hosted by John Burgess.

Historic examples

It is reported that when Voltaire was the guest of Frederick the Great at Sanssouci Palace, they exchanged puzzle notes. Frederick sent over a page with two picture blocks on it: two hands below the letter P, and then the number one hundred below a picture of a handsaw, all followed by a question mark. Voltaire replied with: Ga!

:Both messages were rebuses in the French language: deux mains sous Pé, cent sous scie? (= demain souper, Sanssouci? "supper tomorrow, Sanssouci?"); reply: "big G, small a!" Gé grand, A petit! (= j'ai grand appétit! "I am very hungry!").

]] The early 16th century Bishop of Exeter, Hugh Oldham adopted the owl as his personal device. It bore a scroll in its beak bearing the letters D.O.M., forming a rebus based on his surname, which would probably have been pronounced at the time as owl-dom.

The nineteenth century French sculptor Jean-Pierre Dantan would place rebuses on the socles of his caricature busts to identify the subject. For example, Victor Hugo was an axe (hache in French, which sounds like the French pronunciation of "H") + UG + crossed bones (os, sounding like "O"). Hector Berlioz was represented by the letters BER low on the socle, with a bed (lit, for "li") comparatively high on the socle (to mean "haut", the French for high, pronounced with a silent "h" and "t" and so sounding like "O").

In the US, a rebus was used on the Continental Congress Patterns minted in 1776 and later on the Fugio Cent, the first federal coin, minted in 1787. According to Walter Breen, Elisha Gaullaudet engraved the dies, using sketches of Benjamin Franklin. The obverse depicts a sundial with the terms "Fugio" and "Mind Your Business". Fugio means "I flee", the sundial means time, and "mind your business" means "do your work". Therefore this rebus read, "Time flees, so do your work."

References

External links

Lashon.net has Rebus puzzles in Hebrew.

an example of using chinese-like characters to write English.

The online music review La Folia offers rebuses derived from composers' names

Category:Word puzzles Category:Symbols Category:Heraldry

Notableworks	Inspector RebusDark Entries

Ian Rankin, OBE, DL (born 28 April 1960 in Cardenden, Fife), is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.

Background

He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, he moved to Tottenham, London for four years and then rural France for six while he developed his career as a novelist. He was a Literature tutor at the University of Edinburgh, where he retains an involvement with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The 'standard biography' of Rankin, a Scot, states that before becoming a full-time novelist he worked as a grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist, college secretary and punk musician.

He lives in Edinburgh with his wife Miranda and their two sons Jack and Kit.

Writing

Rankin did not set out to be a crime writer. He thought his first novels Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek were mainstream books, more in keeping with the Scottish traditions of Robert Louis Stevenson and even Muriel Spark (the subject of Rankin's uncompleted Ph.D. thesis). He was disconcerted by their classification as genre fiction. Scottish novelist Allan Massie, who tutored Rankin while Massie was writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh, reassured him by saying, who would want to be a dry academic writer when "they could be John Buchan?"

Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels are set mainly in Edinburgh. They are considered major contributions to the Tartan Noir genre. Ten of the novels were adapted as a television series on ITV, starring John Hannah as Rebus in Series 1 & 2, with Ken Stott taking on the role for Series 3-5.

In 2009, Rankin donated the short story "Fieldwork" to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Rankin's story was published in the Earth collection. International store.]] In 2009 Rankin stated on Radio Five Live that he would start work on a five- or six-issue run on the comic book Hellblazer, although he may turn the story into a stand-alone graphic novel instead. The Vertigo Comics panel at WonderCon 2009 confirmed that the story would be published as a graphic novel called Dark Entries, the second release from the company's new Vertigo Crime imprint.

Controversy

In 2007, Rankin was criticised for saying, "the people writing the most graphic violence today are women. They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting".

Documentaries

He is a regular contributor to the BBC Two arts programme Newsnight Review. His 3-part documentary series on the subject of evil was broadcast on Channel 4 in December 2002. In 2005 he presented a 30-minute documentary on BBC Four called Rankin on the Staircase, in which he investigated the relationship between real-life cases and crime fiction. It was loosely based on the Michael Peterson murder case, as covered in Jean-Xavier Lestrade's documentary series Death on the Staircase. The same year he collaborated with folk musician Jackie Leven on the album Jackie Leven Said.

In 2007, Rankin appeared in programmes for BBC Four exploring the origins of his alter-ego character, John Rebus. Titled "Ian Rankin's Hidden Edinburgh" and "Ian Rankin Investigates Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde," Rankin looks at the origins of the character and the events that led to his creation.

In the TV show , he takes a trip through Edinburgh with writer/cook Anthony Bourdain.

Awards and honours

Elected Hawthornden Fellow

Won the Chandler-Fulbright Award.

Two Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Dagger prizes for short stories

1997 the CWA Macallan Gold Dagger for Fiction for Black and Blue (which was also short-listed for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for best novel).

2002, made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Golden Jubilee Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to literature.

2004, Edgar Award for Resurrection Men.

2005, CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger to mark a lifetime's achievement in crime writing.

2008, ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Author of the Year, for Exit Music.

He has honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, the University of Abertay Dundee, the University of St Andrews and, in 2005, from the University of Hull.

Rankin's novel Exit Music was shortlisted for Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award 2009.

Bibliography

To date he has written at least 25 novels, 2 short story collections, 1 Original Graphic Novel and 1 non-fiction book. He has also written an entry into Quick Reads 2009:

Other publications

Recordings

Jackie Leven Said (Cooking vinyl, 2005), with Jackie Leven

The Sixth Stone (CD, 2007), with Aidan Moffat, on Ballads of the Book

This Has Been the Death of Us (7th Realm Of Teenage Heaven, 2009), with Saint Jude's Infirmary

The Third Gentleman (BBC Broadcast October 25, 1997. 87mins.) Black comedy set in 1790s Edinburgh.

Graphic novels Dark Entries (September 2009) with art by Werther Dell'Edera. Published by Vertigo Crime and starring John Constantine of Hellblazer.

Short stories

An Afternoon (1984) (published in New Writing Scotland)

Voyeurism (1985) (published in New Writing Scotland)

Colony (1986) (published in New Writing Scotland)

Territory (1987) (published in Scottish Short Stories 1987)

Trip Trap (1992) (published in 1st Culprit)

Marked for Death (1992) (published in Constable New Crimes 1)

Well Shot (1993) (published in 2nd Culprit)

Someone Got to Eddie (1994) (published in 3rd Culprit)

A deep hole (1994) (published in London Noir)

Adventures in Babysitting (1995) (published in No Alibi and in Master's Choice Two)

Natural Selection (1996) (published in Fresh Blood)

Auld Lang Syne (1997) (published in The Orion Book of Murder)

Principles of Accounts (1997) (published in Mystery's Most Wanted)

Death is Not the End (1998) (novella later expanded into Dead Souls)

The Hanged Man (2000) (published in The World's finest mystery and crime stories)

Saint Nicked (2003) (published in 2 numbers of Radio Times)

Soft Spot (2005) (published in Dangerous Women)

Not just another Saturday (August 2005) (written for SNIP, a charity organisation)

Sinner: justified (2006) (published in Superhumanatural)

Criticism

Horsley, Lee, The Noir Thriller (Houndmills & New York: Palgrave, 2001).

Lanchester, John, ‘Rebusworld’, in London Review of Books 22.9 (27/4/2000), pp. 18–20.

Lennard, John, 'Ian Rankin', in Jay Parini, ed., British Writers Supplement X (New York & London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004), pp. 243–60

Mandel, Ernest, Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story (Leichhardt, NSW, & London: Pluto Press, 1984).

Nicol, Christopher, 'Ian Rankin's 'Black & Blue' Scotnote No.24 (Glasgow:ASLS Publications, 2008)

Ogle, Tina, ‘Crime on Screen’, in The Observer (London), 16/4/2000, Screen p. 8.

Plain, Gill, Ian Rankin’s Black and Blue (London & New York: Continuum, 2002)

Plain, Gillian, ‘Ian Rankin: A Bibliography’, in Crime Time 28 (2002), pp. 16–20.

Robinson, David, ‘Mystery Man: In Search of the real Ian Rankin’, in The Scotsman 10/3/2001, S2Weekend, pp. 1–4.

Rowland, Susan, ‘Gothic Crimes: A Literature of Terror and Horror’, in From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell (Houndmills & New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 110–34.

Notes

References

Nicol, Christopher: Ian Rankin's 'Black & Blue': Scotnote No.24, ASLS Publications,2008

External links

Official site

Ian Rankin's new novel sees the Return of Malcolm Fox 12th April 2011

(British Council)

Macavity's Interview

Guardian Books profile, with links to further articles.

The Reykjavík Grapevine Interview

CNN interview with Ian Rankin

2011 radio interview at The Bat Segundo Show (1 hour)

Two BooksfromScotland.com interviews with Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin's introduction to the 2007 edition of James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:People from Fife Category:People associated with Edinburgh Category:Scottish comics writers Category:Scottish crime fiction writers Category:Scottish mystery writers Category:Scottish novelists Category:Edgar Award winners Category:Cartier Diamond Dagger winners Category:Members of the Detection Club Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Category:Academics of the University of Edinburgh Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Deputy Lieutenants of Edinburgh