Which character, played in a popular film of 2009, shares his name with what appears to have been, according to at least two famous poets, an old form of trumpet?

daBomb619

Horace Slughorn, the new Potions teacher in the film "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". "...in a poem about the Battle of Hastings he writes "some caught a slughorne and an onsett wounde" (Battle of Hastings ii.99), meaning "some picked up a slughorn and sounded a charge". A slughorn in this context appears to be some kind of trumpet. However in a footnote to another usage of the word, Chatterton defines it as "not unlike a hautboy". The Medieval English word hautboy is the origin of the modern word oboe and has never referred to any instrument comparable to a trumpet. Chatterton's usage inspired Robert Browning in his poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, in particular the last stanza in which the hero sees the ghosts of all those who died trying to reach the Dark Tower before him. 'I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. "Child Roland to the Dark Tower came."' ("Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" xxxiv.4-6). Horace Slughorn is a character in the Harry Potter series of novels by J. K. Rowling." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slughorn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Half-Blood_Prince_(film) Aug 17 09, 8:18 PM

gmackematix

An answer worthy of an E at OWL level! Slughorn is an appropriately slimy sounding name for the Hogwarts prof who lives rather cushily due to the connections and influence of the students he "collects" in his club. However, the word seems to mean a wind instrument, and is related to the word slogan, which in turn comes from the Celtic for "war cry". Aug 17 09, 8:39 PM