I'm subscribed to the snopes.com mailing list, and this week's newsletter contained a report on urban legend about the origin of the US military bugle call known as Taps. Having never heard it, I downloaded it, and immediately thought that it sounded like the piece known in the Commonwealth as "The Last Post". So, I went looking to see if I could find out where they came from, and which came first. This led me, among other places, to this:
In reply to:
The Last Post is one of a number of bugle calls in military tradition which mark the phases of the day. Where "Reveille" signaled the start of a soldier's day, the "Last Post" signaled its end. It is believed originally to have been part of a more elaborate routine, known in the British Army as "tattoo", that had its origins in the 17th century. During the evening, a duty officer had to do the rounds of his unit's position, checking that the sentry posts were manned and rounding up the off-duty soldiers and packing them off to their beds or billets. He would be accompanied by one or more musicians. The "first post" was sounded when the duty officer started his rounds and, as the party proceeded from post to post, a drum was played. The drum beats told off-duty soldiers it was time to rest - if the soldiers were billeted in a town, the beats told them it was time to quit the pubs. "Tattoo" is a derivation of doe den tap toe, Dutch for "turn off the taps", a call which is said to have followed the drum beats in many a Dutch pub while English armies were campaigning through Holland and Flanders in the 1690s. (It is also from this routine that American practice of "taps" or "drum taps" originated.) Another bugle call was sounded when the party completed their rounds, when they reached the "last post": this signaled the night sentries were alert at their posts and gave one last warning to any soldiers still at large that it was time to retire for the evening. "Last Post" was incorporated into funeral and memorial services as a final farewell and symbolises that the duty of the dead is over and that they can rest in peace.
Does that sound feasible as an etymology? It sounds a bit legendary itself, to me.
Tapping into a Dutch Tattoo?
