flageolet
OBSOLETE high six-holed wind instrument (similar to recorder but with different arrangement of finger-holes and thumb-holes), used e.g. in Handel’s Rinaldo
LOL! 
Jim
Sudden urge to write pretentious letter to Penguin saying:
My attorneys will be in touch with you immediately!
At least they didn’t say “deprecated.” That’s a word out of computer lingo, it means “still used but not recommended.” 
This touches back to an interesting subject that’s been touched on before: when is a whistle a flageolet? When is a flageolet a whistle? Ralph Sweet calls his wooden whistles flageolets. Some actual historic flageolets have six finger holes like a whistle, but the fipple has a sponge compartment and looks completely different than a whistle fipple. Other flageolets had two thumb holes in the back and four finger holes on the front. Still others has six finger holes and six keys, like a six-key flute.
Are all whistles flageolets but not all flageolets are whistles?
Or are all flageolets whistles but not all whistles are flageolets?
Or do thoughts like this just mean I’m not wound too tight?!? 
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
I think, strictly speaking, that it’s only a flageolet in the historical sense if it has four finger holes and two thumb holes. Flageolets were French instruments and very similar to the recorder, both in sound and in shape.
I’ve never been sure why Generation insists on refering to its whistles as “flageolets.” Perhaps the originators of the Generation whistle thought the name sounded more “fancy” (or less like a toy) than “whistle.”
The flageolet is more or less obsolete (some people still make them, but they’re more a curiousity than anything else)…but the good ol’ whistle is still going strong!
Redwolf
Correct, flageolet is a French word. In XXth century music, “flageolet” mostly refers to the school-years 8-holes recorder, to avoid confusion with the flute. This gets obsolete, since modern French language nicknamed “flageolets” the common white beans on the ground they’re “musicians” if you kkknnnnigggeeets follow my general direction 
So we distinguish it more often as “flûte à bec” as opposed to the (transverse) “flûte traversière” or “flûte d’orchestre”.
In the French original flageolet fingering, it did have two thumb-holes (though I’ve seen 5 top + 1 back hole), but I understood it got much wider favor in the 19th century in England, with our “whistle” fingering, among the gentry and/or well-to-do population.
The British version evolved to grow a long straw-like duckbill. This shape always reminds me the silver straw-pipe Argentinians use to sip “mate” herb tea.
To my knowledge ony Alba whistles offer this as a choice to-day. Ask them the whys and hows, there’s gotta be some techical or historical research behind.
Given the advantages of thumb holes (especially the top one) I always wondered why the British fingering switched all holes to the top. Could it come from the tin whistle, where the underside metal-sheet seam forbids or hampers the thumb bores ?
[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2002-11-27 18:30 ]
That would make some sense. A thumb hole would be pretty hard to manage on a rolled tin tube…and given that Clarke was catering more to the common folk than the gentry with its 19th century version of the whistle, the company probably would have gone for the “cheap-but-still-functional” rolled tin with six top holes configuration. That would also explain why Generation would have gone with the word “flageolet”…perhaps they DID hope to attract a more “high-tone” market.
As far as why have the six top holes (and no thumb hole) at all…my suspicion is that casual musicians found it less confusing. Beginning recorder players really seem to have a time figuring out how in the heck to use that thumb hole. Straight-up fingering for a scale, just blowing a little harder to get a second octave, doesn’t require memorizing as many finger/thumb positions. Of course, it also makes the instrument less flexible, but if you’re playing relatively simple tunes, rather than lush Baroque compositions, that’s not so big a deal.
Redwolf
I don’t know about the whole “flageolet” thing, but what I do know is that
I LIKE MY WHISTLES.
'nuff said.