? nonce-wd. A contrivance said by Langtoft and his translator Robert of Brunne to have been used by the English at the battle of the Standard, in order to discomfit the Scots by terrifying their cattle with a subterraneous noise.
Langtoft’s words are ‘Homme dist, tymmers Englays suz terre avayent.’ The original source seems to be the following: ‘Idem archiepiscopus [Thurstinus] … fieri jussit in viis subterraneis quædam instrumenta sonos horribiles reddentia, quæ Anglice dicuntur Petronces’ (Life of Abp. Thurstan in Raine, Historians of Church of York, II. 266).
c. 1330. R. Brunne, Chron. (1810), 118. Yn ilk strete & way þei ordeynd an erþe horn. Ibid. Þis was at Kouton more, þat þe erþe hornes blewe Þer þe Scottis misfore.
