I was reading M.R. James’ short story “Oh Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad”; recently I’ve been rereading him to see if I could make sense of the Latin he occasionally drops into his ghost stories. In this particular story the protagonist finds an old whistle in the ruins of an abbey and finds, upon returning to his hotel and examining it, the inscription
FLA
FUR BIS
FLE
(With “quis est iste qui venit?” on the other side)
When he blows the whistle it summons a malevolent ghost and that’s the rest of the story. But it’s the first inscription (left untranslated) that I can’t figure out. “Flabis” and “flebis” are clear enough; it’s the “furbis” that I can’t make sense of.
Ed: The forum isn’t displaying the legend correctly. The words are in a diamond, with “fla” and “fle” being the top and bottom, respectively.
The story is here, if anyone cares:
