GABLETS (diminutive of “gable”), in architecture, triangular terminations to buttresses, much in use in the Early English and Decorated periods, after which the buttresses generally terminated in pinnacles. The Early English gablets are generally plain, and very sharp in pitch. In the Decorated period they are often enriched with panelling and crockets. They are sometimes finished with small crosses, but of oftener with finials.
GABLONZ (Czech, Jablonec), a town of Bohemia, Austria, 94 m. N.E. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 21,086, mostly German. It is the chief seat of the glass pearl and imitation jewelry manufacture, and has also an important textile industry, and produces large quantities of hardware, papier mâché and other paper goods.
GABORIAU, ÉMILE (1833-1873), French novelist, was born at Saujon (Charente Inférieure) on the 9th of November 1833. He became secretary to Paul Féval, and, after publishing some novels and miscellaneous writings, found his real gift in L’Affaire Lerouge (1866), a detective novel which was published in the Pays and at once made his reputation. The story was produced on the stage in 1872. A long series of novels dealing with the annals of the police court followed, and proved very popular. Among them are: Le Crime d’Orcival (1867), Monsieur Lecoq (1869), La Vie infernale (1870), Les Esclaves de Paris (1869), L’Argent des autres (1874). Gaboriau died in Paris on the 28th of September 1873.
GABRIEL (Heb. גבריאל, man of God), in the Bible, the heavenly messenger (see [Angel]) sent to Daniel to explain the vision of the ram and the he-goat, and to communicate the prediction of the Seventy Weeks (Dan. viii. 16, ix. 21). He was also employed to announce the birth of John the Baptist to Zacharias, and that of the Messiah to the Virgin Mary (Luke i. 19, 26). Because he stood in the divine presence (see Luke i. 19; Rev. viii. 2; and cf. Tobit xii. 15), both Jewish and Christian writers generally speak of him as an archangel. In the Book of Enoch “the four great archangels” are Michael, Uriel, Suriel or Raphael, and Gabriel, who is set over “all the powers” and shares the work of intercession. His name frequently occurs in the Jewish literature of the later post-Biblical period. Thus, according to the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, he was the man who showed the way to Joseph (Gen. xxxvii. 15); and in Deut. xxxiv. 6 it is affirmed that he, along with Michael, Uriel, Jophiel, Jephephiah and the Metatron, buried the body of Moses. In the Targum on 2 Chron. xxxii. 21 he is named as the angel who destroyed the host of Sennacherib; and in similar writings of a still later period he is spoken of as the spirit who presides over fire, thunder, the ripening of the fruits of the earth and similar processes. In the Koran great prominence is given to his function as the medium of divine revelation, and, according to the Mahommedan interpreters, he it is who is referred to by the appellations “Holy Spirit” and “Spirit of Truth.” He is specially commemorated in the calendars of the Greek, Coptic and Armenian churches.
GABRIEL HOUNDS, a spectral pack supposed in the North of England to foretell death by their yelping at night. The legend is that they are the souls of unbaptized children wandering through the air till the day of judgment. They are also sometimes called Gabriel or Gabble Ratchet. A very prosaic explanation of this nocturnal noise is given by J.C. Atkinson in his Cleveland Glossary (1868). “This,” he writes, “is the name for a yelping sound heard at night, more or less resembling the cry of hounds or yelping of dogs, probably due to large flocks of wild geese which chance to be flying by night.”