Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1978 - 15

are now, however, all identified and secure in the
National Museum of Ireland, the Ulster
Museum and the Yorkshire Museum. It seems
likely that all of these Bronze Age horns were so
impressive to their finders and early owners that
care was taken to ensure their safekeeping.
Almost 150 bronze horns dating to the late
Bronze Age period (1000-500 b.c.) still exist. Not
all of the discoverers, however, were careful with
the handling of the horns. Instruments were
tested for their musical properties, sometimes
with drastic complications, and the slightly later
Iron Age trumpets and horns from Ireland and
Britain were blown, paraded around and even
melted down on occasion. Probably apocryphal is
the tale of one such discovery: "the finder, as
soon as he had cleared the tubes of the moss
which they contained, applied the smaller end of
the larger joint to his mouth, and blew a blast,
which immediately arrested the attention of the
inhabitants of several adjacent townlands, who
hurried to the spot " (UlsterJournal of Archaeology
8 [I860]: 103). Such volume and range can only
be compared with Alexander the Great's
mythical horn which could be heard over
sixty miles away.
Irish horns are of two main types: the
instrument blown on one end and a horn blown
from the side. Both have their origin in the cow
horn, with its tip cut off for the ordinary end-blow
type, and a hole drilled in the side for the more
unusual side type. Many versions, usually made
of animal horn, exist today in parts of Africa,
Asia and America. The Irish horns were made
of tin and bronze, and were cast in a two-piece
mold with an inner collapsible clay core held in .
place by small pieces of metal called chaplets or
core-supporters. The horns are curved and
conical, and the metal is 1.5 millimeters (0.06
inch, 1/17 inch) thick. The positioning of the
core is critical, and parts of it still remain in the
closed end of the side-blow instrument. Over
two-thirds of the known horns were repaired in
antiquity, mostly because of faulty casting where
the hot metal failed to run between the mold
wall and the core. The side-blow horns are
one-piece instruments, made of a single piece of
metal measuring fifty to eighty centimeters in
length; the end-blow horns sometimes had an
additional straight metal tube which was inserted
into the conical horn to lengthen the instrument
to over one meter, thereby increasing its range
of notes. All types of horns were embellished by
cast or beaten decoration of bands, zigzags or

small cones. Two distinct Irish provinces where
instruments were made can be identified by
these decorations. One-piece horns with band
and zigzag decoration are found in northeast
Ireland; southwest Irish horns have cone
decoration.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the
horns is that almost all of them have been
"killed" by the removal of their mouthpieces.
The killing of an instrument is generally thought
to be an attempt to remove it from the world, so
that it could not be used again, until, perhaps,
it was brought to life in another place. The
side-blow horns have very wide mouthholes and
if ethnographic examples of animal horns are a
guide, then there should have been some form
of built-up mouthpiece to help the player direct
breath into the instrument. As they exist at the
moment, the horns are playable only with
difficulty. The first experiment to assess the
notes and volume of these horns was undertaken
in 1860 by Robert Ball of Dublin. Although he
could produce "a deep bass note, resembling the
bellowing of a bull," his laudable performance
went unrewarded as the contemporary account
records: "... it is a melancholy fact that the loss
of this gentleman's life was occasioned by a
subsequent experiment of the same kind. In the
act of attempting to produce a distinct sound on
a large trumpet ... he burst a blood vessel, and
died a few days after" (UlsterJournal of
Archaeology 8 [I860]: 101). More recent attempts
by the author have been less damaging, with
each horn yielding only one true note, apart
from the various raspberries blown inadvertently.
These notes range from g to e1.
The end-blow horns so far uncovered also
lack their mouthpieces, and most of them possess
a flange onto which a short tubular piece should
be fitted. Only three or four existing horns have
the tubular piece actually cast onto the main
body. No other mouthpieces have ever been
found. It is likely that the peat bogs where the
horns were found would have preserved
mouthpieces made of wood or bone, but where
and what these mouthpieces are remains a
mystery. The horns minus mouthpieces yield two
to four notes; the Drumbest horns, for example,
11
produce f d#l c" f , and a two-piece horn
from County Kerry can be made to sound
B b f #l b1 d#l . These notes, however, lack
quality since they are produced without original
mouth supports and the tube ends are
unpleasantly sharp.
15
Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1978

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