Hornpipe

In the early 20^th century, a wooden object was found in the Britsum terp in Friesland: it turned out to be a wooden centrepiece of an instrument dated between 800 and 1000 AD. We would like to highlight a fairly underexposed instrument from early medieval Frisia: the hornpipe.

The hornpipe is a reed instrument: the sound is produced by blowing on a reed, which then vibrates and makes a sound. In the original find from Britsum, at one end was thus a reed - possibly with a mouthpiece made of horn or wood - that could be blown. On the other side was a horn that amplified the sound.

The hornpipe was not found exclusively in Frisia. Similar finds of elderwood centrepieces were found in Lund (Sweden) and Falster (Denmark), and are dated around 1050 AD. The find from Lund included a piece of leather, suggesting that it was possibly part of a bagpipe. Furthermore, the hornpipe appears in several depictions from the late Middle Ages, such as in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and in the stained glass in St. Mary's Church in Warwick. Variants of the hornpipe are also known as folk instrument from Wales (pibgorn), Bellarus/Russia (zhaleika), Spain (gaita serrana) and India (pepa), among others.

Tooting the hornpipe was very popular in the Middle Ages; so probably also in early medieval Frisia! For this reason we have attempted to make a hornpipe ourselves. However, we note that none of us is a professional instrument maker. Thus, the sound from our reconstruction may not be what the hornpipe from Britsum once sounded like. We suspect that the sound of a skilfully-made, modern-day Welsh pibgorn comes closer to the Britsum hornpipe than our reconstruction does. Audio fragments of both our reconstruction, and a modern-day Welsh pibgorn have been added.