A while back I started prowling through the online collection of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden to try to find more accessories or other items to help flesh out my 9th-century Frisian kit and I ran across a wooden pipe found in a terp (raised artificial dwelling mound) in Britsum, Netherlands, and dated between 800 and 1000 CE. The image above shows the original find (Museum No. a 1907/8.197). It is clearly some sort of woodwind musical instrument and is quite similar to an instrument found during the excavation of a shipyard in Falster, Denmark, on the Fribrødre River (the Falster pipe is dated to 1050-1100 CE).

The map below shows the approximate location of Britsum, a village just north of Leeuwarden in western Frisia.

There was very little additional information available on the object, which was acquired by the museum in 1907 and was likely dug up by farmers. It is simply cataloged as “shawm or hornpipe,” although the museum database does include a note suggesting how the complete instrument might have looked: “on one side a reed (with a horn over it) is placed, on the other side a horn.” Regardless, it is clearly some sort of woodwind musical instrument and is quite similar to an instrument found during the excavation of a shipyard in Falster, Denmark, on the Fribrødre River (the Falster pipe is dated to 1050-1100 CE). Despite knowing almost nothing about the physics behind woodwinds, nor how to play anything but a pennywhistle, I decided to try to make one to see how it might work.

The other two early medieval pipes I am aware of (the Falster example and another from Lund, Sweden, both dated c.1050 CE; see Lund 2010) are fragmentary, or at best include only the body. The Swedish example was found with a small leather fragment, suggesting it may have been attached to a bag, but neither the Falster nor the Britsum pipes have any traces of other components. There is some speculation over whether the Falster pipe was used on its own or served as the chanter of a bagpipe (the bit the bag is attached to), but it makes no difference in the construction of instrument itself. Either the reed end is blown directly, and the tenon is there to accept some sort of mouthpiece or reed cap, or a bag would be attached to the tenon over the reed. The other tenon would have a cow-horn attached to form a bell, amplifying the sound of the instrument.

I was immediately struck by the similarity to the Welsh instrument known as the pibgorn (literally “horn pipe”). Aside from the number of holes, the principle and construction are the same, and the pibgorn itself is a medieval instrument that is clearly depicted in iconography in the mid-1400s. There are certainly other folk instruments in use today that are quite similar–the Basque alboka also uses a horn reed cap, and the Slavic version called the zhaleika is virtually identical to the pibgorn aside from the mouthpiece, which is a separate wooden tube attached over the reed instead of the cow-horn funnel. So I was pretty confident that a single-reed, horn lower bell, and horn reed cap would at least be plausible for a reconstruction.

Making the pipe

Step 1: drilling the bore and finger holes

The Rijksmuseum does not list the wood species, but it seems likely that, like the Falster and Lund examples, it was made from elder, which has a soft core that is very easy to push out without drilling. Since I had no idea what I was doing, I wanted to try something that would be durable, so I looked to the construction of slightly later medieval reed instruments made from hardwoods, such as the small c.1400 pipe chanter from Rostock, Germany, which is believed to be from maple (Rezanka 2014) . Today, some woodwinds are still made from maple, and I even had a few pieces on hand that were already close to the right size.

I used a long drill bit to drill the bore–on my first try, I used a standard-length bit and had to go in from each end and try to meet in the middle. This was a terrible idea, and although the first iteration was playable, there was a very slight step in the bore where I was misaligned by about a millimeter. This was enough to create absolute chaos with the airflow. The second iteration, using an 8″ long bit to drill straight through, worked beautifully with minimal adjustment. I scaled the hole spacing from the photograph of the original pipe and used a smaller drill bit to drill the finger holes. These started out undersized, since I knew I might need to enlarge them a bit later on and it is always easier to remove material rather than try to put it back.

Step 2: Shape the tenons

The tenons are the rounded bits at either end. The cow-horn pieces fit around the tenons (or in the case of a bagpipe, the bag would be attached to the upper tenon). I did not measure these, since they are basically the same diameter as the rest of the pipe and just needed to be rounded instead of square in cross section. The horn bells could be cut to fit after the fact. I used a handsaw to cut the tenon shoulders and a knife to whittle them to size, plus a bit of cleanup with sandpaper.

Here you can see the sawcut for the tenon shoulder and the top end of the bore.

Step 3: Carve the body

The area over the fingerholes is much thinner than the rest of the body, so I used a handsaw to set the depth on either side of the recess and then a chisel to shave down the area in between. I then used a small knife to carved the X-shaped decoration on the bits in between.

Beginning to remove excess material above the fingerholes.

Step 4: Seat and adjust the reed

The reed is what actually makes the instrument produce a tone. Unlike a recorder, which has a fipple block and windway, or a flute where you blow across an opening at one end, for this type of instrument the reed itself needs to vibrate. The simplest form of reed is made by slicing partway through a tubular section of reed cane just below one of the natural joints. The thin slice forms the reed tongue, which is stabilized with a bit of string tied around it (this is called the bridle). The closed end of the tube, blocked off by the reed joint, goes up toward the player’s mouth while the open end of the tube is inserted into the top of the wooden instrument body. All the air blown into the reed is forced in under the tongue to create the necessary vibration. It actually works a lot like a tiny version of a clarinet mouthpiece, although a clarinet reed is a separate strip that is clamped to the tubular mouthpiece.

Welsh piper John Tose has a nice tutorial on how to make a cane reed from scratch, but ready-made ones can also be found online for a few bucks each (they are sold as miniature bagpipe drones). I started with a ready-made one and shaved it down slightly so that it required less force to produce sound. The tongue also needs to be propped open about a millimeter, so I followed Tose’s advice and used a bit of horsehair for this.

Closeup of the reed showing the horsehair that wedges the tongue open. The left (top) end of the reed is sealed by the natural joint in the cane. The open lower end (right side) is wrapped with thread to help it sit securely in the bore.

A hypothetical reconstruction: the mouthpiece

While it is possible to play the pipe by simply sticking the whole reed end in one’s mouth, you need to get a tight seal with the lips below the bridle. It is much easier to do this with a mouthpiece to surround the reed and funnel all the air into it instead. The reed is also very delicate, and any shifting of the bridle or the horsehair can affect the pitch of the instrument or even keep it from sounding at all. A simple wooden tube would work as a mouthpiece, or really anything that fits over the upper tenon and completely covers the reed without interfering with it. I decided to go the pibgorn route and use a piece of cow horn. I sawed it off to the appropriate size and bored out the narrow end so that it would fit loosely over the tenon. I wrapped a bit of waxed linen cord around the tenon to act as a gasket and make a nice tight seal. The lower bell was more or less the same process as the mouthpiece, but uses a larger piece of horn. It mainly increases the volume of the instrument, to the horror and dismay of my three cats.

Adjustments and playability

At this point, the instrument was functional, but I still had some room for adjustment in pitch and tuning. For starters, the reed can be adjusted by pushing it deeper into the bore or by moving the bridle up or down; all of these things change the overall pitch of the instrument. The diameter of the finger holes also affects individual notes relative to the starting pitch. The lowest note on a woodwind instrument is produced when the tube is at its longest, i.e. when all the holes are covered up. As individual holes are opened (starting from the bottom), the tube gets shorter and the notes are higher in pitch, but the intervals between each note can be adjusted a little bit by enlarging individual holes to raise the pitch slightly. Interestingly, I ended up enlarging the middle hole a little more than the other two and upon closer inspection, that seems to be what happened on the original pipe from Britsum too!

Ultimately, I believe that the final product is conjectural–I think it is a reasonable (if crude) Welsh pibgorn, and perhaps a plausible Early Medieval instrument. My suspicion is that mine at least approximates the sound of the Britsum pipe, since I tried playing it without the upper or lower horn pieces attached and found that the sound doesn’t change much. So clearly the tone depends primarily on the reed and body, and the exact configuration of mouthpiece (or bag) and lower bell is not especially relevant. A version from elder wood at a perfect 1:1 scale would likely yield a more accurate sense of the original Britsum pipe’s sound, but the size and seating of the reed also makes a big difference. Since this element was not preserved, it is impossible to reconstruct the pipe completely faithfully. Based on the measurements of the Lund, Falster, and Britsum examples, my pipe falls somewhere within the documented range as far as bore diameter (and thus reed diameter) and bore length–the main factors that affect pitch and tone, not material (see Backus 1964 and Coltman 1971). So it seems likely that the sound of my pipe would not have stood out as unusual to an early medieval listener. Overall I am relieved that despite a total lack of useful experience, a bunch of mistakes, and some material compromises, I have a playable instrument.

Here’s the finished pipe shortly before it got a dip in boiled linseed oil to seal and protect it from moisture. The image above shows it with the mouthpiece off so the reed is visible. The red string is the bridle.

Click the video below to hear what the pipe sounds like [WARNING: IT IS LOUD—start with your volume down]. I have no idea how to play it properly, but it at least sounds like a “real instrument.” Perhaps the Britsum pipe might have sounded similar? Who knows. It sounds a bit like a modern clarinet or very mellow saxophone when I play it, but I think as my playing improves and I learn to incorporate the sorts of trills and vibrato techniques commonly heard in bagpipe and pibgorn performance today, it will sound more like a historical instrument.

References:

“Schalmei/hoornpijp vlechtbandversiering, 3 greepgaten.” 800-1000 CE. Museum No. a 1907/8.197. Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, Netherlands. https://www.rmo.nl/en/collection/search-collection/collection-piece/?object=143868

Backus, J. (1964 ). “Effect of Wall Material on the Steady-State Tone Quality of Woodwind Instruments.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 36, no. 10 : 1881-1887.

Balfour, H. (1891). The Old British “Pibcorn” or “Hornpipe” and its Affinities. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 20, 142–154. https://doi.org/10.2307/2842233

Coltman, J. W. (1971). “Effect of Material on Flute Tone Quality.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49, no. 2: 520-523.

Hardy, C. F. (1902). The Music in the Glass of the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick. Sammelbände Der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 3(3), 454–467. http://www.jstor.org/stable/929156

Lund, C. S. (2010). ‘People and Their Soundscape in Viking-Age Scandinavia: Critical Reflections in a Music-Archaeological Perspective.’ Studien zur Musikarchäologie VII.Ricardo Eichmann – Ellen Hickmann – Lars-Christian Koch (HRSG). DEUTSCHES ARCHÄOLOGISCHES INSTITUT: ORIENT-ABTEILUNG Orient-Archäologie Band 25.

Rezanka, T. (2014). ‘The Rostock Chanter,’ Chanter [Journal of the Bagpipe Society]. Winter 2014: 22-28. https://www.bagpipesociety.org.uk/articles/2014/chanter/winter/the-rostock-chanter/ 

Tose, J. (2013). ‘Making a Pibgorn.’ https://johntose.blogspot.com/2013/04/making-pibgorn_6.html