The Killyfaddy four
The four wooden tubes which survive from a bog at Killyfaddy, Co. Tyrone are a great challenge as they may be the skeletal parts of one great early Iron Age trumpa or equally separate bits or sections of different instruments. An experiment was conducted in September 2004 at the 10th Conference of World Music Archaeology to establish one way or the other. Results are to be published in 2006 but in the intervening period, a reference was brought to light by Prof. Barry Raftery from a descriptive catalogue of antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy by W.R. Wilde in 1857, which states that ‘it was said when the tubes were discovered in 1837 that there was a thin, ornamental brass plate extending along the joinings. This may indicate that the Killyfaddy four tubes are in fact the remains of a single long trumpa or horn.
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