Any body play one of these?
Seven threads back in this forum: https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/clerorfa-concert-caernarfon-1809-with-pibgyrn/63610/1 
Thank you 
More from Jem about his pibgorn here, including link to a video clip:
https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/pibgorn-hornpipe/56856/1
I still think it’s really a duck call, not an instrument. Or he should be smoking it, not playing it. Those clever Welsh can’t fool me.
A true Welsh person would play the pibgorn whilst it is still attached to the animal’s head 
Erm…
Meaning that Welsh people are strong in that they can lift up the pibgorn and the animal at the same time
Disclaimer
Just in case anyone is wondering. No the Welsh do not play the pibgorn while it is still attached to the animals head.
When Jem gets caught running around in the fields chasing after cattle, I’m sure that is his very convenient excuse. And he’s not even Welsh …
Who’s Jem?
Erm…
Actually, thinking about it, quite a few of the horns used on pibgyrn aren’t Welsh in origin. Not all horns are suitable… Imported horns, shocking, I was shocked… 
Anyone got any horns available?
Okay, watched the videos, what is the volume like?
Also, it seems like a huge mouthpiece to keep air tight.
Well, they do say “Wales, where men are men and sheep are worried…” but that doesn’t account for cow horn!
As I understand it, post BSE (Google it if you don’t know what it is - no point us trying to explain it here…) and regulations for the suppression thereof, it isn’t legal to use British reared horn as the horn-core is linked to the spinal cord and brain in some fashion that means it is one of the proscribed parts even from perfectly healthy and certifiably uncontaminated livestock, that must be incinerated. So, all pibgorn and pibau cwd makers now have to use imported or pre BSE horn (i.e. from mounted horns from junk shop trophies etc.)
I.D.10-t, no you merely press the open end of the horn mouthpiece against your face around the lips - not a big problem to seal unless you have very awkward bone structure and no facial fleshiness! Remember, it is in effect a windcap instrument. (Google that too!) As for volume, whilst this varies with the reed, pibgyrn are really “outdoor” instruments. They aren’t overwhelming like GHBs, nor even as loud as a bombarde, but are at least equal to a uillean chanter.
Must get around to update video!
I’m sure they say a lot of original things, indeed…
I seem to remember being told that cattle-rearing practices nowadays mean there are fewer horns left on cattle than of yore. Any farmers shed light on this?
At least one maker tells me that he uses Welsh horns. Thinking about it, I met a farmer out a couple of Christmasses ago, when I was with a Mari Lwyd locally (you could Google that too!) and playing my pipes. He asked me if the horn on the pipe chanter was his, as he’d supplied another local maker.
Not sure whether Welsh pipemakers are igoring the law and being baaaaad… As it were.
I suspect so, Geraint. “Baaaaaad”, that is. It may be that there are some ways around/exemptions to the BSE regs, though. I’m certainly no expert thereon. I think John Glenydd (who made my pibgorn) himself was the one who told me about the BSE issue and I linked it up with what I already knew about that. As for horn availability, it has been standard practice on farms throughout the British Isles since at least WW2 to de-horn young cattle (and sheep) - used to be done by cauterisation with a red hot iron, I believe, but there are more humane modern methods now; usually done to calves, I think as is neutering of males - not right at birth, but well before adolescence. Sometimes the horn stumps will still grow a bit and have to be filed occasionally, I seem to recall. The argument is that it avoids nasty accidents, both between animals and to humans. Certainly I was around West Country farms as a youngster in the 1960s & 70s and one simply never saw cattle with horns, even full bulls, save for the occasional rare breed. In fact, I think leaving things more to nature and allowing some cattle to keep/grow their horns is a fairly recent thing on some farms - mid 1990s on. Ditto with more rare breed husbandry as it has become a fashionable/conservation thing. Even if it is a little more common now than at some times in the recent past, it is still very unusual to see cattle with horns in GB. There would have been relatively little British horn available in the second half of the C20th even without BSE regulations at the tail end thereof ( - no horns at the tail end! ). That said, there was probably always a highland/lowland split - as ever - with more “old fashioned” breeds and practices surviving to a greater extent/longer in the Welsh, Scottish and English mountain/hill regions.
Oh, yeah, and a word for devilsome frogs meddling where…
“SPLAT”
No dilemma!
Jem, an aside question, just because I’m curious.
Looking at your avatar, is that you? If it is, what is that thing coming out of the back of your flute? As far as I can make it out, it’s a Baroque (or early 19th c. )flute, and any whispy black thingie seems a bit out of place.
Sorry, the rest of you, just curious, really..
Yuri, I think that’s just the end of a microphone pointing toward the flute from outside the frame.
Or maybe it’s one of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaltOiolIEU
Hi Yuri, yep, that’s me, and The Guru is spot on - it is the bulb of a microphone (NOT a water sprinkler/mega-reverb inducer!!! ) - just a visual, angle of view juxtaposition - I wasn’t all that close to it! You’re right abot the flute, it is a 1-key boxwood flute made probably in the 1820s by Norton of Shaftesbury, Dorset. It has far larger embouchure and tone-holes than a Baroque flute and is tuned to a little above A=440 the Baroque cross fingerings mostly work adequately on it, though as one would expect F natural is very poor, especially in the lower octave.
Here’s the original, uncropped picture:
and here’s the flute:
Enough about flutes on here! Back to pibgyrn!
I was talking to a friend at my local sesh last night (whose flute I have recently done up and who was retrieving it from me - the “Douglas” German one I recently put a clip of on YouTube) who has been experimenting with making pibgyrn. He told me he had been given a supply of British cow horns by a friend who is a vet - probably in contravention of the BSE regs, but what the hell! It’s who you know… Previously he had bought horn stock from a German specialist supplier to the early woodwind trade (as in Mediaeval/Renaissance instrument makers).
Ah… Thanks for the clarification. Neat looking flute.