I saw one of these in my Lark in the Morning Catalog I got a couple days ago.
It caught my eye because it was so odd-looking…as does most of the stuff in that catalog. I just stand around holding the catalog looking at all the odd things I didn’t even know existed!
Everything that I see that I want costs a hundred million dollars (or might as well). Still, I can’t help just standing and looking. I am lucky if I make it to the front door of the house before opening it…I rarely bother to sit down, and then once the catalog is open, I’m stuck for a few minutes…just standing and looking!
That’s the end of my Lark in the Morning Catalog story.
Kim
Hey I want one! 
Doc
To quote my rustic forebears -
“Whut th’ heyell is thet?”
Looks like a cross between a Clarke original and a descending colon.
On 2002-11-17 20:07, jim_mc wrote:
Looks like a cross between a Clarke original and a descending colon.
Minus the holes of course.
Ahhh! Double post!
[ This Message was edited by: jeffmiester on 2002-11-17 20:11 ]
Coooooool!!! Looks just like me!
serpent
If you heard the sound of it you wouldn’t want one, believe me.
why, does is sound like a farting colon?
That’s a reproduction of a very old English instrument.
I could imagine the rustics in a Thomas Hardy novel playing one in the Church Gallery for a Sunday service.
Hey, Bill, at least they deferred to you and spelled theirs different! 
-Paul
I want to bring one of those babies to the session. That’ll make everybody love the bodhran players.
hehehe.
On 2002-11-18 10:14, Paul wrote:
Hey, Bill, at least they deferred to you and spelled theirs different! >-Paul
Nuts. And I was hoping for tons of publicity once people saw the snakey thing and thought it was me!
Serp
-Looks pretty arcane, but a predilection for tin whistles sounds that way for most people too.
Not that I know the faintest thing about the instrument, but it looks proto-tuba-ish.
(yes,the word “taste” would fit, but “predilection” makes it sound, well, a little kinky)
On 2002-11-18 05:41, Martin Milner wrote:
That’s a reproduction of a very old English instrument.I could imagine the rustics in a Thomas Hardy novel playing one in the Church Gallery for a Sunday service.
There’s one in the village band in Hardy’s novel Under the Greenwood Tree .
Praise whistlers might want to note this interesting fact from the New Oxford Companion to Music , s.v.:
The serpent was known first in France, shortly before 1600 (reputedly the invention of a canon of Auxerre). Its function there was to support the singing of plainchant (for which the organ was for a long time not used: the Frnech Royal Chapel had its joueur de serpent up to at least the 1720s, and still in the early 20th century the serpent (or replaced by ophicleide) is said to have been performing the same duty in some French parish churches.
John
The serpent, and the cornet (not to be confused with the modern cornet), were a sort of bridge between the woodwinds and the brass instruments. Their mouthpiece was like a trumpet, but the fingering was more like a clarinet, whistle, or such.
The serpent was a very low-pitched instrument, while the cornet was the higher-pitched version. The cornet might be viewed as a European version of the shofar with fingering holes. The Authorized Version of the Bible uses the word cornet to translate the Hebrew word shofar.
So, serpant is a misspelling?
No, Serpent is a miscreant.
OK, so why hasn’t anyone made a curvy low D? Seems like that might help the finger stretch…