Midwinter horn

[1] A mouthpiece, usually made of elder wood, is added;[2] this is cut at a slant, like that of the Celtic carnyx, and the horn is played laterally.

[2] The playing of wooden horns at midwinter is an old tradition on either side of the Dutch-German border that has been revived in recent years in, for example, the County of Bentheim in Germany and Twente in the Netherlands.

[7] The first recorded mention of the midwinter horn dates to 1815,[7] but the tradition is generally thought to derive from Germanic Yule custom, both to summon help and to repel evil spirits.

The Indiculus proscribes the sounding of horns along with the playing of bells as Saxon heathen methods of warding off bad weather.

[9] The region is a Catholic enclave within overwhelmingly Protestant areas, and the horns may well have been blown to warn neighbouring farmers of danger; during the German occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War, they were used to signal the approach of a patrol.