Olifant

The olifant (in the past “ oliphant ”) is a Musical instrument with wind of the family of the horns.

It is a horn of a great dimension, makes usually defense of elephant furnished with metal rings to suspend it. Olifant was a horn of war and as hunting, it was used to give signals, to rejoin the troops, to announce the approach of an enemy.

Olifant was thus a instrument which the chiefs carried, or a man who followed them (as the modern radios follow the lieutenant) and than they embouchaient with the war, to join together their world, or to prevent of their approach. The guettor of the castle has only one horn, to give signals; olifant was the horn of noble, of the lord having barons under its orders. Everyone knows the legend of Roland. When it fights in the processions of Roncevaux, that it sees his companions died for the majority, it puts then olifant it at its mouth. The hero holds with its olifant as much as with his sword; when it feels death to come, not being able to break Durandal, it puts its horn in parts, then lie down under a pine to die.

Olifant was then a distinctive mark of command, of dignity, that the large ones, only, carried to the war, and it was dishonouring to let take this instrument considered as noble. On one of the corbel X of the one of the doors of the frontage of the abbey church of Vézelay, an angel which announces the birth of the Saver carries one olifant in shoulder-belt. This horn is worked with sides.

The olifants of Ivoire were often richly carved; our public collections and private preserve of it certain a one very old time number (of the X^e at the 12th century), over which are illustrated in low-reliefs of huntings, of the real or fantastic animals. The majority of these objects were several times engraved; they affect all the same form, imposed besides by the curve of the defense of elephant.

Source: Purple the Duke

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