The swiss hornblower with ears and horns on his head

[Chris Flagstad]

In the Diebold Schilling the Younger drawing of The Battle of Grandson, there's a guy blowing a horn and wearing a hood with bull ears and horns on it.
The horns and ears look like they're sewn on like the tails of a jester's hood.


He's in black and yellow and has a bull motif, so it seems like he's associated with the canton of Uri, but the other hornblowers don't have such crazy headgear.


You see this guy pop up in toy soldiers, modern illustrations, and stuff like that. Does he show up in any other period sources?

I can't think of any depictions of anybody wearing anything like his headgear, at least not in any military scenes. Is there any context behind it?

[Mac]

I don't know of any other examples of this.

It seems sadly typical, though, that modern artists of all sorts chose to depict this guy in various media. They frequently take the most outrageous thing as the subject of their work. This is sort of natural, of course, because it's striking and interesting. The unfortunate result is that reenactors come to think of it as "normal" and emulate it.

Mac

[Chris Flagstad]

I'm definitely guilty of doing that


The Laughing Fool is wearing something really similar,


But he's not on a battlefield.

[Ernst]

The horn blower from Lucerne doesn't seem unusual, but he's got no canting heraldic charge to draw inspiration from.

[Mac]

The horn blower from Lucerne doesn't seem unusual, but he's got no canting heraldic charge to draw inspiration from.

Are there other examples of this, then? I assumed that he was singular, but I have to admit I didn't do a search to find out.

Mac

[Chris Flagstad]

I found another guy with animal ears in a military context



https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/3025924730413288/

The Pinterest post said it's from Mittelalterliches Hausbuch von Schloss Wolfegg.