Torrs Pony-cap and Horns

The Torrs Horns and Torrs Pony-cap (once together known as the Torrs Chamfrein) are Iron Age bronze pieces now in the National Museum of Scotland, which were found together, but whose relationship is one of many questions about these "famous and controversial" objects that continue to be debated by scholars. Most scholars agree that horns were added to the pony-cap at a later date, but whether they were originally made for this purpose is unclear; one theory sees them as mounts for drinking-horns, either totally or initially unconnected to the cap. The three pieces are decorated in a late stage of La Tène style, as Iron Age Celtic art is called by archaeologists. The dates ascribed to the elements vary, but are typically around 200 BC; it is generally agreed that the horns are somewhat later than the cap, and in a rather different style.

Whatever the original appearance and functions of the objects, and wherever they were made, they are very finely designed and skillfully executed, and form part of a small surviving group of elaborate metal objects found around the British Isles that were commissioned by the elite of Iron Age British and Irish society in the final centuries before the arrival of the Romans.

The artefacts were found together, "about 1820" and "before 1829", in a peat bog at Torrs Farm, Kelton, Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, the context suggesting they were a votive deposit (the bog may once have been a pool or lake). It was thought that the horns were detached from the cap at finding, but a recently unearthed contemporary newspaper report says they were attached. They were given by the local exciseman to the novelist Sir Walter Scott, and long displayed with the horns attached to the cap at Abbotsford House, which was opened for public visits from 1833, soon after Scott's death. The horns are currently exhibited fixed onto the cap, pointing backwards, but were originally mounted pointing forwards, and have also been displayed detached from the cap.

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Wikipedia