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E Clampus Vitus · The Hewgag
Blow the Hewgag
The Hewgag is the great tin horn of E Clampus Vitus. A newspaper of 1896 called it “a big horn that can be heard all over town.” Here is one to turn over in your hands, at the top of a mining-camp street at dusk. Hold the button and blow: the longer the blast, the farther it carries, and the town wakes up.
How to play it
- Hold the button, or press and hold on the horn itself, or hold the space bar when the button has focus. Let go to stop. A short toot reaches the nearest houses; a long blast reaches the hills.
- Drag to turn around the horn, scroll or pinch to come closer. Down the bell looks back up the horn from the town’s side.
- The sound is made on your own device as you play; turn your volume down first if you are somewhere quiet.
What we know of the Hewgag
The word is first found at Sierraville, California, in January 1884, and a paper of 1896 described the horn as “a big horn that can be heard all over town.” The order’s history of 1966, Then and Now, calls it “the great tin horn” of the order, which “sounded a horrendous blast.” Where the word came from, nobody has said. The story, with every early word of the order dated by its first appearance, is in E Clampus Vitus: the complete record.
No two lodges’ horns need be alike, and this one is imagined from those words: a long cone of rolled tin, soldered at three joints, with a wide bell, a few dents from the road home, and a red cord for the red shirts. It is not a copy of any real horn, and the town is not any one town.
Made by Project Scroll in three.js (MIT licence); the horn, the town and the sound are drawn and synthesised in the page. Project Scroll is independent research. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by E Clampus Vitus, Inc. or any of its chapters, and it does not speak for the order. E Clampus Vitus®, ECV® and Clampers® are registered trademarks of E Clampus Vitus, Inc., named here only to identify the order.