clarion (klarion)

[ Pypes, trompes, nakeres, and clariounes, That in the bataille blowe bloody sownes. Chaucer, Knight's Tale (ed. Morris), L. 1653. Sound, sound the clarion , fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name. Scott, Old Mortality, xxxiv. 2. Hence, any sound resembling that of a clarion; any instrument which utters sounds like those of a clarion. And his this drum, whose hoarse, heroic ba Drowns the loud clarion of the braying a . Pope, Dunciad, ii. 234. The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. Gray, Elegy. 3. An organ-stop having pipes with reeds, which give a bright, piercing tone, usually an octave above the key struck.-4. In her., a bearing common in very early English heraldry, and occasionally used on the continent, supposed to represent a musical wind-instrument. It is also called a rest, and because so called supposed by some to represent the rest of the lance; but it is certain that it occurs in English heraldry before the J. R. Planché, in