The Bullroarer Atlas

ANATOLIA-004 - museum specimen

Çakmak Köyü, Edirne, Turkey

Turkey - Edirne - Cakmak Koyu - Europe - Anatolia

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These two corded, saw-edged wooden slats pricked with dotted figures are European folk instruments of the same broad family — not the...
Representative image. These two corded, saw-edged wooden slats pricked with dotted figures are European folk instruments of the same broad family — not the smooth-edged, tapering fırıldak Picken collected at Çakmak Köyü, Edirne. Léna, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 Image source

fırıldak / virildak / kicirdak Turkish terms in English catalog

Source term: Bullroarer

fırıldak is the Turkish word for a whirligig or spinning toy; the variant names virildak and kicirdak are recorded by Picken but not separately glossed.

Etymology. The Cambridge/Picken labels record `firildak`, `virildak`, and `kicirdak` for Turkish rotating-blade bullroarers. The secure lexical gloss is for Turkish `fırıldak`, a whirligig or spinning toy; the other variants remain name evidence pending direct Picken page work. (medium confidence)

A wooden bullroarer from Çakmak Köyü, a village in Edirne province in the European corner of Turkey, its flat blade tapered and smooth-edged so it whirls at the end of its cord. The musicologist Laurence Picken collected it during the fieldwork behind his Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey (1975), where it appears on plate 31a and where he compares its smooth, thinned blade to a Hungarian cousin — the same child's whirligig, fırıldak in the everyday Turkish, spun on a cord at arm's length in a circle sized to the child. Picken's collection later passed to the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Rotating blades Bullroarer (firildak, virildak, kicirdak). With smooth edges. Note tapering blade.

Cambridge MAA, accession 1977.221 (object record)
Object
Smooth-edged rotating-blade bullroarer with tapering blade, MAA 1977.221.
Function
A child's whirligig by type: Picken catalogues it under fırıldak — the everyday word for a spinning toy, whirled on a cord at arm's length in a circle sized to the child — and compares its smooth tapering blade to a Hungarian parallel (Picken 1975:371-372; cf. Sárosi 1967:67).
Map confidence
medium - Representative Cakmak Koyu / Edirne province anchor; village coordinate not independently locked.
Source location
MAA 1977.221; Picken 1975, Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey, plate 31a iv and pp.370ff cited by catalog

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