The Bullroarer Atlas

ANATOLIA-005 - museum specimen

Aziziye Köyü, Burdur, Turkey

Turkey - Burdur - Aziziye Koyu - Europe - Anatolia

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A hanging pair of European folk instruments of the wider family, shown for their form rather than as a document of Turkish practice — not the...
Representative image. A hanging pair of European folk instruments of the wider family, shown for their form rather than as a document of Turkish practice — not the pair of toothed fırıldak, one pinewood and cross-hatched, that Picken collected at Aziziye Köyü, Burdur. Léna, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 Image source

fırıldak / virildak / kıcırdak Turkish terms in English catalog

Source term: Bullroarer

fırıldak: a whirligig, pinwheel, or spinning toy in Turkish; virildak and kıcırdak are dialect variants recorded for the same instrument.

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)

Two wooden bullroarers from the village of Aziziye Köyü in Burdur province, southwestern Turkey, made in 1962 — Picken's plate names Şevket Çeler and Harun Atasoy for them. Each blade, of juniper or pine, is coarsely toothed along its edges, and one was once decorated with cross-hatching and transverse lines. They carry three local names, all toy-words: fırıldak, the ordinary Turkish for a whirligig or spinning toy, with the variants virildak and kıcırdak. Laurence Picken, the Cambridge scientist turned musicologist who travelled Turkey alone documenting its folk instruments from 1951, figured the pair as plate 31b of Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey — a child's toy of the countryside, whirled on a stout string at arm's length.

Two specimens, each with toothed edges. The pinewood specimen once decorated with cross hatching.

Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, object 1977.222
Object
Two toothed rotating-blade bullroarers, one pinewood specimen formerly decorated with cross-hatching; MAA 1977.222.
Function
A village child's toy by type: Picken's fırıldak entry covers these coarsely toothed juniper-or-pine blades, his plate naming Şevket Çeler and Harun Atasoy of Aziziye for the pair (Picken 1975:368, 371).
Map confidence
medium - Representative Aziziye Koyu / Burdur province anchor; village coordinate not independently locked.
Source location
MAA 1977.222; Picken 1975, Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey, plate 31b and pp.370ff cited by catalog

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