Toothed bullroarers from Aziziye Köyü, Burdur

fırıldak / virildak / kıcırdak

Source term: Bullroarer

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

Etymology. In Turkish, fırıldak names many things that spin: a child’s pinwheel turned by the wind, a vaned window ventilator, a chimney cowl that swings round with the wind — and, figuratively, a trick, or someone who keeps changing his mind.

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; one carried a decoration of oblique lines, herring-bone chevrons and transverse cuts, until Çeler himself scraped the pattern away so that he could carve his own name and address into the wood. They carry three local names, all toy-words: fırıldak, the ordinary Turkish for a whirligig or spinning toy, with the variants virildak and kıcırdak — the kind of thing, Picken notes, that shepherd-boys start making for themselves from about the age of seven. 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.

Unfortunately, this pattern was scraped off the pinewood specimen in Plate 31b by the maker, Şevket Çeler, so that he could inscribe the specimen with his name and address.

Laurence Picken, Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey (1975), p. 371

Particulars

Object

Two toothed rotating-blade bullroarers, one pinewood specimen formerly decorated with cross-hatching; MAA 1977.222.