ANATOLIA-005 - museum specimen
Toothed bullroarers from Aziziye Köyü, Burdur
Turkey - Burdur - Aziziye Koyu - Near East - Anatolia
Play / practical
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; 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
- 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
Page references
MAA 1977.222; Picken 1975, Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey, plate 31b and pp.370ff cited by catalog; p.371 text-confirmed 2026-07-23 (maker/decoration anecdote)
- Toy / secular survival