ATL-NMI-001 - museum specimen
Maynooth, Co. Kildare (Ireland)
Ireland - Irish Folklife Collection - Maynooth donor metadata - Atlantic Europe
Play / practical
Source term: Bull roarer
In December 2024 the National Museum of Ireland's Country Life museum staged a pop-up display of homemade toys that included a bull roarer, catalogued as F:1934.18 and donated by Donnchadh O Floinn of Maynooth, Co. Kildare. It was shown among children's playthings, not ritual objects. That secular framing fits the wider Irish record. When Alfred Haddon gathered specimens in the north-east corner of Ireland for The Study of Man in 1898, he found the instrument was a boy's plaything there too — in common use among boys in Co. Down, where it was called a "boomer." His informant recalled that once, as a boy, when he was playing with one, an old country woman told him it was a "sacred" thing, and Haddon added that it would be worth while to follow up the clue.
My informant stated that once when, as a boy, he was playing with a boomer an old country woman said it was a "sacred" thing. It would be worth while to follow up this clue.
Haddon, The Study of Man (1898), ch. X, p. 283
- Object
- National Museum of Ireland event metadata identifies object F:1934.18 as a bull roarer donated by Donnchadh O Floinn of Maynooth, Co. Kildare.
- Function
- Official museum event metadata confirms a bull-roarer object in the Irish Folklife homemade-toy display, but the public page does not give production locality, cultural provenance, materials, or use beyond the homemade-toy display context.
- Map confidence
- medium - Maynooth, Co. Kildare donor-locality anchor from the NMI event metadata. The source does not give production, use, or collection locality; the earlier Clear Island snippet remains unverified and is not used for the coordinate.
- Source location
- National Museum of Ireland event page; collection number F:1934.18
- Toy / secular survival