DOUTTE1905-001 - ethnographic attestation
Mogador environs (modern Essaouira)
Atlantic Morocco - Mogador environs - North Africa
Play / practical
ferfâra French
Source term: ferfâra / fernâna / smâra
ferfâra: the children's bullroarer of the Mogador country; fernâna (Reḥâmna) and smâra (Aït Imoûr) are the inland names Doutté reports at second hand.
Around Mogador — today's Essaouira on Morocco's Atlantic coast — children played the ferfâra: a long thin slat on a bundle of cords a metre and more long, twisted tight while the slat hung still, then loosed and whirled like a sling. The slat spun furiously on its axis as the cords untwisted and rewound, throwing out an intermittent roar, sometimes very violent, that carried far. The French Islamologist Edmond Doutté, who recorded it among Morocco's children's games in 1905, knew exactly what he was looking at: the kônos whirled in the Greek mysteries, still sounding in ceremonies from Australia and New Zealand to Zululand and New Mexico — fallen, he wrote, into the realm of children's games, 'become the bull-roarer of the English street-boy and the ferfâra of little Moroccans.' Inland, the Reḥâmna called it fernâna, the Aït Imoûr smâra.
C'est une planchette longue et mince, à l'extrémité de laquelle on attache plusieurs cordelettes d'une longueur de 1m à 1m,50 que l'on tord fortement ensemble en tenant la planchette immobile. Puis on lâche le tout et on fait tourner l'instrument à la manière d'une fronde : la planchette se met à tourner très rapidement autour de son axe en détordant les cordes ... On produit ainsi une sorte de ronflement intermittent, parfois très violent et qui s'entend de loin, si les dimensions de la planchette sont convenablement choisies.
It is a long, thin slat, to whose end are tied several cords a metre to a metre and a half long, twisted tightly together while the slat is held still. Then the whole is released and the instrument is swung like a sling: the slat spins very rapidly on its axis as the cords untwist ... This produces a kind of intermittent roar, sometimes very violent, that can be heard from far off if the slat's dimensions are well chosen.
Edmond Doutté, Merrâkech (1905), p. 329.
- Object
- Long thin wooden slat with several cords 1 to 1.5 m long tied to one end; the cords are twisted tight while the slat is held still, then the whole is whirled like a sling, the slat spinning on its axis as the cords untwist and rewind.
- Function
- Children's toy. Whirled like a sling, it produces a loud intermittent roar — sometimes very violent, Doutté says — heard from far off when the slat's dimensions are well chosen.
- Map confidence
- high - Approximate anchor on modern Essaouira / historic Mogador for Doutte's observed Mogador environs only; alternate names are not mapped observations.
- Source location
- pp. 329-330
- Toy / secular survival