Black Forest (Germany) Schlägel bull-roarer

Schlägel

Source term: bull-roarer

Schlägel — German for a "mallet" or "beater" (a variant of Schlegel); the Black Forest name Haddon's friend reported for the bull-roarer.

In the Black Forest the whirled wooden slat had a dialect name of its own, Schlägel, and at Basel, just over the border, the toy turned up at the fairs. A German friend who had seen it in the forest passed the word to A. C. Haddon, who set it among Europe's last survivals of the bull-roarer.

A German friend has informed me that he has seen the bull-roarer in the Black Forest, where it is known as Schlägel; and I have also heard that it is sometimes seen in fairs at Basel in Switzerland.

Haddon 1898, The Study of Man, p. 285

Particulars

Object

Flat wooden slat whirled on a cord; folk survival in the Black Forest, local dialect term Schlägel.

Function

Folk toy/secular survival; no ritual function recorded.