Basel (Switzerland) fair bull-roarer

Source term: bull-roarer

In his 1898 chapter on the bull-roarer, Alfred Cort Haddon noted that the instrument survived in parts of Europe as a children's toy, and among the places he listed was Basel. Unlike the Black Forest, where a German friend had actually seen one, or West Prussia, where Seidel had recorded the whirling toy in print, the Basel entry rested only on rumor: word that the toy turned up at the city's fairs. The rumor was sound. Eighty years later Brigitte Geiser's survey of Swiss folk instruments found the toy, a shingle whirled on a cord, in children's hands throughout Switzerland, called the Schnurre in the German-speaking cantons.

I have also heard that it is sometimes seen in fairs at Basel in Switzerland.

A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (1898), Ch. X "The Bull-Roarer," p. 285

Particulars

Object

Bull-roarer reported as sometimes seen in fairs at Basel; no form or local name given by Haddon.

Function

Secular fair/toy item; no ritual function recorded.