The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-031 - ethnographic attestation

Scottish Highlands folk (Argyllshire)

United Kingdom (Scotland) - Argyllshire (W Highlands); also seen in use in Edinburgh - Europe - British Isles

Play / practical

Several small notched, perforated boards from the Edward Lovett collection, strung together on a single cord: English folk bullroarers of the...
Representative image. Several small notched, perforated boards from the Edward Lovett collection, strung together on a single cord: English folk bullroarers of the same register as the Argyllshire srannan documented here, though not the specific objects themselves. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution (Edward Lovett collection) CC0 Image source

srannair English/Gaelic

Source term: srannair / Bull Roarer

srannair: Scottish Gaelic name for the whirled blade, from srann ("to snore, drone"), naming the instrument by the droning sound it makes.

Etymology. Scottish Gaelic sound-word naming the instrument by its droning or moaning noise. (high confidence)

In Argyllshire the bull-roarer was called the srannair, and a correspondent to the Glasgow Evening News of 14 October 1901 recalled the one he had known: a piece of builder's lath, eight or nine inches long, notched at the edges, with a string at one end by which it was whirled round the head to give a sonorous moan. When the note was reprinted in the journal Folk-Lore in 1905, its editors remarked that none of their own collectors had recorded the toy, though they had seen it in use in Edinburgh.

The "srannair" we had was made of a piece of builder's lath, eight or nine inches long, notched at the edges with a string at one end by which it was rapidly whirled round the player's head to give a sonorous moan.

Glasgow Evening News, 14 Oct. 1901, quoted in Folk-Lore 16 (1905), Collectanea, "Noise Machines," p. 440
Object
Argyllshire builder's-lath srannair; PRM 1917.53.466 adds Scotland-level object support, a 335 mm serrated wooden blade with terminal hole and wool cord.
Function
Boys' noise toy 'rapidly whirled round the player's head to give a sonorous moan'; Folk-Lore's editors add they have seen it in use in Edinburgh.
Map confidence
medium_high - Argyllshire (mid-Argyll)
Source location
FL 16:440; PRM 1917.53.466

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