The Bullroarer Atlas

FABREVASSAS1987-002 - ethnographic attestation

Ceneselli rombo with a pig bone

Ceneselli, Alto Polesine, Rovigo (Veneto) - Europe - Northeast Italy

Play / practical

Battaglia’s 1925 Cittanova la fionda, a children’s wooden bullroarer.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Battaglia’s 1925 Cittanova la fionda, a children’s wooden bullroarer. · Public domain Image source

rombo-tavoletta

Source term: rombo-tavoletta (rhombe confectionne avec une planchette)

At Ceneselli on the Po plain the slat roarer carried one addition: a pig bone knotted to the free end of the cord. In this region the pig was killed at the season of the dead, and what remains of it — bone and horn, set spinning — 'makes the dead heard.'

Il serait interessant de pouvoir mesurer l'aire de diffusion de la fixation d'un os de cochon a l'extremite de la ficelle du plus typique rombo-tavoletta (rhombe confectionne avec une planchette) qu'il me fut donne d'observer a Ceneselli (Alto-Polesine).

It would be interesting to be able to measure the area of diffusion of the fixing of a pig bone to the end of the cord of the most typical rombo-tavoletta (a rhombe made with a small board) that I was ever given to observe, at Ceneselli (Alto Polesine).

Cleto Corrain, in Tucci 1960: 444, quoted by Fabre-Vassas, Etudes rurales 105-106 (1987), printed p. 203
Object
A planchette-type slat roarer with a pig bone tied to the far end of its cord - a composite recorded nowhere else.
Function
A children's plaything of the Veneto plain: Corrain observed the Ceneselli rombo-tavoletta for his study of the games country children made for themselves, and thought its pig-bone cord-weight worth mapping across Italy (Corrain 1957, p. 156, via Tucci 1969).
Source
Claudine Fabre-Vassas, 'Du cochon pour les morts,' Etudes rurales 105-106 (1987): 181-212, quoting Cleto Corrain in Tucci 1960: 444
Source location
Page references

printed p. 203 (folio and running head 'DU COCHON POUR LES MORTS' verified on the rendered Persee page)

Source confidence
medium Ceneselli town, Alto Polesine.

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