The Bullroarer Atlas

FABREVASSAS1987-003 - ethnographic attestation

Badia Polesine countryside

Badia Polesine region, Rovigo (Veneto), c. 1880 - Europe - Northeast Italy

Function not recorded

Peyrony's founding comparison: an Australian churinga at left.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Peyrony's founding comparison: an Australian churinga at left · Public domain Image source

la mort (French gloss; Venetian form not recorded) fr

Source term: 'la mort' (Corrain in Tucci 1960: 444)

Around 1880, in the countryside of Badia Polesine, the whirring slat went by a name that needs no gloss: la mort — death. The Venetian word itself has not survived; its meaning has.

...une etrange designation de cet instrument 'la mort', repandue il y a a peu pres quatre-vingt ans dans la region de Badia Polesine ainsi qu'il en resulte du temoignage tout de confiance d'un vieux pretre, Don Bassiano Paiato.

...a strange designation of this instrument, 'death', widespread about eighty years ago in the region of Badia Polesine, as emerges from the entirely trustworthy testimony of an old priest, Don Bassiano Paiato.

Cleto Corrain, in Tucci 1960: 444, quoted by Fabre-Vassas, Etudes rurales 105-106 (1987), printed p. 203
Object
A folk slat roarer of the Polesine, known c. 1880 by a name recorded only in French gloss: death.
Function
Not recorded beyond the name. The designation 'la mort' was current in the Badia Polesine countryside around 1880, on the trusted testimony of an old priest, Don Bassiano Paiato.
Map confidence
medium - Badia Polesine town, for the surrounding region named by the source.
Source location
Page references

printed p. 203 (folio and running head verified on the rendered Persee page)

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