Karo Batak dengeng-dengeng children's toy

dengeng-dengeng

Source term: Schwirrholz

dengeng-dengeng: Karo name recorded for accession 1680/1.

On a 71-centimetre bamboo switch hangs a small bamboo spearhead. Karo children swung the flexible stock and sent the dengeng-dengeng circling on its own cord. Fischer's 1914 catalogue calls it simply a child's toy, but the surviving object makes the play legible: a tiny lance launched into orbit, kept tethered to the wand that drives it. Its Toba Batak cousin in the same Leiden collection used a rectangular blade; the Karo toy's narrow point gave it a silhouette of its own.

Schwirrholz (dengeng-dengeng) ... lanzenspitzenförmiges Bambusbrett, mittelst einer Schnur an das Ende eines biegsamen Bambusstockes aufgehängt. Kinderspielzeug.

Bullroarer (dengeng-dengeng): a lance-shaped bamboo board hung by a cord from the end of a flexible bamboo stick. Children's toy.

Fischer 1914, p. 119.

Particulars

Object

A lance-shaped bamboo blade, 26.5 x 3 cm, hung by its own cord from the end of a flexible 71 cm bamboo stock; Wereldmuseum RV-1680-1.

Function

A children's whirled toy.