HAD1898-004 - secondary catalog
West Prussia Marienwerder Schwirrholz
Poland - West Prussia - Central Europe
Play / practical
czurynga English
Source term: Schwirrholz
Schwirrholz = German for bull-roarer (literally "whirring wood"); burren = the local West Prussian verb for the whirring of the whip-mounted toy.
At Gut Neudörfchen in the early 1860s, children made a light wooden Schwirrholz a handspan long and fixed it to a whip; cutting, balancing, and swinging it took real skill, and not every boy could raise the same voice from the toy. Around 1870 the district's Germans emigrated to America and Poles took their place — leaving Haddon to wonder whether the whirring toy went with the emigrants or passed to the newcomers' children.
In West Prussia, near Marienwerder, the true bull-roarer (Schwirrholz) has been noted by Siedel. A narrow piece of light wood, a span in length, was fastened to a whip, the whirling of the whips was called burren, and not every boy could do this equally well; the success depended also partly on the length and weight of the bull-roarer as well as on the nature of the whip.
Haddon 1898, The Study of Man, pp. 285-286 (citing H. Siedel, Das Schwirrholz in Westpreussen, Globus, 1896, p. 67)
- Object
- Handspan-long narrow board of light wood, carefully cut and fixed to a whip; Seidel explicitly distinguished it from the doubled-cord Waldteufel. Marcuse 1964: a narrow board fastened to the lash of a whip and whirled; 15-60 cm (6-24 in.) long — a mounting method and a measured size range, rare for a European folk specimen (tertiary; bib. 89).
- Function
- Children's game requiring a well-balanced board, suitable whip, and practiced circular swing.
- Map confidence
- medium - representative coordinate for named people, place, or region in Haddon
- Source location
- Seidel 1896, Globus 70:67–68
- Toy / secular survival