The Bullroarer Atlas

No. HAD1898-043

East Derbyshire bummer bullroarer

United Kingdom · East Derbyshire · England · Europe · British Isles

Play / practical

East Derbyshire bummer, an oak blade toothed along its far half with a bundled cord tied at the squared end.
Plate I. Haddon's East Derbyshire bummer: half-serrated oak blade, its bundled cord tied into the notches. Image source
Haddon’s drawing of the East Derbyshire blade, with saw-toothed edges and a cord tied around a notch near one end.
Plate II. Haddon's published figure of the same blade (The Study of Man, fig. 38 no. 5). Public domain · Image source

bummer / buzzer

bummer / buzzer: East Derbyshire sound-names for the bull-roarer.

Nearly every English bullroarer Alfred Haddon handled had its string through a drilled hole; the one he got from East Derbyshire did not. Its cord is tied into a nick cut in each side near the squared end, and only the far half of the slat, down to its rounded tip, is toothed - a plano-convex board just over ten inches long. Boys there whirled it on that side-lashed cord, and the noise it made earned both of its local names: 'bummer' and 'buzzer.'

In East Derbyshire it is known as a 'bummer' or 'buzzer.' My Derbyshire specimen is plano-convex, the string end is square and the other rounded.

A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (1898), pp. 278-280

Particulars

Object
Haddon's own East Derbyshire specimen: a plano-convex wooden slat, 257 x 47 mm, square at the string end and rounded at the free end; the single cord is tied into a nick cut in each side near one end, and only the opposite half and the free end are serrated.
Function
A boys' whirring toy, named for its sound.

Source

Haddon 1898, The Study of Man, Chapter X: The Bull-Roarer; Haddon's own collected Derbyshire specimen, described and figured first-hand

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Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.