The Bullroarer Atlas

HAJNAL1906-001 - primary ethnography

Torzsa (today Savino Selo), Danube Swabian German villagers

Serbia - Bácska (Bács-Bodrog county), Kingdom of Hungary - Central Europe

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Torzsa's homemade toy chest, photographed in 1906: the zúgó (Windbrummer) is the pale slat at centre with its cord still tied through the...
Torzsa's homemade toy chest, photographed in 1906: the zúgó (Windbrummer) is the pale slat at centre with its cord still tied through the terminal hole. Hajnal Ignácz, 'Bácskai gyermekjátékok,' Néprajzi Értesítő 7 (1906), fig. 3 Public domain Image source

zúgó (Hajnal's Hungarian caption); Windbrummer (local Danube Swabian/German term, per Tolnai 1920:114) Hungarian

Source term: zúgó (Windbrummer)

zúgó: Hungarian, 'the humming/droning one,' from zúg 'to hum, drone, roar'; Windbrummer: German/Danube-Swabian dialect, 'wind-hummer' — the term Tolnai 1920 records as used locally in Torzsa itself.

A pine slat about as long as a walking cane, pierced at one end and strung on a cord: whirled overhead, it slices the air with a sound like rushing wind. Torzsa's German-speaking children, out on the flat farmland of the Bácska, built their own zúgó — Windbrummer, in their local dialect — alongside handmade whistles, a corn-stalk fiddle bowed with spit-dampened bark strings, and a potato-weighted spinning top. A Hungarian ethnographer photographed the whole toy chest for his 1906 survey of the region's children's games.

A mellette látható zúgó (Windbrummer) egy darab 75—80 cm. hosszú 6—7 cm. széles fenyőfaszilánk, melynek egyik végén lyukat fúrnak, spárgát kötnek rá és forgatva hasítják a levegőt, mire az úgy zúg, mint a szél.

Next to it can be seen the zúgó (Windbrummer): a piece of pine-wood chip 75-80 cm long and 6-7 cm wide, in one end of which a hole is bored, a cord tied on, and by swinging it they cleave the air, whereupon it hums like the wind.

Hajnal Ignácz, 'Bácskai gyermekjátékok,' Néprajzi Értesítő 7 (1906), p. 59, Fig. 3.
Object
A pine-wood slat about 75-80 cm long and 6-7 cm wide, pierced with a hole at one end and fitted with a cord; shown among a set of handmade noisemaking toys (fiddle, willow whistles, goose-quill pipe, spinning top) photographed as Fig. 3 in Hajnal's article.
Function
Whirled overhead by the cord through its pierced end so the board spins on its long axis and 'cleaves the air,' humming like the wind; one of a set of homemade noisemaking toys the German-speaking children of Torzsa built for themselves.
Map confidence
high - Savino Selo (historic Torzsa), Vrbas municipality, South Bačka District, Vojvodina, Serbia — the named village in Hajnal's account.
Source location
Hajnal 1906, Néprajzi Értesítő 7:59, Fig. 3

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