The Bullroarer Atlas

KOLOTOUROU2004-001 - ethnographic attestation

Modern Greek folk tradition

Greece; country-wide folk-instrument attestation, locality unrecorded - Europe - Mediterranean

Function not recorded

Representative—not this record’s object: the Norwich toy bull-roarer figured by Lang in 1884, a European folk example.
Representative—not this record’s object: the Norwich toy bull-roarer figured by Lang in 1884, a European folk example. Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge (1922.385) Image source

Βούγκα / Vouga English / Greek

Βούγκα / vouga: modern Greek name reported for a triangular wooden bullroarer.

Modern Greek vouga was a triangular wooden bullroarer, a corded blade whirled through the air to make sound. Its name and triangular form were set down among Greece’s folk instruments; no village or ritual story came with them.

In Greece, the bullroarer known as vouga also belongs to this type; it is triangular in shape and made of wood.

Aikaterini Kolotourou, A Typological and Iconographic Investigation of Musical Instruments in Iron Age Greece and Cyprus (2004), p. 48 n. 12, citing Anoyanakis 1979:204 fig. 145.
Object
Triangular wooden end-corded free-air bullroarer, whirled overhead.
Function
Sound-producer; particular traditional use unrecorded.
Map confidence
low - Representative central-Greece anchor for a country-wide folk attestation; no locality is recorded. The Athens museum display location is deliberately not used.
Source location
Kolotourou 2004 p. 48 n. 12; cited Anoyanakis 1979 p. 204 fig. 145

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