KOLOTOUROU2004-001 - ethnographic attestation
Modern Greek vouga bullroarer
Greece; country-wide folk-instrument attestation, locality unrecorded - Europe - Mediterranean
Play / practical
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. Fivos Anoyanakis set it down among the children's sound-toys of Greece, with its sister names vourvoúna, vrondára, vrondalídha — thunder words for a toy; 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
- A children's sound-toy: Anoyanakis sets the vouga down among Greek children's sound-producing toys, under the onomatopoeic names vourvoúna, vrondára and vrondalídha.
- 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
Page references
Kolotourou 2004 p. 48 n. 12; cited Anoyanakis 1979 p. 204 fig. 145
- Toy / secular survival