MINE2026-078 - ethnographic attestation
Saint-Hippolyte childhood rhombe
France - Saint-Hippolyte, Charente-Maritime - Western Europe
Play / practical
Source term: rhombe
rhombe: French technical/common term for a whirled sounding slat (bullroarer).
In 1969, Louis Martin of Saint-Hippolyte recalled a childhood game: making a rhombe, the wooden slat tied to a string and whirled until it hummed. He had no special name for it, calling it only la petite planche, and did not recognize the bromouère the researchers proposed. At eighty-six he could still cut one with his knife, and did — Marcel-Dubois and Pichonnet-Andral documented both the game and the making. The national folk museum later judged the little board worth copying: a hemp-corded facsimile of Martin's own rhombe, cut to thirty-two centimetres, is preserved in the Mucem.
il jouait, enfant, a fabriquer des rhombes
as a child, he played at making rhombes
Francoralite, Episode 1: Comptines et jeux d'enfants (Louis Martin, Saint-Hippolyte).
- Object
- Louis Martin described and demonstrated making a rhombe: a shaped wooden slat tied to a string and whirled to sound. His own rhombe was inventoried by the Musée national des arts et traditions populaires as 70.59.1, and a 32 cm hemp-corded facsimile of it made there in 1976 is preserved as Mucem 1976.30.1.
- Function
- Louis Martin recalled making rhombes as a child. The local record gives no ritual, magic, or protective use.
- Map confidence
- high - Saint-Hippolyte commune anchor for the named 1969 informant locality, not a particular childhood play site.
- Source location
Page references
EHESS dossier; Francoralite episode 1 | MNATP 1972-112-85; UPOI_ATP_0001_0009_022
- Toy / secular survival