The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-166 - museum specimen

English folk / Ashdown Forest specimen

United Kingdom - East Sussex - Ashdown Forest - Europe

Function not recorded

Representative—not this record’s object: Alkmaar brommer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet.
Representative—not this record’s object: Alkmaar brommer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge (1922.393) Image source

Hummer English

Source term: Bullroarer

Hummer: PRM-recorded name; Haddon confirms contemporary West Suffolk use of the word but not an East Sussex community term

An oak slat the length of a forearm, its cord still wound tight around one end, came out of Ashdown Forest under the name Hummer. Alfred Haddon had recorded the same word a decade earlier in West Suffolk: one English name for the roaring toy, traveling between counties. A London dealer passed the piece to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1909.

Bull-roarer, Ashdown Forest, Sussex.

Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1909
Object
Oak slat, 270 x 40 mm, with cord wound around one end; exact PRM photograph.
Function
Function not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Ashdown Forest representative anchor; the museum gives forest-level provenance rather than a findspot or performance site.
Source location
PRM 1909.16.1; 1909 Annual Report

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