MUS2026-166 - museum specimen
Ashdown Forest English Hummer bullroarer
United Kingdom - East Sussex - Ashdown Forest - Europe
Play / practical
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
- Boys' toy on Haddon's England-wide account of the instrument; Sussex itself is not among the counties he names, and 'hummer' is the name he recorded in West Suffolk.
- Map confidence
- medium - Ashdown Forest representative anchor; the museum gives forest-level provenance rather than a findspot or performance site.
- Source location
Page references
PRM 1909.16.1; 1909 Annual Report
- Toy / secular survival