The Bullroarer Atlas

No. MUS2026-168

Chichester Whizzing blade bullroarer pair

United Kingdom · West Sussex · Chichester · Europe

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A long, narrow Chichester whizzing blade with a cord knotted through its rounded end.
Plate I. Chichester whizzing blade, Pitt Rivers Museum 1920.100.66. Image source
The second Chichester whizzing blade, with three small holes at its square end and cord at the rounded end.
Plate II. The second Chichester whizzing blade, with three small holes at its square end and cord at the rounded end. Image source

Whizzing blade

Source term: Bullroarer

Whizzing blade: the English name recorded with this Chichester pair.

Whizzing blades — the name two wooden bullroarers carried when the Reverend R. H. Codrington brought them in from Chichester in 1911. Each is a long, narrow board corded through a rounded end; one bears three small extra holes at the far tip, their purpose unexplained. The pair has stayed together ever since.

2 wooden bull-roarers, Chichester, Sussex.

Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1912

Particulars

Object
Two long thin wooden terminal-cord slats, 305 x 39 mm and 304 x 35 mm; the second has three distal holes opposite the cord.
Function
Boys' toy on Haddon's England-wide account of the instrument; Sussex itself is not among the counties he names.

Sources

  1. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1920.100.66, Whizzing blade bullroarer, collected at Chichester in 1911 by R. H. Codrington View · archived
  2. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, 1920.100.67, Whizzing blade bullroarer, collected at Chichester in 1911 by R. H. Codrington
  3. Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1912

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.