The Bullroarer Atlas

No. MUS2026-171

Needingworth Roaring bull bullroarer

United Kingdom · Cambridgeshire · Needingworth · Europe

Play / practical

Needingworth Roaring bull, a wooden blade with alternating triangular notches along both long edges, just over 30 cm long, Pitt Rivers Museum.
Plate I. Needingworth Roaring bull, a dog-toothed wooden blade just over 30 cm long, Pitt Rivers Museum. Image source

Roaring bull

Source term: Bullroarer

Roaring bull: museum-recorded English name for the Needingworth bullroarer

Broad dog teeth along both edges gave Needingworth's thirty-centimetre Roaring bull a fittingly ferocious village name.

Long wooden 'Bullroarer' with dog-toothed edge.

Pitt Rivers Museum 1902.51.2

Particulars

Object
Long dog-toothed carved wooden slat, 306 x 49 mm, with one terminal suspension hole.
Function
Boys' toy, whirled on a long string for a noise that, as Haddon put it in 1898, 'is expressed in the various names given to this simple instrument' — here, Roaring bull.

Source

Pitt Rivers Museum 1902.51.2

View the source · archived

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