The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-178 - museum specimen

English folk / Ickleton

United Kingdom - Cambridgeshire - Ickleton - Europe

Function not recorded

Representative—not this record’s object: Piedmontese folk rombo (MIMO), shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is...
Representative—not this record’s object: Piedmontese folk rombo (MIMO), shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet. Civico Museo del Paesaggio Sonoro, Riva presso Chieri (0216SM, maker Eugenio Reolon), via MIMO Image source

Buzzer English

Source term: Bullroarer

Buzzer: MAA-recorded ink label at Ickleton; Haddon 1898 separately records a Cambridgeshire informant term, 'bull', with plain (unserrated) edges -- not this specimen's finish

A thick, pointed board lined with small sawteeth along both edges, its cord still knotted through a hole at one end, was collected at Ickleton in Cambridgeshire and marked in ink with its local name: 'Buzzer.' That name cuts against what Alfred Haddon heard elsewhere in the same county, where the identical whirled toy was simply a 'bull' and its edges were left plain. One county, two names, two finishes.

'Buzzer'. Ickleton. Cambs.

MAA 1922.384, handwritten ink marking (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge)
Object
Thick, sub-rectangular wooden board, 217 x 42 x 9 mm, with triangular serrations along both long edges; a knotted cord passes through a hole at the pointed end, the opposite end flat; exact MAA photograph permission-gated.
Function
Function not recorded.
Map confidence
high - Ickleton village-center anchor matching MAA provenance; not a documented use site.
Source location
MAA 1922.384; MAA record cites Haddon 1908 (recte 1898), The Study of Man, 'Plate 38, Fig. 9' -- not independently confirmed (see notes)

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