MUS2026-178 - museum specimen
Ickleton Cambridgeshire Buzzer bullroarer
United Kingdom - Cambridgeshire - Ickleton - Europe
Play / practical
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
- Boys' toy — Haddon's Cambridgeshire informants knew the instrument as the 'bull'; this Ickleton blade, ink-labelled Buzzer, is the same schoolboy toy under a neighbouring name.
- Map confidence
- high - Ickleton village-center anchor matching MAA provenance; not a documented use site.
- Source location
Page references
MAA 1922.384; MAA record cites Haddon 1908 (recte 1898), The Study of Man, 'Plate 38, Fig. 9' -- not independently confirmed (see notes)
- Toy / secular survival