The Bullroarer Atlas

No. MUS2026-179

Hemsby Norfolk Buzzer bullroarer

United Kingdom · Norfolk · Hemsby · Europe

Play / practical

Hemsby serrated buzzer with cord, Haddon fig. 38 no. 8.
Plate I. Hemsby serrated buzzer with cord, Haddon fig. 38 no. 8. Public domain · Image source
Haddon’s plate of nine numbered British bull-roarer designs, drawn upright in varied shapes: plain, broad, rounded and saw-toothed blades, several with cords attached.
Plate II. Representative — not this record’s object. Haddon's full plate of bullroarers from the British Islands. Public domain · Image source

Buzzer

Source term: Bullroarer

Buzzer / humming buzzer: the Norfolk names for the whirled board.

Norfolk children called it the humming buzzer, or simply buzzer: a wooden board whirled on a length of string until it growled. This slim, rounded-top example from Hemsby is one of the county specimens Alfred Haddon engraved as No. 8 in his 1898 survey of British bullroarers — the same blade, cord and all, that sits in the Cambridge drawer today.

I have several specimens from different parts of Norfolk, where it is called "humming buzzer," or simply "buzzer"

A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (London: John Murray, 1898), p.278

Particulars

Object
Rectangular wooden board, 291 x 35 mm, with triangular notches along both long edges; a bundled, looped cord passes through a hole at the rounded end, the opposite end flat.
Function
Boys' toy — Haddon records the Norfolk 'humming buzzer' among the bullroarer toys of English boys; this Hemsby blade is one of his own figured county specimens.

Sources

  1. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, 1922.386 View · archived
  2. A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (London: John Murray, 1898), pp. 278–279, fig. 38 no. 8

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