MUS2026-189 - museum specimen
Johannesburg sandstorm bullroarer
South Africa - Johannesburg - Witwatersrand, Transvaal Colony - Southern Africa
Play / practical
Source term: bullroarer / 412.22 whirling aerophone
In Johannesburg around 1905, a boy carved a flat wooden blade nearly half a metre long, tied on a fibre cord, and set it roaring — and as he swung, a sandstorm rose, 'to the great joy of the maker.' Whether he meant to call the wind or simply gloried in the coincidence, the register never says. The anthropologist A. C. Haddon preserved the story along with the object, and the Horniman Museum bought both from him in 1912, the cord still knotted in place.
When made & swung a sandstorm arose, to the great joy of the maker.
Horniman Museum register, object 12.161 (note initialled A.C.H.)
- Object
- Flat wooden blade, 440 x 47 x 17 mm, tapering toward the proximal end where a 1.25 m vegetable-fibre cord is tied; complete with cord; exact Horniman photograph.
- Function
- A boy's own making, swung for the joy of it — the register's sandstorm line is Haddon's anecdote of a storm that happened to rise as he swung, not a recorded weather practice.
- Map confidence
- medium - Johannesburg city anchor standing in for the museum register's 'made or collected' place; the maker's community is unrecorded and no findspot or use site is documented, so the point locates the acquisition, not the object's home.
- Source location
- Horniman 12.161
- Toy / secular survival