Oxfordshire blade-and-stick pair

Source term: Bullroarer

Bought for the museum in July 1904, from a man the register is not quite sure of: two bullroarers out of Oxfordshire, and no one wrote down the village. The smaller is the more complete — a jagged-edged blade the length of a forearm, its string still tied to a stick nearly half a metre long, so that a child could hold the stick and let the blade run its circle out at the end of the line. The larger is broader, plainer, and burnt as well as carved. Between them they are all the county kept.

'Bullroarer' with jagged edge and string and stick attached.

Pitt Rivers Museum 1904.52.1, object description

Particulars

Object

Two carved wooden bullroarers bought together in July 1904. 1904.52.1 is a jagged-edged blade 293 x 70 mm that survives as a complete rig: the blade is slung by its string from a separate wooden stick, 452 mm long and 20 mm in diameter, so the whirler holds the stick and the blade orbits at the end of the line. 1904.52.2 is larger and plain in the record, 455 x 105 x 20 mm, carved, tied, perforated and burnt. 1904.52.1 is on display.

Function

A boys' toy, like the English bullroarers Haddon described in 1898.