MUS2026-216 - museum specimen
Oxfordshire blade-and-stick pair
United Kingdom - Oxfordshire, England - Europe
Play / practical
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
- 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. Exact PRM photographs of both; .1 is on display.
- Function
- A boys' toy, per period English folklife accounts generally; no Oxfordshire-specific use is recorded.
- Map confidence
- medium - Oxfordshire county-level anchor, following the MUS2026-119 Suffolk precedent; the records give 'England Oxfordshire' and no parish, village or use site.
- Source location
Page references
PRM 1904.52.1-.2 (prm-object-39638, prm-object-39639)
- Toy / secular survival