Szurdokpüspöki signed búgattyú

búgattyú

Source term: búgattyú (museum title)

búgattyú: Hungarian, 'the droner', from búg, to drone or coo; one of a family of onomatopoeic names for the whirled board, beside zúgattyú, búgató and bungató.

Somebody inked a name along this pine board: 'Vékás Lajos 42 éves Siófok', Lajos Vékás, forty-two years old, of Siófok, the resort town on the south shore of Lake Balaton. The board itself comes from Szurdokpüspöki, a village in the Zagyva valley at the western foot of the Mátra hills, and reached the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest in 1966: a rough-carved slat of pine twenty-six centimetres long, with a length of twine knotted through a hole at one end so it could be whirled. The museum calls it a búgattyú, the droner. Around Balaton the same whirled board was a bungató.

Particulars

Object

A roughly carved flat rectangle of pine, 26 × 4.6 cm, with twine tied through a hole bored at one end; inked on one face 'Vékás Lajos 42 éves Siófok'. Museum of Ethnography, Budapest, NM 66.118.8.

Function

Whirled on its twine; the museum records no further use.