Aruba Island zeeuw toy

zeeuw

Source term: Schwirrgerät / Schwirrholz / bullroarer

zeeuw: Aruba's name for the whirling toy, a rough oval board on a cord.

The cord is still wound around Aruba's zeeuw, a rough oval blade gathered in the 1880s by the island priest A. J. van Koolwijk. Set loose and swung, it was a children's toy. Yet Schmeltz paused over this modest piece in 1896: the island's Carib population had vanished, leaving a mixed community in its place — and here was the same instrument von den Steinen had just found among the Carib-related Nahukuá of the upper Xingu, a coincidence that seemed to him to invite reflection “in more than one respect.” On Aruba the old whirring form had become simply play, but the object kept its local name.

ein als Spielzeug dienendes Schwirrholz, Zeeuw genannt, in Form einer ovalen, an einer Schnur befestigten, roh bearbeiteten Holzplatte

a bullroarer used as a toy, called Zeeuw, in the form of a roughly worked oval wooden plate fastened to a cord

Schmeltz, ‘Das Schwirrholz’ (1896), p. 118.

Particulars

Object

Wereldmuseum RV-472-10: a roughly worked oval wooden plate fastened to a long cord, collected on Aruba by A. J. van Koolwijk and donated in 1885.

Function

An Aruba children's toy called zeeuw; the exact Leiden/Wereldmuseum specimen and its cord survive.