The Bullroarer Atlas

No. SEIDEL1896-001

Ratzebuhr Schwirrholz survival

Poland · Ratzebuhr · Kreis Neustettin · Hinterpommern · modern Okonek · Central Europe

Play / practical

Alkmaar brommer: a long flat wooden blade with a rounded tip, worn painted decoration and a cord through a hole near its squared end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A Dutch brommer, a rectangular wooden blade, Alkmaar. Image source
Seidel’s 1896 German journal page, with a left-column report that the Schwirrholz was still used at Ratzebuhr, now Okonek.
Plate II. Seidel's 1896 page records the Schwirrholz still in use at Ratzebuhr, now Okonek. Public domain · Image source

Source term: Schwirrholz

Schwirrholz: generic German bullroarer term; no separate local name is recorded

Long after antiquarians had begun filing the Schwirrholz away as a relic, it was still being swung at Ratzebuhr — today's Okonek in Poland — in 1896. A simple plaything, Seidel called it, in boys' hands there as across Pomerania and Rügen, where children not yet of school age already knew how to handle one.

Ich kann melden, daß dies einfache Spielgerät auch in dem hinterpommerschen Landstädtchen Ratzebuhr, Kreis Neu-Stettin, und Umgegend noch heute im Gebrauch ist.

I can report that this simple plaything is also still in use today in the little Farther Pomeranian town of Ratzebuhr, in Neustettin district, and the country around it.

Seidel 1896:340

Particulars

Object
The simple Schwirrholz, the same whirling wooden toy Franz Figura had just reported from Galicia.
Function
A boys' toy.

Source

H. Seidel, 'Das Schwirrholz in Hinterpommern und Rügen', Globus 70 (1896), p. 340

View the source

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.