The Bullroarer Atlas

SEM2026-001 - museum specimen

Slovenia (maker and locality not recorded)

Slovenia - Southeast Europe

Play / practical

Representative—not this record’s object: Battaglia’s field drawings of three Istrian legni ronzanti.
Representative—not this record’s object: Battaglia’s field drawings of three Istrian legni ronzanti. R. Battaglia, "Sopravvivenze del rombo nelle Province Venete," Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 1 (1925), fig. 5 Public domain Image source

brnivka Slovene

brnivka = Slovene name for the cord-whirled sound-maker.

Slovene schoolchildren made the brnivka from the schoolroom itself: tie a cord through the hole of a wooden ruler, spin it fast through the air, and the ruler roars. The folk-music scholar Zmaga Kumer classed the toy among Slovenia's folk instruments, and this homemade twentieth-century example is exactly that lesson-hour instrument — a one-holed wooden slat on a cord.

Na ravnilo z luknjico ... navežemo ... vrvico in ga nato vrtimo po zraku okoli svoje osi precej hitro.

We tie a cord to a ruler with a hole, then spin it quickly through the air around its axis.

Slovene teaching resource, Glasbila, brnivka mechanics
Object
Flat board with one hole and a single cord, spun quickly through the air around its axis.
Function
A children's sound-toy: Slovene schoolchildren tied a holed ruler to a cord and spun it roaring through the air; the folk-instrument surveys class the brnivka with the toys (Kumer 1983).
Map confidence
high - Museum-published Slovenia-level coordinate; object 630:LJU;0021839 has country provenance only.
Source location
630:LJU;0021839

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