The Bullroarer Atlas

SERVIER1970-009 - secondary catalog

Bearn shepherds

France - Bearn - Pyrenees - Europe

Play / practical

Juan Mari Beltrán playing the burruna (Basque bull-roarer).
Juan Mari Beltrán playing the burruna (Basque bull-roarer). Soinuenea, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 Image source

bur rumbo / hurrumbo Spanish translation of French original

Source term: rombo

Bearnais/Gascon name for the whirled-wood noisemaker; from bourroumbe, a dull roar, which in Palay's dictionary also names the child's game of swinging wood on a string to make the noise.

Etymology. From Béarnais bourroumbe, a dull, muffled roar — which in Palay's dictionary also names the child's game of whirling a piece of wood on a string to make that sound. An onomatopoeic motion-sound word. (high confidence)

In Bearn, on the French side of the Pyrenees, shepherds whirled a bullroarer they called the bur rumbo or hurrumbo not in any rite but to keep order in the fold: the droning frightened off and drove away mares that tried to push into the pens of rams. Jean Servier set the Bearn usage beside the neighboring Basque furrunfara, a small board of wood with notched edges that the shepherd spun on a cord sometimes tied to a stick, its buzz scattering animals foreign to the flock, chiefly mares, which could panic the rams in their fold at night. The name carries the sound. Servier reports that in Bearn one word, bourroumbe, names both a dull roar and, in Simin Palay's dictionary of Bearnais and Gascon, the child's game of making that noise by swinging a piece of wood hard on a string.

En Béarn, los pastores emplean también del "bur rumbo" o "hurrumbo" para atemorizar y separar a las yeguas que tratan de penetrar en las majadas de carneros.

In Bearn, the shepherds also use the bur rumbo or hurrumbo to frighten and separate the mares that try to get into the pens of the rams.

Jean Servier, El hombre y lo invisible (Spanish trans. of L'homme et l'invisible), p. 140
Object
Servier says Bearn shepherds use the bur rumbo or hurrumbo to frighten and separate mares entering sheepfolds.
Function
Pastoral signal or animal-scaring use.
Map confidence
low_medium - Camou/Tardets area anchor from adjacent Servier source note
Source location
p. 140

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