Navarre-Basque-Aragon brunzidor

brunzidor

Source term: brunzidor / rombo

brunzidor — Catalan name for the cord-whirled bramadera; Servier extends the term across the Navarre/Basque/Aragon region.

Etymology. A Romance buzz-word from brunzir, to buzz or drone.

Basque shepherds carved the bullroarer they called the furrunfara from a thin plate of wood with toothed edges, decorated with the Basque cross of helical commas — the symbol, Servier writes, of celestial motion. A note from the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires, which he quotes, describes the use: a herdsman swings the little board on the end of a cord, sometimes itself tied to a stick, and the droning sound drives off animals that do not belong to the flock — chiefly stray mares, which at night can panic the rams in their fold. In Spain, Servier adds, the brunzidor is known in Navarre, the Basque Country, and Aragon, on the authority of Ramon Violant y Simorra's 1954 survey of children's and shepherds' instruments in Catalonia. Across the border in Béarn, shepherds whirl their own version, the burrumbo or hurrumbo, to drive wandering mares back from the rams' folds. The brunzidor proper is a Catalan word; the strict diamond-board-on-a-cord form it names is what the Spanish cultural authorities still catalogue as the bramadera, a child's noisemaker whose name comes from bramar, to bellow.

En España, el "brunzidor" es conocido en Navarra, en el País Vasco y en Aragón (R. Violant y Simorra: Instrumentos músicos de construcción infantil y pastoril en Cataluña...).

In Spain, the "brunzidor" is known in Navarre, in the Basque Country, and in Aragon (R. Violant y Simorra: Musical Instruments of Children's and Shepherds' Construction in Catalonia...).

Jean Servier, El hombre y lo invisible (Spanish trans. of L'homme et l'invisible), p. 140

Particulars

Function

A boys' noisemaker, swung hard in a circle around the hand.