The Bullroarer Atlas

SERVIER1970-012 - secondary catalog

Portugal

Portugal - Europe - Iberia

Play / practical

A glass display case of free aerophones at Soinuenea, with a plain wooden burruna board and its cord visible among rombos and other whirled...
Representative image. A glass display case of free aerophones at Soinuenea, with a plain wooden burruna board and its cord visible among rombos and other whirled instruments from across Europe — shown as a representative Iberian piece for the Portuguese zunas documented here. Soinuenea, Oiartzun, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 Image source

zunas Spanish translation of French original

Source term: zunas / rombos

zuna — Portuguese regional name for a whirling buzzer toy; from zunir, "to drone, hiss."

Etymology. From the sound-imitative root zunir/zinir, "to drone, hiss, buzz" — a regional Portuguese name equivalent to zinideira, a strip of withe whirled on a stick to make a sharp hissing sound. (medium confidence)

In Portugal, the ethnologist Jean Servier recorded, the old people forbade children to sound their zunas at harvest time, fearing that the buzzing might disturb the souls of the dead, who were thought ready to leave the earth just as the crops were gathered. The zuna itself was a child's toy: in Juncal do Campo, in the Beira Baixa, children cut them from the withe of old baskets, hung them on a length of string, and whirled them until they buzzed — the name comes from zunir, to drone or hiss. Servier gave no Portuguese folklorist for the harvest taboo, pointing only to a chain of French comparative sources, and that primary record has not been traced; the toy, by contrast, is plainly attested.

En Portugal, los viejos prohíben a los niños que hagan resonar sus "zunas" o rombos en el momento de las cosechas, quizá por temor de actuar sobre las almas de los muertos prontas a dejar la tierra en el momento de las cosechas.

In Portugal, the old people forbid children to sound their "zunas" or bullroarers at harvest time, perhaps for fear of acting upon the souls of the dead, ready to leave the earth at the moment of the harvest.

Jean Servier, El hombre y lo invisible (Spanish trans. of L'homme et l'invisible), p. 140
Object
Servier says elders forbid children to sound zunas at harvest because of possible effects on departing souls of the dead; a Juncal do Campo local-history article independently describes children making and whirling zunas as buzzing toys.
Function
Children's zuna bullroarer toy tradition, with Servier's still-unrecovered harvest-season/dead-soul taboo retained as a comparative claim.
Map confidence
low - country centroid for Servier's taboo claim; Reconquista locates object/toy use at Juncal do Campo, Beira Baixa, but the harvest taboo is not localized there
Source location
Servier p. 140

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