SPANU1994-001 - ethnographic attestation
Gavoi burriburri (frusciu)
Sardinia - Barbagia - Europe - Northeast Italy
Play / practical
burriburri Italian
burriburri — the Gavoi name; frusciu is the general Sardinian term ('rustle'). Calvia Secchi's 1913 buribburi listing filed the name under a cane-cylinder type; the photographed Gavoi specimen is a true one-hole whirled slat.
In Gavoi, up in the Barbagia, the frusciu of the rest of Sardinia answers to burriburri. It is a board with a hole at one short end, on a metre of cord that the player first winds tight and then hauls into circles — and the comparison Sardinians reach for is not thunder or bees but the roar of a motorcycle engine. By the time it was written down it had passed wholly to the boys, though the memory of an older, ritual use still clung to it.
L'effetto sonoro è simile al rombo del motore di una motocicletta (da cui il termine onomatopeico burriburri utilizzato a Gavoi).
Its sound resembles the roar of a motorcycle engine — whence the onomatopoeic name burriburri used at Gavoi.
Spanu 1994:110
- Object
- Wooden board 15-35 cm with a hole at one short end, on about a metre of cord that is wound tight before whirling; the photographed specimen (fig. 112) is 35 cm, made by M. Pira of Gavoi.
- Function
- Boys' toy; the Sonos survey records an older ritual use since lapsed. Its sound is compared to a motorcycle engine.
- Map confidence
- high - Gavoi town, Barbagia di Ollolai.
- Source location
- Sonos pp. 110-111, fig. 112
- Toy / secular survival