The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-009 - museum specimen

Uganda

Uganda - East Africa

Play / practical

The Ugandan toy bullroarer itself — a long, thin tapering blade pierced at the narrow end for its cotton swing-cord, the square end split...
The Ugandan toy bullroarer itself — a long, thin tapering blade pierced at the narrow end for its cotton swing-cord, the square end split lengthwise. British Museum Af1954,+23.3752, from Sir Henry Wellcome's collection. © The Trustees of the British Museum (Af1954,+23.3752) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bullroarer toy

A wooden bullroarer from Uganda in the British Museum is catalogued not as a sacred instrument but as a toy: a tapering blade pierced at one end for a cotton cord, its square end split lengthwise. It reached the museum in 1954 among the African material from Sir Henry Wellcome's collection, and the record gives no ethnic group, district, or local name — only that it was made in Uganda.

A toy in the form of a bullroarer made of wood, pierced at the tapering end for a cotton suspension chord, with the square end split longitudinally.

British Museum, object Af1954,23.3752 (collection record)
Object
Wooden toy with cotton suspension cord
Function
Made in Uganda toy bullroarer
Map confidence
low - Uganda country anchor from British Museum production-place metadata; no district, ethnic attribution, collector locality, or use context is public.
Source location
British Museum Collections Online object Af1954,+23.3752; term-page search result checked 2026-06-01.

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