TUCCI1969-001 - ethnographic attestation
Mountain folk of the upper Illasi valley, Verona
Veneto - Lessinia - Southern Europe (NE Italy)
Play / practical
surla a man Italian
surla — Veronese for the chafer beetles and their buzz; a man 'by hand', a brasso 'by arm'.
In the mountain country at the head of the Illasi valley above Verona, the bullroarer took its name from an insect: surla, the local word for the chafer beetles whose midsummer drone it matched. Boys knew two of them — the plain surla a man, a slat whirled from the hand, and the more elaborate surla a brasso worked from the whole arm — and when Giovanni Tucci came asking in the 1960s, a valley correspondent could still send him the instruments themselves.
- Object
- Wooden slat bullroarer whirled from the hand; a more elaborate arm-worked form, the surla a brasso, was used beside it.
- Function
- Boys' folk toy; two named forms, the hand-whirled surla a man and the arm-worked surla a brasso.
- Map confidence
- medium - Upper Illasi valley / Lessinia anchor above Verona.
- Source location
- Tucci 1969, p. 366
- Toy / secular survival