UKR2026-001 - ethnographic attestation
Ukrainian furkalo garden roarer (Volyn)
Ukraine - Volyn - Kovel - Eastern Europe
Play / practical
фуркало / фуркалка (dim. фуркальце) Ukrainian / Russian glosses
Source term: фуркало (Hrinchenko s.v., sense 3)
From the onomatopoeic фур- (the whirr of wings or of air) with the instrument suffix -ло: literally 'the whirrer.' ЕСУМ treats фуркати as sound-imitative.
The Ukrainian furkalo could clear a garden or a haunted house. A small board tied to a whip-like handle, it was spun until the wood tore a long furkannia from the air: enough to scatter birds and pigs and, in Volyn tradition, to drive evil spirits and vicious dogs from the threshold.
Снарядъ, съ помощью котораго вспугиваютъ въ саду или огородѣ птицъ или свиней: нѣчто подобное кнуту, къ короткой веревочкѣ котораго привязана дощечка.
A device with which one scares birds or pigs in a garden or vegetable plot: something like a whip, to whose short cord a small board is tied.
Hrinchenko, Словарь української мови, т. 4 (1909), с. 379, s.v. фуркало (sense 3)
- Object
- Thin wooden board tied by a short twisted cord to a whip-like handle; in Kovel it was cut from roofing lath and swung in an accelerating circle.
- Function
- Used to frighten birds and pigs from gardens; in Volyn tradition, to drive evil spirits and vicious dogs from the house; also a boys’ noise toy.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Kovel town, Volyn oblast — the locality Skurativsky names for the lath-and-handle roarer; Hrinchenko's dictionary attestation is unlocalized
- Source location
Page references
Т. 4, с. 379 (1958 reprint of the 1907-09 edition)
- Toy / secular survival