Bull-roarer

Bull-roarer, a provincial English name for a boy's playingthing, made of a piece of wood about 8 inches long and 3 broad, sharpened somewhat at the ends, to one end of which a string 30 inches or so in length is tied, then twisted tightly round the finger, when the whole is whirled rapidly round and round until a loud and peculiar whizzing noise is produced. An instrument of the same kind, called turndun, is still used by the native Australians to produce a sound warning off intruders during several religious mysteries; and Mr Andrew Lang has not only collected evidence of its similar use in New Mexico, New Zealand, and South Africa, but identifies it with the rhombos used in the ancient Greek mysteries, itself an unconscious survival of more ancient and more savage mysteries. See 'The Bull-roarer,' in Lang's Custom and Myth (1884).