Douglas Mercer
October 30 2024
Forensically speaking (or speaking strictly rather) what the whirligig is most famous for is that it brings its revenge; that is it cures the earth of the pleurisy of its peoples; by now we can accept it as a truth that when this purging arrives that some are transformed while others are annihilated. In the kabala the say the name of God is unspeakable but it is the Jews who are unspeakable (in a different sense, they can most certainly be named); in Kabala (secret Jewish learning) they say they spin the letters and the Hebrew is the language God spoke (incorrect, it’s English and a pure English at that); spinning is sewing and the fates are said to spin or weave; SoCal slang for a dope fiend circa 1990 was a spinner as in so and so is spun; we call it the turning world and because the world goes round (and round) it made them high; Heidegger placed significant emphasis on the concept of the turn, when the flashing of insight occurs and the one looking is caught sight of; but what it is all about is doing the hokey pokey and turning oneself around (see the widening gyre).
Holderlin speaks of the weather vane (usually represented by the cock) as being the controlling symbol in the semantic field, the one that turns the key of fate, it is said by the Poet to be high up in the sky, and above the wind. A weather vane, also known as a wind vane or a weather cock, is an instrument used to show the direction of the wind (which way the wind blows). It is typically used as an architectural ornament which adorns the highest point of a building. The word vane comes from the Old English word fana, meaning flag. Weather vanes are traditionally mounted on taller structures, including houses and barns, to prevent interference and to catch the purest breezes
A gee-haw whammy diddle is a mechanical toy consisting of two wooden sticks. One has a series of notches cut transversely along its side and a smaller wooden stick or a propeller attached to the end with a nail or pin. This stick is held stationary in one hand with the notches up, and the other stick is rubbed rapidly back and forth across the notches. This causes the propeller to rotate. Sometimes also known as a Ouija windmill, a hoodoo stick or a VooDoo stick. The word whammy is sometimes whimmy, and the word diddle is at times doodle giving it three possible other names as the gee-haw may be dropped. A gee haw refers to the fact that, by rubbing a finger against the notched stick while rubbing, the direction of the spinning propeller may be reversed. The operator may do this surreptitiously and yell gee or ha to make it appear that the propeller is reacting to the commands. When called a hooey stick, the word hooey is used to signify the change of direction. The nail holding the propeller must pass through a hole of approximately twice its diameter, essentially a twirling hoop on a stick. The side force of the finger or thumb on the notched stick forces it to the side as each notch is hit, thus giving it a repeating side jump to pivot the propeller in one direction or the other. A nicely balanced propeller will spin just fine, and it actually is not critical to have it heavy to one side, because the hole diameter always allows one side (slightly longer) to drop during the jerking motion which occurs. To observe the effect, the propeller attached to the end of the ribbed stick must not be pinned at its exact centre of mass, i.e. off-center or loose. For a functioning whammy diddle, there should be a preferred angle (i.e. when stationary, if the propeller is rotated around its axis and then released, it should return to its lowest-energy rest angle relative to the ribbed stick.)
A whirligig is an object that spins or whirls, or has at least one part that spins or whirls. It can also be a pinwheel, spinning top, buzzer, comic weathervane, gee-haw, spinner, whirlygig, whirlijig, whirlyjig, whirlybird, or simply a whirly. They are most commonly powered by the wind but can be hand, friction, or motor-powered. They can be used as kinetic garden ornaments , and can be designed to transmit sound and vibration into the ground to repel burrowing rodents. Button whirligigs, also known as button spinners and buzzers, are the oldest known whirligigs. They require only a piece of clay or bone and a strip of hide. The ancient Greeks had their own version of this toy, called an iynx. Many a child of the Great Depression from the southern Appalachians and Ozarks remembers a button or token, or coin and a string as the primary spinning toy of their youth. Button whirligigs are simple spinning toys whereby two looped ends of twisting thread are pulled with both arms, causing the button to spin. Button whirligigs are often seen today in craft shops and souvenir stores in the southern Appalachian Mountains. String-powered whirligigs require the operator to wrap the string around a shaft and then pull the string to cause the whirligig motion. Friction whirligigs, also called gee-haws, depend on the holder rubbing a stick against a notched shaft resulting in a propeller at the end of the shaft turning, largely as the result of the vibration carried along the shaft. The motion needed to power a friction whirligig is very similar to rubbing sticks together to create fire. Friction whirligigs are another staple of craft shops and souvenir stores in the Appalachian Mountains.
A wind-driven whirligig transfers the energy of the wind into either a simple release of kinetic energy through rotation or a more complicated transfer of rotational energy to power a simple or complicated mechanism that produces repetitive motions and/or creates sounds. The wind simply pushes on the whirligig turning one part of it and it then uses inertia. The simplest and most common example of a wind-driven whirligig is the spinning pinwheel . The pinwheel demonstrates the most important aspect of a whirligig — blade surface. Pinwheels have a large cupped surface area which allows the pinwheel to reach its terminal speed fairly quickly at low wind speed. Increasing the blade area of the whirligig increases the surface area so more air particles collide with the whirligig. This causes the drag force to reach its maximum value and the whirligig to reach its terminal speed in less time. Conversely the terminal speed is smaller when thin or short blades with a smaller surface area are utilized, resulting in the need for a higher wind speed to start and operate the whirligig. Whirligigs come in a range of sizes and configurations, bounded only by human ingenuity. The two blade non-mechanical model is the most prevalent, exemplified by the classic Cardinal with Wings.
The word whirligig derives from two Middle English words: whirlen (to whirl) and gigg (top), or literally to whirl. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the Promptorium parvulorum (c. 1440), the first English-Latin dictionary, which contains the definition Whyrlegyge, chyldys game, Latin: giracu-lum. It is therefore likely the 1440 version of whirligig referred to a spinning toy or toys. The American version of the wind-driven whirligig probably did not originate with the immigrant population of the United Kingdom, as whirligigs are mentioned in early American colonial times. How the wind-driven whirligig evolved in America is not fully known, though there are some markers. George Washington brought whirligigs of an unknown design, while returning from the Revolutionary War. By the mid-18th century weathervanes had evolved to include free moving types of whirligigs. These wings could be human arms; pitchforks; spoons, or virtually any type of implement.
The 1819 publication by Washington Irving of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow contains the following description: a little wooden warrior who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. By the latter half of the 19th century, constructing wind-driven whirligigs had become a pastime and art form. What began as a simple turning of artificial feathers in the wind advanced into full- blown mechanisms producing both motion and sound. Unfortunately, both the exposure to the weather and the fragile nature of whirligigs means very few wind-driven whirligigs from this era survive. The period between 1880 and 1900 brought rapid geographic expansion of whirligigs across the US. After 1900, production seemed for the most part to center on the southern Appalachians.
William Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, uses the whirligig as a metaphor for what goes around, comes around; in his play Cupid’s Whirligig, Edward Sharpham has the deity of love cast a spell over a group of Londoners so that one falls for another, who falls for another, and so on until the final person falls for the first: a cupid’s whirligig. Homespun means homey or cozy; fine-spun means made of incredible delicacy and subtlety. It is funny the way things turn. Someone who dresses well is said to be well turned out; we refer to how something turns out to indicate its ultimate state.
