{"id":"LAYARD1942-001","label":"Atchin ghostly-pig bullroarer voice","people_or_site":"Atchin community","country_current":"Vanuatu","historic_region":"Atchin Island / northeast Malekula","macroregion":"Oceania / Melanesia","local_name":"","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"","object_description":"Not recorded.","function_summary":"Said to represent the grunting of ghostly pigs.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"layard_1942_atchin_ghost_pigs","source_type":"primary_ethnography","source_url":"https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.281957","page_or_plate":"p. 494","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Atchin Island community anchor. GeoNames island feature 2137464. GeoNames: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Boys on Atchin went into the initiation lodge and stayed thirty days. They were kept unwashed and covered in dung, ashes and other foul stuff, put through humiliating ordeals, and surrounded by noises they were meant to take for ghosts — initiated men playing the part, whistling softly like birds and flapping wings that were only hands. One sound was no bird. The bull-roarer, on Atchin, was said to be the grunting of ghostly pigs. Every novice eventually learned to make the noises himself, which is the whole design of the thing: the hoax is what gets handed down.","pull_quote":"the bull-roarer which in Atchin is said to represent the grunting of ghostly pigs","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"John Layard, Stone Men of Malekula (1942), p. 494","term_gloss":"","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","initiation"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"John Layard, Stone Men of Malekula: Vao (London: Chatto & Windus, 1942), p. 494","url":"https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.281957"}],"source_citations":"John Layard, Stone Men of Malekula: Vao (London: Chatto & Windus, 1942), p. 494","source_display":"John Layard, Stone Men of Malekula: Vao (London: Chatto & Windus, 1942), p. 494","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Not recorded.","function_display":"","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"atchin community","display_name":"Atchin ghostly-pig bullroarer voice","image":{"full":"assets/objects/local_review/MUS2026-027_deacon1934_plate_xvi.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/local_review/MUS2026-027_deacon1934_plate_xvi_thumb.jpg","alt":"Deacon’s Plate XVI: the wrapped Nevinbur bullroarer, item 5 at far right, beside mounted effigies including Mansip and his two wives.","credit":"A. B. Deacon, Malekula: A Vanishing People (1934), Plate XVI, item 5","license":"","source_page":"https://www.odsas.net/object/86552","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Seniang Nivivbur bullroarer, Deacon Plate XVI item 5, at far right.","pool_id":"auto-local_review--MUS2026-027_deacon1934_plate_xvi","auto_assigned":true,"last_modified":"2026-09-01"},"slug":"layard1942-001-atchin-community"}