{"id":"PNG152","label":"Tolai","people_or_site":"Tolai","country_current":"Papua New Guinea","historic_region":"East New Britain","macroregion":"Oceania / Sahul","local_name":"","source_term":"","source_language":"English","object_description":"Both the bullroarer and the slit-gong are in use here.","function_summary":"Whirled by children as a plaything.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"gourlay1975_sound_producing","source_type":"source_catalog","source_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000082089644","page_or_plate":"Table 1, row 152; primary at Parkinson 1907 p. 138","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"Approximate anchor for the named people; no findspot given.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Across much of Melanesia the bullroarer is a guarded voice of spirits, kept from women and children on pain of punishment. Among the Tolai of New Britain's Gazelle Peninsula it was the reverse: a child's toy, whirled for the noise, carrying no secret — and, as the trader-ethnographer Richard Parkinson noted in 1907, not even a name in the Kuanua tongue. The dread that elsewhere rides the roarer belonged here instead to the masked tubuan and duk-duk, ancestral spirit-figures of the men's secret society who appeared at initiations and funerals to enforce Tolai law.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society: A Study of Esoteric Instruments and Their Role in Male-Female Relations (New Guinea Research Bulletin 60; Canberra and Port Moresby, 1975), Table 1, entry 152; Richard Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (Stuttgart, 1907), p. 138","url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000082089644"}],"source_citations":"K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society: A Study of Esoteric Instruments and Their Role in Male-Female Relations (New Guinea Research Bulletin 60; Canberra and Port Moresby, 1975), Table 1, entry 152; Richard Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (Stuttgart, 1907), p. 138","source_display":"K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society: A Study of Esoteric Instruments and Their Role in Male-Female Relations (New Guinea Research Bulletin 60; Canberra and Port Moresby, 1975), Table 1, entry 152; Richard Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (Stuttgart, 1907), p. 138","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Both the bullroarer and the slit-gong are in use here.","function_display":"Whirled by children as a plaything.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"tolai","display_name":"Tolai","image":{"full":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/bm_E_Oc1906-1013-1450.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/museum_harvest/thumbs/bm_E_Oc1906-1013-1450_thumb.jpg","alt":"A long, plain New Guinea wooden bull-roarer blade with a round hole near its squared end.","credit":"© The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1906-1013-1450)","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Oc1906-1013-1450","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"A plain, unengraved New Guinea bull-roarer blade with a drilled hole."},"slug":"png152-tolai"}