{"id":"PNG55","label":"Bukawa / Yabim","people_or_site":"Bukawa / Yabim","country_current":"Papua New Guinea","historic_region":"Morobe","macroregion":"Oceania / Sahul","local_name":"balum","source_term":"balum","source_language":"Bukaua and Yabim (Jabêm), Huon Gulf, Morobe, Papua New Guinea","object_description":"Bullroarer, sacred flute and slit-gong are all in use here. Lehner drew the named roarers themselves: Walu lanqua, cut from yoli wood, carries the moa selam, the little sea-snake, as a zigzag band down its length.","function_summary":"In Yabim use, twirled while naming the dead to produce a fine taro crop; the balum also voiced the swallowing monster of male initiation.","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 55; Lehner 1911, printed p. 407; Frazer, Belief in Immortality I (1913), printed pp. 260-261; Table 1, row 61 (Gawac); Lehner 1911, printed p. 412, Fig. 5","map_confidence":"high","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"Village or district coordinate for the named people.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among the Bukaua and Yabim of the Morobe coast, boys taken for circumcision were said to be swallowed by a ferocious monster called balum, who released them from his belly only after enough pigs had been sacrificed to make him vomit them up; in spewing them out he bit or scratched them, and that wound was the circumcision. The bull-roarer's hum, swung by hidden men, was the monster's voice, and the one word balum named the roarer, the monster, and the souls of the dead alike. Frazer, reading Lehner, set the word beside its neighbours: the Kai say ngosa and the Tami kani, each a single name for the roarer and the monster alike. The same dead had power in the gardens: Yabim men twirled the balum while naming them so that the taro would flourish. Women and uninitiated boys were forbidden to see the instrument on pain of death, and as the procession of novices set out the mothers watched weeping from a distance, believing their sons were about to be devoured. The place of operation was a hut a hundred feet long, narrowing toward the rear like the monster's belly, with great eyes painted over the entrance; lodged in the balumslum, the monster's house, the boys were held to be killed and restored to a new and better life — no longer boys, but men. The balum often took the form of a sea-snake, and a sea-snake was cut into the roarers themselves - a zigzag band that Lehner's old carvers explained as a warning against eating the creature. Below the ruling roarers stood the lesser 'serving' ones, and apart from both a third class, small and higher-voiced, that spoke not for the dead men but for their wives. The Bukaua account of how the men came by it begins with a woman: chopping firewood, she struck off a chip that flew up with a whirring sound and carried it home to her husband, who took it to the men. They agreed to keep it by killing her — and agreed, too, that he should be given a new wife in her place.","pull_quote":"When a lad bleeds to death from the effect of the operation, he is secretly buried, and his sorrowful mother is told that the monster swallowed him and refused to bring him up again.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Frazer, The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Vol. I (1913), Lecture XII","term_gloss":"ghost / spirit of the dead (the same word also names the swallowing monster and the bull-roarer)","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["spirit_voice","snake","initiation","death_rebirth","women_taboo","women_special","female_priority_myth","agriculture"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":true,"f_snake":true,"etymology":"In Bukaua and Yabim speech, the one word balum names at once the bull-roarer, the monster that swallows the novices at circumcision, and a ghost of the dead; among the Bukaua each bull-roarer further bears the name of a particular dead man.","literal_gloss":"","semantic_cluster":"spirit_voice / initiation","etymology_confidence":"high","sources":[{"citation":"K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society (1975), Table 1, entry 55; S. Lehner, 'Bukaua,' in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, vol. III (1911), pp. 407, 412 and fig. 5; H. Zahn, 'Die Jabim,' ibid., p. 333; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., vol. XI (1913), p. 232; Frazer, The Belief in Immortality, vol. I (1913), pp. 260-261; K. A. Gourlay 1975, Table 1, entry 61 (Gawac, i.e. Bukaua); J. G. Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, vol. II (The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., Part VII, 1913), ch. 'The External Soul in Folk-Custom', New Guinea section","url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000082089644"}],"source_citations":"K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society (1975), Table 1, entry 55; S. Lehner, 'Bukaua,' in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, vol. III (1911), pp. 407, 412 and fig. 5; H. Zahn, 'Die Jabim,' ibid., p. 333; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., vol. XI (1913), p. 232; Frazer, The Belief in Immortality, vol. I (1913), pp. 260-261; K. A. Gourlay 1975, Table 1, entry 61 (Gawac, i.e. Bukaua); J. G. Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, vol. II (The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., Part VII, 1913), ch. 'The External Soul in Folk-Custom', New Guinea section","source_display":"K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society (1975), Table 1, entry 55; S. Lehner, 'Bukaua,' in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, vol. III (1911), pp. 407, 412 and fig. 5; H. Zahn, 'Die Jabim,' ibid., p. 333; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., vol. XI (1913), p. 232; Frazer, The Belief in Immortality, vol. I (1913), pp. 260-261…","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Bullroarer, sacred flute and slit-gong are all in use here. Lehner drew the named roarers themselves: Walu lanqua, cut from yoli wood, carries the moa selam, the little sea-snake, as a zigzag band down its length.","function_display":"In Yabim use, twirled while naming the dead to produce a fine taro crop; the balum also voiced the swallowing monster of male initiation.","confidence_display":"high","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"bukawa","display_name":"Bukawa / Yabim","image":{"full":"assets/objects/PNG55_vkm_1938_21_0001.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/PNG55_vkm_1938_21_0001_thumb.jpg","alt":"Bullroarer from a balum festival magic bundle in the Finschhafen area, with a pale incised cross-band and geometric ornament extending toward one end.","credit":"Världskulturmuseet, Göteborg (1938.21.0001)","license":"CC BY 4.0","source_page":"https://collections.smvk.se/carlotta-vkm/web/object/1938.21.0001","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Bullroarer from a magic bundle for the balum festival, Finschhafen area.","additional":[{"full":"assets/objects/pd_plates/lehner1911_fig5_walu_lanqua.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/pd_plates/thumbs/lehner1911_fig5_walu_lanqua_thumb.jpg","credit":"Stefan Lehner, 'Bukaua,' in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea III (1911), p. 412, Fig. 5; scan Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt","license":"Public Domain Mark 1.0 (Lehner in Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea III, 1911)","source_page":"https://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/urn/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:2-328554","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Walu lanqua, a named Bukaua roarer of yoli wood, front and back; the zigzag band is the moa selam, the little sea-snake."}]},"slug":"png55-bukawa-yabim"}