{"id":"TORRES-001","label":"Mer rain-making bullroarer (bigo)","people_or_site":"Meriam (Mer / Murray Island), Eastern Torres Strait","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Mer (Murray Island), Eastern Islands, Torres Strait, Queensland","macroregion":"Oceania / Torres Strait","local_name":"bigo","source_term":"bigo","source_language":"","object_description":"Two small wooden bullroarers in the Australian Museum. E.17230 is a mounted model carved from softwood with a black band; one end carries a braided palm-fibre cord, the other is fixed to a notched bamboo stick (L 25 cm, W 6 cm). E.17231 is a mounted model carved as a small oval, one end with a knob and plant-fibre cord, the other fixed to a bamboo stick (L 22.5 cm, W 5.7 cm). Both are flat slats whirled on a cord. The British Museum has a complete rig Haddon brought home from his first visit of 1888–89, Oc,89+.141: a flat oval wooden blade the size of a thumbnail, 2.8 centimetres, lashed by cord to a cane stick eighty-five centimetres long. Cambridge holds Haddon's own Mer rig, MAA Z 9702 A: a small pear-shaped blade of brown wood bound to its stick with fine strings of coconut fibre — blade, line and handle together.","function_summary":"Whirled in rain-making rituals (weather magic).","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"florek2005_torres_strait_bigo","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://journals.australian.museum/media/Uploads/Journals/18021/1464_complete.pdf","page_or_plate":"p. 89, catalogue nos. 160 (E.17230) and 161 (E.17231) | Haddon 1908 vol. VI pp. 194-198, Pl. VIII fig. 1","map_confidence":"high","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Representative island-centroid anchor for Mer (Murray Island), where the Hedley-McCulloch 1907 collection was assembled and within whose catalogue section these two bullroarers fall; no sub-island provenance is recorded.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"In the Eastern Torres Strait the bullroarer was an instrument of the weather. Every Mer rain-maker owned a doiom — a rudely carved stone man — and each was dressed for work with a small bigo, a bullroarer, hung at its neck on coconut-fibre line. The mightiest had names. Dugena, owned by Gasu, was the strongest of them; its head had snapped off the day Gasu, furious that it brought no rain, dashed it to the ground — he wired it back on, and after selling it to Haddon he 'never ceased regretting its loss.' Working bigo were lanceolate hardwood blades whirled on some two feet of cord knotted to a metre-long stick. The Australian Museum holds two small wooden examples from Mer, collected by Hedley and McCulloch in 1907 — display models mounted to show how cord and handle worked. Where Haddon's western islanders whirled the bigu and wanes for turtle and wind, on Mer the whirled blade was turned to calling the rain.","pull_quote":"\"Dugena,\" owned by Gasu … which made very heavy rain with a little thunder","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Haddon, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. VI (1908), p. 195","term_gloss":"Meriam Mir name recorded for the bullroarer on Mer (Murray Island); given on the Australian Museum catalogue cards as \"bigo (DRM)\", the indigenous term supplied by curator David R. Moore. The cognate Western-island (Mabuiag) form is bigu.","cls":"weather","class_label":"Weather / fertility magic","color":"#2F6FA3","is_candidate":false,"flags":["weather"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"etymology":"Bigo is the Meriam Mir word for the bullroarer, glossed in the Cambridge expedition vocabularies as a small bull-roarer and equated with Mabuiag bigu, the deep-noted instrument of the Western Islands. On Mer, Haddon knew it chiefly from the doiom rain-makers' kit and from turtle ceremonies, and by 1898 it survived mainly as a child's toy; nothing further is recorded about the word itself.","literal_gloss":"small bull-roarer","semantic_cluster":"name_only; size_class; weather","etymology_confidence":"medium","sources":[{"citation":"Florek, Stan. 2005. The Torres Strait Islands Collection at the Australian Museum. Technical Reports of the Australian Museum No. 19, p. 89, catalogue entries 160 (E.17230) and 161 (E.17231).","url":"https://journals.australian.museum/media/Uploads/Journals/18021/1464_complete.pdf","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260103091423/https://journals.australian.museum/media/Uploads/Journals/18021/1464_complete.pdf"},{"citation":"A. C. Haddon (ed.), Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. VI (1908), pp. 194-198 and Pl. VIII fig. 1","url":"https://archive.org/details/reportsofcambrid06hadd/page/194/mode/1up"}],"source_citations":"Florek, Stan. 2005. The Torres Strait Islands Collection at the Australian Museum. Technical Reports of the Australian Museum No. 19, p. 89, catalogue entries 160 (E.17230) and 161 (E.17231).; A. C. Haddon (ed.), Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. VI (1908), pp. 194-198 and Pl. VIII fig. 1","source_display":"Florek, Stan. 2005. The Torres Strait Islands Collection at the Australian Museum. Technical Reports of the Australian Museum No. 19, p. 89, catalogue entries 160 (E.17230) and 161 (E.17231).; A. C. Haddon (ed.), Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. VI (1908), pp. 194-198 and Pl. VIII fig. 1","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Two small wooden bullroarers in the Australian Museum. E.17230 is a mounted model carved from softwood with a black band; one end carries a braided palm-fibre cord, the other is fixed to a notched bamboo stick (L 25 cm, W 6 cm). E.17231 is a mounted model carved as a small oval, one end with a knob and plant-fibre cord, the other fixed to a bamboo stick (L 22.5 cm, W 5.7 cm). Both are flat slats whirled on a cord. The British Museum has a complete rig Haddon brought home from his first visit of 1888–89, Oc,89+.141: a flat oval wooden blade the size of a thumbnail, 2.8 centimetres, lashed by cord to a cane stick eighty-five centimetres long. Cambridge holds Haddon's own Mer rig, MAA Z 9702 A: a small pear-shaped blade of brown wood bound to its stick with fine strings of coconut fibre — blade, line and handle together.","function_display":"Whirled in rain-making rituals (weather magic).","confidence_display":"high","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"meriam mer","display_name":"Mer rain-making bullroarer (bigo)","image":{"full":"assets/objects/TORRES-001_haddon1912_fig235-236.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/TORRES-001_haddon1912_fig235-236_thumb.jpg","alt":"Printed plate with line drawings of five miniature bigo models: three suspended from long sticks in figure 235 and two with looped cords beside sticks in figure 236.","credit":"Haddon, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. IV (1912), figs. 235-236","license":"Public domain (published 1912)","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/reportsofcambrid04hadd","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Line drawings of miniature bigo.","additional":[{"full":"assets/objects/TORRES-001_haddon1908_dugena_wellcome.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/TORRES-001_haddon1908_dugena_wellcome_thumb.jpg","alt":"Dugena rain charm from Mer: a small human-shaped figure with a round head, projecting nose and fibre skirt, tied to a post against a woven wall.","credit":"Haddon, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. VI (1908), Pl. VIII fig. 1 — Wellcome Collection M0005261","license":"CC BY 4.0","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Dugena%22_rain_charms_in_Expeditions_to_the_Torres_Straits_Wellcome_M0005261.jpg","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Dugena rain charm from Mer, wearing a miniature bigo bullroarer."},{"full":"assets/objects/museum_harvest2/MUS2026-269_bm_Oc-89-141.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/museum_harvest2/thumbs/MUS2026-269_bm_Oc-89-141_thumb.jpg","alt":"Register card for Haddon’s 1889 gift from the Torres Straits: a long wand with cord wound along it and a small oval bullroarer blade suspended from one end.","credit":"© The Trustees of the British Museum (Oc,89+.141)","license":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","source_page":"https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Oc-89-141","rehosted":true,"caption":"Haddon's 1889 gift to the British Museum, Oc,89+.141: the whole magic rig drawn on its register card."}],"also":[{"label":"Dugena — Gasu's rain charm with its miniature bigo (Haddon 1908, Pl. VIII fig. 1)","page":"assets/objects/TORRES-001_haddon1908_dugena_wellcome.jpg","credit":"Wellcome Collection M0005261","license":"CC BY 4.0"}]},"slug":"torres-001-meriam-mer-murray-island-eastern-torres-strait"}