The Bullroarer Atlas

AFR-002 - ethnographic attestation

Kwanyama / Owambo

Namibia; Angola - Uukwanyama - Kwanyama region - Africa

Restricted

A wooden blade whose midsection is wound thickly in dark cord, with a further hank knotted at the tip — again a generic specimen, not the edila...
Representative image. A wooden blade whose midsection is wound thickly in dark cord, with a further hank knotted at the tip — again a generic specimen, not the edila sounded by bird-masked officiants during Kwanyama boys' circumcision. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1999-01-39) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

edila / odila; omazila / omadhila English

Source term: edila; bullroarer

Owambo names for the "Big Birds" of the rite: edila / odila ("birds"; the singular odila also glossed as eagle, duck, epilepsy, and airplane), and the circumcision forms omazila / omadhila (sing. eedhila, eethila).

Etymology. Kwanyama plural noun meaning "birds." Loeb states the bullroarers are called edila, the same name given to the masked men whose voices they represent, coding the instrument as the voice of the Big Bird spirits. (high confidence)

In the Uukwanyama circumcision rite of the Owambo, the boys were eaten by a Big Bird and then defecated from its anus. The men who staged this wore bird masks and were called the "spirits" or the "Gods" of circumcision; "eaten by" was the ordinary Owambo metaphor for spirit possession, so to be swallowed was to die ritually and be possessed by the Bird. The anthropologist Edwin Loeb, who recorded the rite, described it as a secret performance from which women of fertile age were banished altogether and at which the boys observed silence and taboos on food and drink. As each boy was cut, the masked Bird-men sounded their bullroarers to drown his cries and held him down so he would not struggle free; afterward each boy broke loose and ran, and the birds chased him with switches, making an outcry as if driving cattle. The next day a sheep was killed and its hide cut into belts to give the boys supernatural protection. The same Big Birds went in procession across the country before the sowing season, the instrument the same one whirled in the Uukwaluudhi rain rite: a bullroarer whirled at the end of a strong rope, sounded alongside an instrument made from the tip of an antelope horn.

The Bird-men sounded their bullroarers to drown the cries of the boys as they were cut.

Salokoski 2006:253, drawing on Loeb 1962:236-239
Object
Bird-masked circumcision officiants sound bullroarers during boys' cutting and possession by the Big Bird.
Function
Kwanyama circumcision is described as a secret rite in which boys are eaten by a Big Bird, women of fertile age are banished, and Bird-men sound bullroarers during the cutting.
Map confidence
medium - representative coordinate for named people/region; source does not warrant a ritual-site point
Source location
Loeb 1962 pp. 236-239 via Salokoski 2006 pp. 252-254

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