AFR-005 - ethnographic attestation
Dii (Duru) / Adamaoua
French Cameroon - Adamaoua highlands - Africa
Restricted
Jer (per Bergen catalog title "Svirrebrett. Jer"; unverified as a Dii term) English
Source term: svirrebrett; Jer
Zág: panther, in Dii — the animal the rhombe's roar was said to be, and also the name given to the circumcision knives. Jer: the term following "svirrebrett" in Bergen's catalog title for E 7772, possibly the Dii name for the instrument, unverified. Svirrebrett: the Norwegian museum-catalog word for a bullroarer, literally "whirring board".
Dii boys were circumcised out in the bush, away from the village, and the danger of it was explained to the women at home as a panther. The rhombes were made for exactly that purpose: tied to a rope and turned quickly in the air, they gave off a noise like the cry of the zág, and the men said the thing lived out there where the boys had gone. One of Tomas Drønen's informants laid out the reasoning without varnish — they fabricated the panther-rhombe, "which is a pure lie, since the circumcision is performed with small knives" — the whole apparatus assembled so that the women should not be aware of anything, including the boys who were injured or died. The instruments were not merely props, though. Alongside the circumcision knives, themselves called zág and kept in jars between ceremonies, the rhombes were seats of the ancestral spirits, the yóõóõb: hidden in the mountain and given sacrifices of their own. This blade in the University Museum of Bergen, catalogued out of French Cameroon as Duru — the name neighbours and colonial mapmakers gave the Dii — is an unusually complete survival: leaf-shaped, thirty-four centimetres, edges finely notched, still carrying its cord and the slim wooden toggle its whirler held.
The fabricated rhombes were tied to a rope, and when quickly turned around in the air, they made a noise that resembled the cry of the panther.
Tomas Sundnes Drønen, Communication and Conversion in Northern Cameroon (Brill, 2009), p. 127
- Object
- Leaf-shaped wooden bullroarer blade, 34.3 x 5 cm, with finely notched edges and a single perforation at one end, retaining its original cord and a slim wooden toggle handle (16.1 x 1 cm); University Museum of Bergen E 7772, accession card labelled "Fransk Kamerun, Vest-Afrika". Catalog title: "Svirrebrett. Jer".
- Function
- Whirled on a rope at the Dii boys' circumcision in the bush, its roar presented to the women left in the village as the cry of the panther (zag) said to live out there; the rhombes were also venerated with the circumcision knives as material seats of the ancestral spirits (yoooob), stored in hidden jars and given sacrifices.
- Map confidence
- medium - representative coordinate for the Dii chiefdoms around Mbe, north of Ngaoundere, Adamaoua; museum card gives only "Fransk Kamerun"
- Source location
Page references
Dronen 2009, pp. 127-128, 131 (and p. 125 n. 27) | Bergen UMUIB-F photo record 0210112461933; accession card E 7772 in frame
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women