The Bullroarer Atlas

No. BARGERY1934-001

Zaria's forbidden fatauci

Nigeria · Zaria, Kaduna State · West Africa

Restricted

"Men will swing the bullroarer": the example sentence for viigi
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. "Men will swing the bullroarer": the example sentence for viigi CC BY 4.0 · Image source

fatauci

Source term: bull-roarer

fatauci (Zaria; also fatauchi): Hausa 'bull-roarer'; Bargery equates it with kura.

A fatauci is a thing women must not see, ran the Hausa saying at Zaria. Wherever the old religion was kept, the bullroarer was guarded from every woman's sight, and while it was sounding all women had to hide in their houses, or they would die. Hausa who turned to Islam gave up the fatauchi with the rest of the old ceremonies, setting the bullroarer aside with the rites it served.

fatauci ba ganin mata ba

a 'bull-roarer' is a thing which women must not see

G. P. Bargery, 1934, s.v. fatauci

Particulars

Object
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. G. P. Bargery, A Hausa-English Dictionary (1934), s.v. fatauci, in S. Matsushita, Hausa Dialect Vocabulary 2 (Tokyo, 1994), p. 805 View
  2. J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in West Africa (Oxford, 1959), p. 39 View

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.