The Bullroarer Atlas

No. BERN1903-001

Mangamba bark-cord bullroarer

Cameroon · Abo country north of the Mungo River · German Kamerun · Central Africa

Function not recorded

Dii bullroarer E 7772: long wooden blade with a scalloped edge, cord, and toggle handle.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Dii bullroarer with notched blade, cord, and toggle handle. CC BY-SA 4.0 · Image source

Source term: Surrholz mit Bastschnur

A blade on a cord of bast — inner-bark fibre — reached Bern among Wittwer’s gifts from Cameroon. The mixed donation also included a great Koso drum, bamboo flutes announcing the secret-society members’ Sunday, Isango’s carved staffs, and a snake fetish with a wooden head and real snakeskin. The bullroarer got three words in the inventory: Surrholz mit Bastschnur, ‘whirring-wood with bast cord.’

Fetischsachen von Geheimbünden und Anderes

Fetish objects of secret societies, and other things

Jahresbericht des Historischen Museums in Bern pro 1903, p. 64

Particulars

Object
Wooden bullroarer with a cord of bast — inner-bark fibre.
Function
Not recorded.

Source

Jahresbericht des Historischen Museums in Bern pro 1903, p. 64; Ethnologica Helvetica 2–3 (1979), pp. 192–193

View the source

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