No. BLENCHDICT-001
Berom jwà ǹgasang
Nigeria · Plateau State · Africa
Restricted
jwà ǹgasang
Source term: bull-roarer
bull-roarer
Berom country is the high, cool grassland of the Jos Plateau in central Nigeria, farmed in terraces and cut about over the last century by the tin fields. In the Berom dictionary drawn from the eastern Foron dialect the bullroarer arrives in three words and then goes quiet: jwà ǹgasang, bull-roarer. The name carries the use. Ngasang is the Berom rite of passage for teenage boys, a circumcision and puberty ceremony the Bi-Gabong held every seven years in precolonial times, whose secrets were kept and whose calling suspended all warfare among the villages that joined it. The jwà ǹgasang is the Ngasang bullroarer, the instrument of that rite.
jwà ǹgasang n.p. bull-roarer
Blench, Dusu, Kuhn, Pwol and Fang, Berom Dictionary, circulation version (30 June 2025), printed p. 86.
Particulars
- Object
- A bullroarer known in Berom as jwà ǹgasang, recorded in the eastern Foron dialect of the Jos Plateau, Nigeria; material, dimensions and cord are not described.
Source
Roger Blench, Barnabas Dusu, Hanni Kuhn, Yusufu Pwol, and Bot Fang, Berom Dictionary, eastern dialect based on Foron, circulation version, Jos, 30 June 2025; Audrey Smedley, Women Creating Patrilyny (2004), Berom ritual section