BRADLEY2006-001 - lexicographic attestation
Southern Lisu forest-spirit bullroarer, northern Thailand
Northern Thailand - eastern Shan Southern Lisu dialect range - Southeast Asia - Mainland
Sacred / spirit Candidate only
fũ lù yũ du English / Southern Lisu
Source term: fũ lù (forest spirit); fũ lù yũ du (bull-roarer)
fũ lù = a deaf forest spirit; fũ lù yũ du = bull-roarer. Bradley gives no literal English derivation.
Among the Southern Lisu of northern Thailand there is a forest spirit, fũ lù, with a peculiar affliction: it is deaf, and its ceremonies require a bullroarer. David Bradley's dictionary preserves the pairing in two spare entries — the spirit, and fũ lù yũ du, the instrument its rites demand. The dictionary names other spirits by what they exact, like the house-defiling spirit that requires its own rite of purification; the deaf spirit of the forest exacts the whirring board. Its form, and its ceremony, went unrecorded.
forest spirit which is deaf and requires the use of a bull-roarer at its ceremonies
David Bradley, Southern Lisu Dictionary (2006), p. 289.
- Object
- No physical description is recorded; the dictionary explicitly glosses the local term as a bull-roarer.
- Function
- Required at ceremonies of a deaf forest spirit; construction, sound, and exact ceremonial role are not described.
- Map confidence
- medium - Northern Thailand cultural-region anchor for a Thailand-based Southern Lisu dictionary source; not a village or ceremony site.
- Source location
Page references
p. 289 (PDF p. 323)