CHENG2015-001 - ethnographic attestation
Sakizaya
Taiwan - Guo Fu Community - Hualien City - East Asia
Play / practical
berber / ber ber English
Source term: bullroarer; distinct from same-named whirring disc
berber / ber ber = Sakizaya name shared by the bullroarer and a separate whirring disc.
For more than a century after Qing troops crushed them in the 1878 Takobowan battle, the Sakizaya survived by hiding in plain sight — living as Amis, keeping their language indoors, until Taiwan recognized them as its thirteenth indigenous people in 2007. Out of that guarded childhood world the elder Jin-wen Huang remembered the ber ber: a thin slice of stone tied to a long string and spun until it sounded. 'The thinnest stone made the loudest sound.' A toy, nothing more — and today elders teach schoolchildren to make it again.
We used to tie a long string to a thin stone slice and spin it to produce sound during my childhood. The thinnest stone made the loudest sound.
Jin-wen Huang, in Cheng, Taxonomies of Taiwanese Aboriginal Musical Instruments (2015), p. 942.
- Object
- Slender oval bullroarer; in practice a thin stone slice tied to a long string and spun. The same name also covers a separate two-hole whirring disc.
- Function
- Children's toy; revived by elders as a plaything in schools and cultural associations.
- Map confidence
- high - Approximate Guo Fu Community / Hualien City anchor; source gives no household or object accession.
- Source location
- pp. 613-15, 942
- Toy / secular survival