FROBENIUS1925-001 - ethnographic attestation
Tschamba Samba Leko Langa circumcision bullroarer
Cameroon - Tchamba - Beka - Faro Department - North Region - Africa
Restricted
Langa German / Tschamba term
Source term: Holzerne Schwirren
Langa: Tschamba name for the wooden bullroarers and associated ancestral being; no literal gloss recovered
After boys were circumcised, wooden Langa sounded at night while the initiates remained in the bush camp. Women, children, and uncircumcised people fled. If a boy had died, his mother was told that Langa had found no meat and had eaten her son.
Abends erklingen dann die holzernen Schwirren, die Langa.
That evening the wooden bullroarers called Langa sound.
Frobenius 1925:13
- Object
- Wooden bullroarers; no dimensions, cord, perforation, blade shape, or object figure is supplied.
- Function
- Sounded after circumcision in the bush camp; women, children, and uncircumcised people fled; Langa was explained as an ancestor.
- Map confidence
- medium - Modern Tchamba village in documented Samba Leko territory between the Alantika Mountains and Faro/Mayo Deo; representative area anchor, not an interview locality or object findspot.
- Source location
Page references
printed pp. 13-15; later Langaschwinger references in the same section
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women