The Bullroarer Atlas

GIRARD1967-001 - ethnographic attestation

Buang roarer among the seed yams

Papua New Guinea - Snake River valley (Mapos), Bulolo District, Morobe Province - Oceania - Sahul

Sacred / spirit

Representative—not this record’s object: named Bukaua roarers of the Huon Gulf.
Representative — not this record’s object. · named Bukaua roarers of the Huon Gulf. · Public domain Image source

Source term: rhombe

djebang: the men's yam-planting basket, woven for the planting.

At yam planting, Buang men of the Snake valley carry their seed in a djebang, a basket slung from the right shoulder, woven for the occasion and used only by men. In the story of the two ancestral brothers, the younger carried the elder's body to its grave in a djebang. Sometimes a stone the size and shape of a yam lies among the seed, a stone said to have fallen from the sky, there to strengthen it. Some people put a bullroarer there instead: they descend from immigrants from Bulolo, where the bullroarer is used. The old village of Tsagai says the yams, and the rites that make them grow, belonged to its own ancestors, and remembers newcomers from around Bulolo, a few generations back, who could grow only taro and kept very sacred, fearsome rites of manhood in round men's houses.

Quelques personnes, descendant d'immigrés venus de Bulolo où l'on utilise le rhombe, en placent dans leur djebang en guise de pierre.

Some people, descended from immigrants who came from Bulolo, where the bullroarer is used, put one in their djebang in place of the stone.

Girard, "Les gens de l'Igname" (1967), p. 307
Object
A bullroarer laid among the seed yams in the men's planting basket (djebang), in place of a yam-shaped stone fallen from the sky.
Source
Françoise Girard, "Les gens de l'Igname; Les Buang de la vallée du Snake, district de Morobé, Nouvelle-Guinée," Journal d'agriculture tropicale et de botanique appliquée 14, nos. 8-9 (1967), pp. 287-338, at pp. 288, 307
Source location
pp. 288, 307
Source confidence
medium
Location note
Mapos 1 and 2 (OSM -6.9068, 146.7561 and -6.9128, 146.7642), the village at the centre of the Snake valley where Girard lived; the practice is reported for some valley families, not a single village.

Regions: New Guinea · Sahul · Melanesia

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