GUNN1953-001 - ethnographic attestation
Afusare bull-roarer of the guinea-corn sowing
Nigeria - Bauchi Province section of the Afusare (now Jos East LGA, Plateau State) - West Africa
Restricted
Source term: bull-roarer
izhak: the Afusare circumcision rites. dodo: the masked ancestral spirits. acha: fonio, the small-grained cereal of the Plateau.
At Fobur, senior village of the Bauchi Afusare, the farming year was marked with water. It was sprinkled before the hoeing began, after the acha harvest, when the guinea-corn ripened, and at the sowing of the guinea-corn, when the bull-roarer sounded. Water from Fobur was essential to izhak too, the circumcision rites held in the same year in all three main villages, first at Share, then Fobur, then Gusti. At Fobur the boys were gathered at Faigwom and purified with water sprinkled from a buffalo horn. At Gusti the foreskins were buried, to serve later as a cure for impotence. At Share the 'dodos in grass' came, and in all three villages the bull-roarers sounded.
Sprinkling of water is a feature of four other rites at Fobur: (1) before hoeing commences; (2) at the sowing of guinea-corn (when “bull-roarer is used”); (3) after acha-harvest (double rites, in village and on the farms); and (4) when guinea-corn is ripe.
Gunn 1953:73
- Object
- Bull-roarer; not described.
- Function
- Sounded at Fobur when the guinea-corn is sown, one of four water-sprinkling rites of the farming year, and at izhak, the circumcision rites held in turn at Share, Fobur and Gusti.
- Source
- Harold D. Gunn, Peoples of the Plateau Area of Northern Nigeria, Ethnographic Survey of Africa, Western Africa Part VII (London: International African Institute, 1953), pp. 72-73
- Source location
- pp. 72-73
- Source confidence
- medium
- Location note
- Fobur village, Jos East LGA, Plateau State (OSM/Nominatim), where the sowing rite is placed; Share and Gusti, the other izhak villages, lie within 15 km.
Regions: Africa · West Africa
- Initiation rite
- Agriculture / crop magic