The Bullroarer Atlas

HAD1898-006 - ethnographic attestation

Yoruba country

Nigeria - West Africa

Restricted

Yoruba Oro bull-roarers figured by Haddon (1898).
Yoruba Oro bull-roarers figured by Haddon (1898). A. C. Haddon, "The bull-roarer" / The Study of Man (1898), pl. Public domain Image source
A complete Yoruba Oro rig obtained from Ibadan people: narrow blade, cotton cord, and long wooden handle; British Museum Af1914,-.33.
A complete Yoruba Oro rig obtained from Ibadan people: narrow blade, cotton cord, and long wooden handle; British Museum Af1914,-.33. © The Trustees of the British Museum (Af1914,-.33) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Oro English

Source term: Oro stick

Oro: a Yoruba god of terror and vengeance whose voice is the bull-roarer; also the cult and rite tied to civil authority, from which women were excluded on pain of death.

Etymology. Batty (1890), reproduced by Haddon, glosses the cult name Oro as "Torment" — a Yoruba god of terror and vengeance whose "voice" is the bull-roarer. (medium confidence)

Across Yoruba country, the whirring roar from the forest was the voice of Oro, god of terror and vengeance bound up with civil authority. When Oro was abroad, women shut themselves indoors on pain of death — no woman might see the bull-roarer and live. At Ondo his festival, Oro Doko, lasted three lunar months, the women confined from daybreak to noon every ninth day while the men paraded the streets whirling the blades, dancing, and drumming; stray dogs and fowls were killed and feasted on. On the lower Niger it was said that heavy blades voiced the great-grandfathers, lighter ones the newly dead.

The voice of Oro is produced by whirling round and round a thin strip of wood, some 2½ inches broad, 12 inches long, and tapering at both ends, which is fastened to a stick by a long string. It is, in fact, the instrument known to English boys as the "bull-roarer."

A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (1894), ch. VI, pp. 110-111
Object
A thin wooden blade tapering at each end, up to three feet long, slung from a pliable rod and whirled. Surviving Oro objects include MAA 1918.74 (Abeokuta, 'Voice of Oro'), PRM 1930.43.93 (Abeokuta), the forked PRM 1931.3.1-.2 (Oshogbo), a carved example at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, and British Museum Af1914,-.33, a complete Ibadan rig 71.1 cm overall, its narrow blade joined by cotton string to a long wooden handle.
Function
Bullroarer produces the voice of Oro, a terror and vengeance cult tied to civil authority and female exclusion.
Map confidence
medium - representative coordinate for named people, place, or region in Haddon
Source location
Batty 1890 pp. 160-164; Haddon 1898 pp. 289-290; Fig. 39; RMCA MO.1977.27.1; MAA 1918.74; PRM 1930.43.93; PRM 1931.3.1-.2 | British Museum Af1914,-.33

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