HAD1898-007 - secondary catalog
Bushman / San rain and hunting bullroarer
Botswana - Namibia - South Africa - Southern Africa
Weather / fertility magic
going-going English
Source term: bull-roarer
The Bushmen of South Africa, Haddon reports, made a bull-roarer that widens slightly toward its free end before tapering to a point; the attached end carries a button-like knob with a circular notch, and the cord is tied there and fastened to a stick. It was spoken of as a rain-charm, and was said to be used as a clapper in driving game and to "charm their luck in hunting." For the hunting use he ventured an explanation: the cattle and game evidently mistook the buzz for the gad-fly or bot-fly and bolted, which he supposed would also serve these "little hunters" well in their raids on the cattle of the Zulus. The instrument was still alive when the geographer Siegfried Passarge crossed the Kalahari: at 'Gau, a Batawana town on the Tauche, he watched a child of unmistakable Bushman descent sweep one through figure-eights in the air until the feather bound to its far rod hummed. The name he learned for it, Ssewéwe, was the Bechuana one.
The Bushmen of South Africa have a bull-roarer which slightly increases in width towards its free end, and then has a pointed termination ... It is spoken of as a rain-charm, and is said to be also used as a clapper in driving game, and again, "they try to charm their luck in hunting by means of bull-roarers."
Haddon 1898, The Study of Man, p. 290 (after Ratzel, The History of Mankind, Eng. ed., ii. 275-276)
- Function
- Rain charm, hunting charm, and possible game-driving instrument.
- Map confidence
- medium - representative coordinate for named people, place, or region in Haddon
- Source location
Page references
Haddon 1898 pp. 290-291, Fig. 40 no. 1; after Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii. 275-276, i. frontispiece
- Weather magic