The Bullroarer Atlas

HAD1898-024 - secondary catalog

Mota, Banks Islands

Vanuatu - Melanesia

Sacred / spirit

An Island Melanesian bull-roarer carved with wavy zigzag bands and a small round-eyed, toothed face near one tip — a Banks Islands piece from...
Representative image. An Island Melanesian bull-roarer carved with wavy zigzag bands and a small round-eyed, toothed face near one tip — a Banks Islands piece from Merelava, Mota's neighbour island; the nanamatea used at Mota itself has no published photograph. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1906-1013-1451) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

nanamatea English

Source term: nanamatea / death-maker

nanamatea: Mota (Banks Islands) "death-maker," the name for the bullroarer swung to drive off a ghost.

Etymology. The Mota bullroarer name is a transparent death/ghost-driving term in the checked Haddon/Codrington lane. (high confidence)

On Mota in the Banks Islands the bullroarer is called nanamatea, "death-maker," and is swung to drive a ghost away. Codrington, who recorded the name, says there is no mystery about it: in the Banks Islands the instrument is a common plaything, and this is simply a noise used to chase off the dead. On nearby Merlav the same thing is the worung-tamb, "a wailer," sounded the night after a death to make a mourning sound.

There is no mystery about it when it is used in the Banks' Islands to drive away a ghost, as in Mota, where it is called nanamatea, death-maker, or to make a mourning sound, as in Merlav, where it is called worung-tamb, a wailer, and used the night after a death.

Codrington 1891, The Melanesians, ch. 17
Function
Bullroarer used to drive away a ghost.
Map confidence
medium - representative anchor on Vanua Lava, the main Banks Islands landmass; Mota is a small island in the same group, too small to render
Source location
p. 342

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