Mer / Murray Island boys' toy bullroarer

bigo

Source term: bull-roarer

bigo: Meriam (Mer/Murray Island) word for the bullroarer, a small lanceolate hardwood whirled in rain-making and tied as the 'dressing' of the doiom rain-stone; the corresponding Western Torres Strait word is bigu, no literal meaning recorded (Meriam Mir, Eastern Torres Strait; Haddon 1908, Reports vi:196-198).

On Christianized Mer (Murray Island), about 120 miles from Muralug at the eastern end of Torres Strait, Alfred Haddon was startled to see a number of small boys playing with bull-roarers. The boys were scholars in the Mission School, brought from Saibai, a low island near the New Guinea coast at the far end of the Straits. Only a few weeks earlier, on Muralug (Prince of Wales Island), Haddon had been given the same kind of instrument in secret: an old chief, after satisfying himself no one could overhear, whispered its name — waness — and the next morning led Haddon and his son into the bush, took precautions not to be followed, and produced the bull-roarer, giving it over only on the promise that it never be shown to a woman. Haddon set the two encounters side by side.

A few weeks afterwards I was in Christianized Mer (Murray Island)... and to my great surprise I saw a number of small boys playing with similar bull-roarers. These boys were scholars in the Mission School, and had been brought from Saibai... In one island a bull-roarer was too sacred to be shown to a woman; in another it was a plaything!

Haddon 1898, The Study of Man, pp. 307–308

Particulars

Function

Small boys from Saibai were playing with similar bullroarers at the mission school.