HARLEY1941-001 - ethnographic attestation
Vu ni and the unmasked high men
Liberia - Nimba (Mano country) - West Africa
Restricted
vu ni
Source term: bull-roarer
vu ni (Mano): the bull-roarer, one of the voices of the Poro spirits; the Ge give the same name to a Poro Bush devil who uses one.
To Mano women and uninitiated boys, the officials of the Poro existed only as ge, masked spirits who spoke a foreign tongue in a rolling falsetto. During the first part of the Poro the high men walked about at night without their masks, and vu ni, the bull-roarer, was one of the spirit voices heard in the dark while they did. Among themselves the men admitted it freely: it was "merely a bit of frightfulness to keep the women under control." Inside the bush, once the boys' scars had healed, it was said the great spirit had eaten them. They waited in his belly until he gave them rebirth as men.
The bull-roarer, vu ni, was used during the first part of the Poro merely to terrify the women.
George W. Harley, Notes on the Poro in Liberia (Peabody Museum Papers 19(2), 1941), p. 14
- Object
- Not described.
- Function
- One of the voices of the Poro spirits, sounded during the first part of the Poro session, especially at night when the high men walked about unmasked, to terrify the women and keep them under control.
- Source
- George W. Harley, Notes on the Poro in Liberia, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 19(2) (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), pp. 7, 14-15
- Source location
Page references
pp. 14-15; p. 7
- Source confidence
- medium to high
- Location note
- Saclepea, Nimba County (OSM/Nominatim), a Mano town south of Ganta; Mano country anchor, not a use site.
Regions: Africa · West Africa · Upper Guinea Poro
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Death and rebirth
- Forbidden to women