HAYS1986-005 - ethnographic attestation
Gadsup returning-grandparents voice
Papua New Guinea - Eastern Highlands - Kainantu-Gadsup area - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
Source term: bullroarer
Women who heard the bullroarers and flutes sounding together knew what to say: the grandparents are returning. Among the Gadsup of the Kainantu valleys, the spirits behind the men's sacred sounds were the ancestors themselves, the community's dead drawing near again. The bullroarer belonged with the transverse flutes to initiation — the sounds heard by everyone, the explanation given to those who could not see them.
women hearing the bullroarers and flutes would say that "the grandparents are returning"
Hays 1986:440, citing DuToit 1974:236
- Object
- Bullroarer; no physical description recorded. Hays's table marks the Gadsup sacred-instrument set as transverse flutes and bullroarer.
- Function
- Sacred men's initiation instrument whose sound, with the flutes, was explained as the returning dead: women hearing it said the grandparents were coming back.
- Source
- Terence E. Hays, 'Sacred Flutes, Fertility, and Growth in the Papua New Guinea Highlands,' Anthropos 81 (1986), pp. 436, 440 and 445, citing Du Toit 1974, p. 236
- Source location
- p. 440
- Source confidence
- medium
- Location note
- Published Gadsup language-area anchor shared with retired Gourlay row PNG-T2-136.
Regions: Sahul · New Guinea · Melanesia
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women