Voice of the night monkeys

Source term: Schwirrholz

Yanacona: a Tacana medicine man; there were five classes of them.

For the Tacana of the Bolivian foothills, sickness arrived in person. Scarlet fever came as a beautiful girl scattering flower seeds, and families met her with a calabash of the best honey and some maize meal: touch my child lightly, they asked, and go to the people who give you nothing. Black smallpox came out of a black mountain with a black mule. Whooping cough belonged to the lord of the night monkeys, and the bullroarer spoke with his monkeys' voice, so a child who played with one could bring the cough on. In a Yanacona's hands the same sound was a weapon. A medicine man who swung it could send plague and other diseases to anyone he meant to harm or pay back.

Das Tönen des Schwirrholzes ist die Stimme der Nachtaffen. Schwingt ein Yanacona das Instrument, so vermag er mit ihm die Pest und auch andere Krankheiten einem Menschen zu senden, dem er Schaden zufügen, an dem er sich rächen will.

The sounding of the bullroarer is the voice of the night monkeys. If a Yanacona swings the instrument, he can send with it plague and other diseases to a person he wants to harm or take revenge on.

Hissink 1964, p. 207

Particulars

Object

A bullroarer.

Function

Its sound is the voice of the night monkeys. A child who plays with or swings it brings whooping cough from the lord of the night monkeys; a Yanacona (medicine man) swings it to send plague and other diseases against an enemy.