HOBLEY1922-001 - ethnographic attestation
Kikuyu
Central Kenya - Southern Kikuyu - East Africa
Play / practical
kiburuti English
Source term: bull-roarer
kiburuti — the Kikuyu name for the bull-roarer, recorded by Hobley as surviving locally only as a child's toy.
When the colonial official C. W. Hobley asked whether the bull-roarer figured in Kikuyu circumcision rites, he found the instrument, well known locally as the kiburuti, surviving only as a child's toy. Among many of the neighbouring tribes, he noted, the bull-roarer and “its first cousin, the friction drum,” were still regularly sounded in initiation ceremonial; in Southern Kikuyu, where the old circumcision ceremonial was by then rapidly dying out, the whirling toy was kept going by children.
Inquiries were made as to whether the bull-roarer, which is well known in Kikuyu as kiburuti, was used in these ceremonies, but curiously enough it appears to survive only as a child’s toy, whereas in many of the neighbouring tribes it and its first cousin, the friction drum, are regularly used in initiation ceremonial.
Hobley 1922, Bantu Beliefs and Magic, p. 87
- Object
- Hobley records the bull-roarer as well known in Kikuyu under the name kiburuti, but says it appears to survive there only as a child's toy.
- Function
- In a circumcision-context discussion, Hobley says the Kikuyu kiburuti is known locally but seems to survive as a child toy, contrasting it with unnamed neighboring tribes where bullroarers and friction drums are used in initiation ceremonial.
- Map confidence
- medium - representative coordinate for named people/region; source does not warrant a precise ritual locality
- Source location
- p. 87
- Initiation rite
- Toy / secular survival