JOHNSTON1908-001 - ethnographic attestation
Bolobo's serrated roarer, kept from women
Democratic Republic of the Congo - Middle Congo River, left bank above the Kwa-Kasai confluence (Mai-Ndombe) - Central Africa
Restricted
Source term: serrated stick; bull-roarer
At Bolobo on the middle Congo, one of the mission boys was twirling a notched stick to make it roar when a man from his village stopped him short. The roar belonged to the men, and its whole power lay in the women not knowing what made it. Let them into the secret, the man warned, and the men could no longer make them afraid. Bolobo was a town of the Bobangi, the people who once held the carrying trade of the western Congo between Stanley Pool and the Equator.
'What,' said he, 'you will let the women into the secret! If they understand, we shall no longer be able to make them afraid.'
George Grenfell, quoted in Harry H. Johnston, George Grenfell and the Congo, vol. 2 (1908), p. 665
- Object
- A serrated stick, twirled to make a roar.
- Function
- Sounded by the men to frighten the women, who were never to learn that the roar came from a stick.
- Source
- Sir Harry H. Johnston, George Grenfell and the Congo, vol. 2 (London: Hutchinson, 1908), p. 665, quoting George Grenfell
- Source location
- Johnston 1908 vol. 2 p. 665
- Source confidence
- medium to high
- Location note
- Bolobo town, site of the Baptist Missionary Society station; the incident happened in the boy's own village, which Grenfell does not name.
Regions: Africa · Central Africa
- Forbidden to women