LAYARD1942-001 - ethnographic attestation
Atchin ghostly-pig bullroarer voice
Vanuatu - Atchin Island - northeast Malekula - Oceania - Melanesia
Restricted
Source term: bull-roarer
Boys on Atchin went into the initiation lodge and stayed thirty days. They were kept unwashed and covered in dung, ashes and other foul stuff, put through humiliating ordeals, and surrounded by noises they were meant to take for ghosts — initiated men playing the part, whistling softly like birds and flapping wings that were only hands. One sound was no bird. The bull-roarer, on Atchin, was said to be the grunting of ghostly pigs. Every novice eventually learned to make the noises himself, which is the whole design of the thing: the hoax is what gets handed down.
the bull-roarer which in Atchin is said to represent the grunting of ghostly pigs
John Layard, Stone Men of Malekula (1942), p. 494
- Object
- Not recorded.
- Source
- Layard, Stone Men of Malekula, printed p. 494; DLI leaf 556
- Source location
- p. 494
- Source confidence
- medium Atchin Island community anchor.
- Spirit voice