LOEB1929-040 - ethnographic attestation
Kulisehu River toy bullroarer and sacred flute
Brazil - Upper Xingu - Kulisehu River - South America
Play / practical
yelo Bakairí (yelo/iyelo); Mehinakú (niatäpu); Nahuquá (matähu) — Upper Xingu / Kulisehu River
Source term: yelo / iyelo (Bakairí)
thunder/thunderstorm (Bakairí); cf. Mehinakú niatäpu, Nahuquá matähu
Etymology. For the Bakairi the bullroarer is yelo (iyelo), the same word for "lightning and thunder" — best rendered, von den Steinen says, as "thunder" for the sound it imitates. The Mehinaku (niatapu) and Nahuqua (matahu) share what he treats as the same word, with no recorded meaning. (high confidence)
On the Kulisehu River in the Upper Xingu, the bullroarer was a child's plaything, and the flute, not the bullroarer, was the sacred instrument. Edwin Loeb set the detail against its neighbor for contrast: among the Bororo nearby, von den Steinen had reported that women sought refuge in the woods the moment a bullroarer was sounded, and would have died had they seen one. Here the roles were reversed, and the whirring board passed into the hands of children.
Near by, however, on the Kulisehu river the bullroarer was used as a toy, and the flute was the sacred instrument.
Loeb 1929, Tribal Initiations and Secret Societies, UC Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. 25(3):281, citing von den Steinen 1897:384
- Function
- Near the Bororo, on the Kulisehu River, Loeb says the bullroarer was used as a toy and the flute was sacred.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - representative coordinate for named people, place, or region in Loeb
- Source location
- p. 281
- Toy / secular survival