The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-026 - museum specimen

Taulil

Papua New Guinea - Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

A pale wooden board painted at its corded end with a dark diamond-in-diamond lattice, the rest left plain and tapering to a point — a New...
Representative image. A pale wooden board painted at its corded end with a dark diamond-in-diamond lattice, the rest left plain and tapering to a point — a New Guinea bull-roarer held by the British Museum, shown for the general form; not the Taulil instrument from the Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain, documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1925-0213-4) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

tandaravakwe English

Source term: bull-roarer

tandaravakwe: the 'female' bullroarer of a male/female pair (vakwe 'female'; the male counterpart is uka), cut from the kawa tree and swung in the bush and after a man's death; kept secret from women, who take its voice for the Tambuan spirit (Taulil, Gazelle Peninsula). MAA Cambridge acc. 1930.464, coll. G. Bateson.

Etymology. The Taulil bullroarer is tandaravakwe, the 'female' member of a male/female pair (vakwe 'female'; the male counterpart is uka), cut from the kawa tree and swung in the bush and after a man's death. It was kept secret from women, who took its voice for the Tambuan — the masked spirit of the Gazelle Peninsula secret societies. (high confidence)

Swung in the bush after a man's death, this palm-wood splint spoke with a borrowed voice: the Taulil women who heard it took its roar for the Tambuan, the masked ancestral spirit their Tolai neighbours dance over the dead. Cut from the kawa tree, it is the "female," tandaravakwe, of a male-female pair (uka being the male), and kept strictly secret from women. Gregory Bateson lifted it from a man who was carrying it in his bag.

Secret from women who think it is Tambuan

MAA Cambridge object 523257, accession 1930.464
Object
Bull-roarer of the Taulil, in the collection of MAA Cambridge (MAA 1930.464).
Function
MAA Cambridge object record 523257 / accession 1930.464 identifies a Taulil bullroarer and records that it was secret from women, who thought it was Tambuan.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
MAA 1930.464 / object 523257

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