MUS2026-078 - museum specimen
Urama bull-roarer (museum)
Papua New Guinea - Gulf Province (Urama Island) - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
kaiaimunu English
Source term: bull-roarer
kaiaimunu (also kaiamunu): a large wickerwork effigy of a monstrous animal kept in the men's clubhouse of the Papuan Gulf delta peoples; the same word names the bull-roarer that is taken to be its voice.
Etymology. The Urama and their Era-River neighbours call the bull-roarer kaiaimunu (also kaiamunu) — the same name as the great wickerwork effigy of a monstrous animal kept in the men's clubhouse. The whirled slat is understood as that monster's voice, sounded at male initiation and hidden from women. (high confidence)
An Urama bull-roarer from the lower Gulf of Papua, where the whirling slat is called kaiaimunu and is the voice of the wickerwork monster of the same name that lodges in the men's clubhouse. When it is swung, its growl is the monster speaking. Boys meet that voice at initiation, when the kaiaimunu is said to swallow and bring them forth again as men; women and the uninitiated must never hear it. In the Wapo Creek and Era River villages the slats were kept inside the great basketry effigies themselves, stored in the body of the beast whose cry they were.
Snorrebot
Wereldmuseum / NMVW TM-2670-364
- Object
- Snorrebot / bull-roarer of the Urama, Wereldmuseum / NMVW TM-2670-364.
- Function
- The voice of the kaiaimunu, the wickerwork clubhouse monster that swallows boys at initiation and yields them back as men; women and the uninitiated must never hear it (Wirz 1937).
- Map confidence
- high - approximate culture/locality centroid
- Source location
Page references
Wirz 1937, JRAI 67:407-413; the word "bull-roarer" is printed on pp. 408, 409 and 410 (page-locked 2026-07-27, and it occurs on no other page of JRAI 67, so all three are inside Wirz's own article)
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Death and rebirth
- Forbidden to women