The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-095 - museum specimen

Amhara

Ethiopia - Gondar, Amhara - Africa

Weather / fertility magic

A plain elongated wooden blade with a small notch cut near one end — an African bull-roarer held by the British Museum, shown for the general...
Representative image. A plain elongated wooden blade with a small notch cut near one end — an African bull-roarer held by the British Museum, shown for the general form; not the Amhara rhombe from Gondar, known locally as rorata or furrit, documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1999-01-40) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Rorata / Furrit French

Source term: bull-roarer

Swung fast on its cord, the cypress blade throbs out what Ethiopian goat-herders hear as a leopard's cry — the very sound they use to drive real leopards off their flocks. Yet the same voice cuts both ways by district: at Gondar people swear the roar draws the leopards in, while among the Choa its noise is believed to pull down rain. The Dakar-Djibouti expedition carried this blade home from Gondar in 1932.

Rorata, Furrit

local names recorded for the rhombe

Quai Branly API object 213357
Object
Quai Branly object 71.1931.74.2995: Amhara/Gondar rhombe, local names Rorata and Furrit.
Function
Quai Branly API records goat-herder use against leopards and a regional rain belief for the Amhara/Gondar rhombe; no women language is recorded.
Map confidence
high - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
object record 213357 (Quai Branly API)

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