MUS2026-153 - museum specimen
Kubu ceremonial bullroarer
Papua New Guinea - Kubu, Western Province - Oceania
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer
bullroarer: English British Museum object type; no Kubu name is recorded.
The yams at Budji would not grow well until Maigidubu, the snake-man — a man who wore a snake's skin by day and kept his own gardens — came to a woman in a dream and taught her to whirl a bull-roarer to 'wake up the ground' before planting. So the Kiwai told Gunnar Landtman, who in 1912 carried home this ceremonial roarer from Kubu, in the low country where Kiwai territory on the Fly meets that of the Gogodala. Over ninety centimetres of board painted red, black, white and yellow and dressed with berries, seeds, feathers, gum and rattan, it was built to be seen as well as heard. In the Kiwai telling the whirring instrument was garden magic and men's secret at once: its medicine flew over the yams, banana and taro to make them grow, and no woman who first owned the sound was allowed to keep it.
Ceremonial bullroarer, Kubu.
British Museum, Oc1912,1217.6, 1912 register.
- Object
- 90.5 x 28.5 x 4 cm wooden bullroarer, painted red, black, white, and yellow and ornamented with berries and feathers; materials also include seed, gum, and rattan.
- Function
- The 1912 register calls it ceremonial; no performance is described.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Kubu populated-place anchor in Western Province, matching the British Museum findspot. This is a locality, not a claimed culture centroid.
- Source location
Page references
Oc1912,1217.6; 1912 register
- Snake-linked