The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-367 - museum specimen

Matahenua hakatangikugu, the rain-summoner

Solomon Islands - Matahenua, Bellona Island (Mungiki), Rennell and Bellona Province - Oceania - Polynesian outliers

Weather / fertility magic

Its mate MIR 1284, a cross-carved head above red-banded engraving.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Its mate MIR 1284, a cross-carved head above red-banded engraving

hakatangikugu

Source term: svingtræ

hakatangikugu: bullroarer; to roar, to sound loud; to swing one. From tangi, “to cry, sound, ring”. aho ’ua: “to summon or provoke rain, as by swinging the bull-roarer”.

Bellona is a ridge of raised coral ten kilometres long, walled in by cliffs, and the Polynesians who settled it call it Mungiki. From Matahenua at its western end comes this whirling rig, a hundred and sixty-three centimetres from blade to cord’s end: a slip of ghaimenga, the tree Bellonese prize above all others for canoes because it lasts and use for their houses too, and whose own forest god canoe-makers appeal to; the cord is hau, the hibiscus bast they twist into rope. They call it hakatangikugu, from tangi, to cry out. Bellonese music was sung rather than played, and this was no instrument of song. The one sentence anyone wrote about it is in Samuel Elbert’s dictionary, and it names a man: Moa of Hutuna, on Rennell, swings his hakatangikugu to summon rain. The same Moa, in the entry alongside, breaks the oven stones that the rain taboo protects along the south coast, because rain follows when the taboo is broken.

KO Moa e hakatangikugu i tena hakatangikugu ke aho ’ua.

Moa swings his bull-roarer to summon rain.

Samuel H. Elbert, Dictionary of the Language of Rennell and Bellona, Part 1 (1975), s.v. hakatangikugu
Object
Complete whirling rig 163 cm overall: a blade of ghaimenga wood (Palaquium erythrospermum) on a cord of hau, Hibiscus tiliaceus bast.
Function
Swung to summon rain.
Source
Nationalmuseet I.6199, object 64255, journalnummer E 143/64; "Ghaimenga træ, snor: hau"; "Længde 163 cm"; Matahenua, Bellona Isl., Rennell, Salomonsøerne; register text "Noona Dan Ekspeditionen 1961/1963. (Torben Monberg)"; acquired 1962; classified "Kultiske og magiske genstande" / "Sacred objects and places"; Samuel H. Elbert, Dictionary of the Language…
Source location
Page references

I.6199; object 64255. Elbert 1975 s.v. hakatangikugu, aho ’ua.

Source confidence
medium Matahenua is a traditional settlement toward the western end of Bellona, a 10 km cliff-ringed limestone ridge centred near 11°18′S 159°48′E; anchored at the western end, no village coordinate published.

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