The Bullroarer Atlas

NAGA-007 - ethnographic attestation

Sema Sumi bird-scarer and doorway-derivative bullroarers

Naga Hills - present Nagaland - South Asia - Northeast India

Play / practical

Complete Sümi herumu rig with blade, cord, and cane handle.
Complete Sümi herumu rig with blade, cord, and cane handle. Image source
Sümi hewu with its string attached, Pitt Rivers Museum 1923.84.909.
Sümi hewu with its string attached, Pitt Rivers Museum 1923.84.909. Image source
Roy’s 1928 plate of an eleven-inch Sema Naga bullroarer.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Roy’s 1928 plate of an eleven-inch Sema Naga bullroarer. · Public domain Image source
A second complete Sümi herumu rig, Pitt Rivers Museum 1928.69.322.
A second complete Sümi herumu rig, Pitt Rivers Museum 1928.69.322. Image source

herumu / hewu English

Source term: bull-roarer

herumu / hewu — Sümi (Sema) Naga names for the bull-roarer, recorded on the PRM specimens

Sümi boys sent the hewu or herumu roaring over cultivated ground to scare birds from the crops — a working instrument of the fields rather than the men's house. Painted derivatives of the same form hung in house doorways — at Mishilimi, Shaw recorded, "to act as disinfectants in case of illness", the whirring blade's shape doing protective duty even when it never sounded.

bull-roarer used by boys for scaring birds from crops

Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1923, Accessions by Loan (J.P. Mills, Sema)
Object
Bull-roarer plus painted doorway derivatives, Pitt Rivers Museum. The sounding rigs are PRM 1923.84.909 (vernacular hewu; Henry Balfour coll.) and 1928.69.321-322 (herumu), preserving blades and complete corded assemblies; 1923.84.908 is the painted doorway derivative kept as contextual material.
Function
PRM annual report lists a boys' bull-roarer for scaring birds from crops; separate doorway derivatives are retained only as contextual notes.
Map confidence
medium - Broad Sumi/Sema regional anchor; not Oxford
Source location
Page references

1923 annual report | PRM acc. 1923.84.908/909; 1928.69.321-322

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