The Bullroarer Atlas

NGUINEA-013 - museum specimen

Roro Islands, Central Province (PNG)

Papua New Guinea - Central Province - Bereina subdistrict - Roro Islands - Oceania - Sahul

Function not recorded

An elongated, pointed board carved with dense geometric and curvilinear incising in the kaiva decorative style, a plaited cord and tasselled...
An elongated, pointed board carved with dense geometric and curvilinear incising in the kaiva decorative style, a plaited cord and tasselled binding threaded through a hole near one end. Said to come from a Roro village on the Papuan coast; the pair of rhombes from Quai Branly that anchor this page are a separate, unillustrated pair. C. G. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (Cambridge, 1910), fig. 25 Public domain Image source

beriwa English

Source term: Rhombe

beriwa: the Roro word for the bull-roarer, which is also the name of the spirits of the dead (and of malevolent beings that were never human); the neighbouring Nara, who swing the bull-roarer for crop growth, likewise call it beriwa. C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910), p. 304.

Etymology. Among the Roro-speaking tribes the bull-roarer is called beriwa — the same word used for the spirits of the dead, and for malevolent beings that were never human. Seligmann adds that the neighbouring Nara, who swing the bull-roarer to make their crops grow, likewise call it beriwa. (high confidence)

A bullroarer from the Roro-speaking coast of Hall Sound, the shore and low islands around Yule Island and Bereina in the Central Province of Papua New Guinea. The Musee du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac catalogues it as a rhombe, the French word for a bullroarer, object 9647, inventory 71.1933.88.49.1-2, acquired in 1933. The register records the island and the object type but nothing of how the piece was swung or by whom. The fullest early account of the Roro is C. G. Seligman's "The Melanesians of British New Guinea" (1910), which notes that the carved, square-ended ornamental boards of the Roro club-houses could "pass into the bull roarer form." In the Roro language the word beriwa meant spirits and non-human agencies, not necessarily the dead; it was the neighbouring Nara, or Pokao, just to the east who used beriwa for the bullroarer itself and swung it to make their crops grow.

Beriwa, (1) spirits, not necessarily of the dead, non-human agencies (Roro); (2) bull-roarers (Pokao)

Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910), Glossary p. 748
Object
Two rhombes from the Roro country around Hall Sound, Quai Branly objects 9647 and 9649 (inventory 71.1933.88.49.1-2 and 71.1933.88.50.1-2), consecutive numbers in the same 1933 accession lot.
Function
Function not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Representative Roro Islands / Bereina-Yule area anchor.
Source location
Quai Branly object 9647 / inventory 71.1933.88.49.1-2 | Quai Branly 9647 + 9649; inventory 71.1933.88.49-50

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