The Bullroarer Atlas

NGUINEA-016 - museum specimen

Bukaua bullroarer (Neuhauss, VI 29955)

Papua New Guinea - Morobe (former German New Guinea - Nordost-Neuguinea) - Oceania - Sahul

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A long, dark, finely tapered wooden blade incised along its length.
A long, dark, finely tapered wooden blade incised along its length. · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source
Walu lanqua, a named Bukaua roarer of yoli wood, front and back; the zigzag band is the moa selam, the little sea-snake.
Walu lanqua, a named Bukaua roarer of yoli wood, front and back; the zigzag band is the moa selam, the little sea-snake. · Public domain Image source
Wabo lanqua, hung askew on its cord so it rasps: Wabo had a mutilated nose and spoke indistinctly.
Wabo lanqua, hung askew on its cord so it rasps: Wabo had a mutilated nose and spoke indistinctly. · Public domain Image source

banko lanqua

Source term: Schwirrholz

banko lanqua: individually named bullroarer bearing the attribute lanqua 'old' - among the neighbouring Tami this honorific is also a mark of esteem for eminent men, while the Bukawa apply it to bullroarers deserving special respect (Bukawa, Huon Gulf); Bamler 1911: 497 (Tami) and Lehner 1911: 410ff (Bukawa), via Gourlay 1975: 23. | balum li: the generic Bukaua word for the bullroarer, named for its blattaehnlich, leaf-like form (short form balum). | abumtau: a clan's ruling roarer, inherited and guarded by the balum muki. | ngasengomi: the 'serving' roarers, also named for the dead but of concern only to the actual descendant. | auwi lanqua: small high-voiced roarers speaking for the balumsfrauen, the wives of the ruling roarers - explicitly distinguished by Lehner from the ngasengomi. | saling: lanceolate wooden ornaments worn at the Balum feast, not sounded (Lehner 1911: 411-412).

Etymology. The second element is the attribute lanqua, 'old', an honorific which on this coast is applied both to eminent men and to bullroarers deserving special respect; Huon Gulf bullroarers also carry individual names, and the balum songs Neuhauss recorded among the Bukaua speak of individual bullroarer-spirits such as Tangayabo lanqua and Gumba lanqua. Banko itself is not glossed in the sources and is probably this instrument's personal name, giving 'Banko the old'. (medium confidence)

Banko lanqua - "Banko the Old." Among the Bukaua of the Huon Gulf each clan's ruling bull-roarer bore a dead man's name joined to lanqua, "the Old One," and the name doubled as the clan's war-cry, shouted in war, at pig-netting, at the pig market and at the girls' consecration; a man whose roarer was Tango yabo lanqua would never side with the party whose roarer was Nombu lanqua. The likeness could be exact. Gumba the Old was carved with two humps for Gumba's protruding hip-bones, and at the village of Uwaung the roarer named for Wabo was hung deliberately askew on its cord so that it rasped instead of humming, because Wabo had a mutilated nose and spoke indistinctly. On the blades themselves Stefan Lehner got the old carvers to explain the ornament: a little sea-snake and a beetle grub warning that these delicacies must not be eaten, a butterfly for the message that travels landward and seaward alike, a scorpion that stings unseen, a spirit carrying fire to expose the man who tells, a spiny pandanus leaf nobody goes near - and, almost never absent, the eye of the abo fruit, which grows strong and seed-bearing only once it is broken from the stalk, as the boys are broken from the tree by circumcision. At circumcision hidden roarers gave voice to the monster balum, said to swallow the boys and hand them back as men. This 44-centimetre blade reached Berlin in 1910 from the physician-ethnographer Richard Neuhauss, its own old man's name still on the catalogue.

Schwirrholz, einheimische Bezeichnung "banko lanqua"

Bullroarer, indigenous designation "banko lanqua"

Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. VI 29955
Object
A long, thin wooden blade, 44 cm long, 6.5 cm wide and 1.5 cm thick, classed by the Berlin museum as a Schwirrholz (bullroarer) and recorded under the indigenous name "banko lanqua". Collected in the Bukaua district on the Huon Gulf and acquired by purchase from the physician-ethnographer Richard Neuhauss in 1910. Bukaua roarers of this class were cut from yoli, abui, abong (Afzelia) or nip (coconut wood) and carved with a glossed motif programme - among them a little sea-snake, a beetle grub, a butterfly, a scorpion, a pandanus leaf and the eye of the abo fruit (Lehner 1911, pp. 411-413, Figs. 5-16).
Function
Voice of the balum: on the Huon Gulf hidden roarers spoke for the monster said to swallow boys at circumcision, and each clan's ruling roarer bore a dead man's name with the honorific lanqua, "the Old One" — this one is Banko the Old (Lehner 1911).
Map confidence
medium - Representative anchor on the north shore of the Huon Gulf in the Bukaua (Bukawa) speech area, Morobe Province; the museum record localises the object only to "Huon Golf, Bukaua" with no village, so the point marks the Bukawa coastal district rather than a precise find-spot and sits close to the existing Bukawa/Yabim cluster.
Source location
inv. VI 29955

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