The Bullroarer Atlas

OCEXP-002 - ethnographic attestation

Maewo (Aoba), New Hebrides

Vanuatu - New Hebrides - Oceania

Play / practical

A dark wooden blade with a notched, cord-wound tip and a loose bundle of dried grass tied to the free end of its cord - shown for the general...
Representative image. A dark wooden blade with a notched, cord-wound tip and a loose bundle of dried grass tied to the free end of its cord - shown for the general Island Melanesian form, not the tal-viv, 'a whirring string', that this page documents from Maewo. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Oc1987-05-122) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

tal-viv English

Source term: bull-roarer

tal-viv — Maewo name for the bull-roarer, "a whirring string."

Etymology. Transparent descriptive compound for the Maewo toy bullroarer. (high confidence)

On Maewo in the New Hebrides the bull-roarer was a common plaything, called tal-viv, "a whirring string." Listing the names it went by from island to island, the missionary R. H. Codrington set Maewo's toy beside Vanua Lava's mala, "a pig," named for the noise it made, and Araga's tavire bua, "a bit of bamboo." Only at Florida, where it was the buro used in the Mysteries, did he say any superstitious character belonged to it; in the Banks' Islands there was no mystery about it, where it served to drive off a ghost or to make a mourning sound the night after a death.

It is a common plaything; in Vanua Lava they call it mala, a pig, from the noise it makes; in Maewo it is tal-viv, a whirring string; in Araga it is merely tavire bua, a bit of bamboo.

Codrington, The Melanesians (1891), Ch. XVII, p. 342
Object
Swung-cord aerophone; local name means 'a whirring string'. Used as a common plaything.
Function
Secular toy; name describes the acoustic property. No ritual character noted.
Map confidence
medium - representative on-land anchor at Maewo (Aoba), New Hebrides (regional coordinate fell just offshore of the rendered coastline); not an exact findspot
Source location
p. 342

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