OCEXP-002 - ethnographic attestation
Maewo (Aoba), Vanuatu — buro toy (tal-viv)
Vanuatu - New Hebrides - Oceania
Play / practical
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
- Toy / secular survival