OLKKONEN2007-001 - lexical attestation
Burum-Mindik (Somba-Siawari)
Papua New Guinea - Burum and Mindik valleys, inland southern Huon Peninsula, Morobe Province - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
esöŋ (cult, spirit, and bullroarer; Siawari asa); köwawöŋ / muwum-muwum Somba-Siawari / English
Source term: bull-roarer
esöŋ (Siawari asa) = 'ancestral cult, circumcision of boys, ancestral spirit,' also the bullroarer; köwawöŋ (variant muwum-muwum) = 'bullroarer, humming, buzzing'; timbip = 'bamboo pole with which the bull-roarer is whirled.'
One word carried the whole institution among the Burum-Mindik of the inland Huon Peninsula: esöŋ was the ancestral cult, the circumcision it enacted, and the ancestral spirit — 'the ancestral spirit swallowed up the boys,' runs the dictionary's own example sentence — and esöŋ was also the bullroarer, whose sound women and girls, shut out of the cult's ceremonies, had reason to fear. The everyday name was köwawöŋ or, echoing the hum itself, muwum-muwum, and the instrument whirled from a bamboo pole called timbip.
esöŋnöŋ leuam gwahöt eŋgiyök
the ancestral spirit swallowed up the boys
Olkkonen & Olkkonen, Somba-Siawari — English Dictionary (SIL, 2007), p. 29
- Object
- Known from dictionary entries: the bullroarer itself (köwawöŋ, echoic variant muwum-muwum) and timbip, the bamboo pole 'with which the bull-roarer is whirled.' No dimensions, material, or specimen recorded.
- Function
- Named for the esöŋ ancestral cult — the spirit said to swallow the boys at circumcision; its sound was feared by women and girls, who were barred from the cult ceremonies.
- Map confidence
- high - WALS Burum language-area centroid; the dictionary covers the Burum-Mindik communities as a whole, so a single village pin (Mindik, Ogeranang) would claim more precision than the source supports.
- Source location
- printed pp. 29, 90, 172
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women