PNG154 - ethnographic attestation

Sulka

Papua New Guinea - East New Britain - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

When the drone of the vuvu crossed a Sulka village, the women hid at once: they heard a spirit's voice in it, and it meant a mask was near. The Sulka of Wide Bay held their towering masks to be real spirits, o inkuol, which now and then devoured children and women; a woman who set foot on the mask-men's assembly ground would lose the child she carried and remain barren ever after. The masks were built and kept at a vererei, a homestead set apart in the forest, and went out from there to dance in the hamlets at the great rites — a boy's circumcision, a girl's ear- and nose-piercing, a young man's teeth-blackening before marriage. Ahead of them went the warning voice of the vuvu — the Sulka word for wind and for blowing.

Um die Weiber zu warnen, wenn eine Maske in der Nachbarschaft ist, schwingt man das Schwirrholz, vuvu, und die Geängstigten, die darin eine Geisterstimme zu erkennen glauben, verstecken sich schleunigst.

To warn the women when a mask is in the neighbourhood, one swings the bullroarer, vuvu, and the frightened women, who believe they recognize a spirit's voice in it, hide themselves at once.

Parkinson 1907, "Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee," p. 636 (chapter "Masken der Sulka"); the original Fraktur is normalized to standard German above.

Object

bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; slit-gong occurrence; slit-gong use

Function

Swung to warn the women away when a spirit-mask was near; the women, hearing a spirit's voice in it, hid at once.

Map confidence

medium - alias_area

Source location

Table 1, row 154

• Spirit voice
• Forbidden to women

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