PNG168 - ethnographic attestation
Barriai
Papua New Guinea - West New Britain - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
Tibuda English
Source term: bullroarer
Tibuda: the Bariai name for the Bullroarer, at once instrument and spirit being; McPherson's prose also spells the spirit Tivuda.
Women invented the Bariai bullroarer. In the story Naomi McPherson recorded, women cutting firewood from a Taltalnga mangrove sent a chip flying off with a whirr — 'Oh, how wonderful!' — made it sing again, carried it home, and hid it from the men. On feast days their messenger Ola, in ceremonial finery, sent the men out of the village, and the Bullroarer, Tibuda, came into the plaza to sing and eat pork and roasted taro with the women. Then an old man tripped during the exodus, spilled his lime powder, and conspired: on the appointed day the men's-house groups killed every female from the oldest grandmother to the littlest girl, sparing only infants at the breast. The men captured the Bullroarer, but the knowledge died with its owners — no woman now knows how to make it sing, and women flee its fearsome presence. Only initiates may watch the aulu and bokumu mask dances it guards: seeing the instrument cost one pig, entering the dance a second. Admission to the aulu mysteries was itemised: a new member paid one pig to be allowed to see the bullroarer and a second to be admitted to the dance — sight of the instrument the cheaper of the two purchases.
The men captured the Bullroarer and now no woman knows how to make it sing because the memory was killed. Since that time, the Bullroarer has belonged to men and women flee its fearsome presence.
McPherson, 'Black and Blue: Shades of Violence in West New Britain, PNG,' in Engendering Violence in Papua New Guinea (ANU Press, 2012), p. 52
- Object
- Bullroarer sounded outside the aulu or bokumu cylindrical-mask dance.
- Function
- Warned uninitiated people away; staged initiation required one pig to see the bullroarer and another to enter the dance.
- Map confidence
- medium - alias_area
- Source location
Page references
vol. II, pp. 512-513 (footnote: Friederici 1912:102); McPherson 2012 p. 52
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women
- Women-linked
- Female-origin myth