PNG172 - ethnographic attestation
Hakus
Papua New Guinea - Bougainville - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
rus English
Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags
rus: Halia term for the spirit associated with boys' initiation rites and for the bullroarer itself, 'an object swung around to make a frightening sound' (rus 2 in the SIL Halia dictionary).
On Buka a boy taken for the upe disappears into a forest school for up to three years, his head bound in a woven cone; no woman may see him, or even cross ground he has walked. Among these northern islanders Gourlay's 1975 survey marks two sounding things — the slit-gong and the swung bullroarer, the wooden voice that men across Buka Passage lent to the ancestral dead. The Halia language of Haku holds both halves of the secret in one word: rus is the spirit that attended boys' initiation, and rus is the bullroarer, 'an object swung around to make a frightening sound.'
The spirit that was associated with boys' initiation rites. Refers also to the bullroarer, an object swung around to make a frightening sound.
Halia Dictionary (SIL), entry rus
- Object
- bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; slit-gong occurrence; slit-gong use
- Function
- Gourlay Table 1 row 172 records Hakus/Haku bullroarer occurrence/use and slit-gong occurrence/use; the Halia dictionary defines rus as the spirit of boys' initiation and as the bullroarer swung to make a frightening sound.
- Map confidence
- medium - alias_area
- Source location
Page references
Table 1, row 172; SIL Halia lexicon entry rus 2
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women