Iatmul — Mindimbit

Source term: Schwirrholz; bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong

Schwirrholz: Reche’s German term for bullroarer. wagan: Iatmul avenging clan-spirits whose voices are the secret slit-gongs.

At Mindimbit on the Middle Sepik, Otto Reche documented H.S. 6649a, a 37.5-centimetre carved blade with a twisted-bast cord and a short wooden handle. Its forked cord mount kept the line aligned as the blade rotated. The expedition found it stored inside the belly of a large woven crocodile. Reche’s paired engraving shows the patterned front and back. A second plate depicts the monumental 140-centimetre H.S. 6596 from Mụåńgêm, which Reche judged very probably also a bullroarer and interpreted as a formal embodiment of the initiation spirit. In the later Iatmul rites Bateson described, novices learned to play flutes and swing bullroarers; women saw parts of the ceremony and heard the hidden instruments sounding from the house. The wagan slit-gongs belonged to the more serious secrets.

Beim Schwingen gibt es einen sehr tiefen, brummenden Ton.

When swung, it produces a very deep, humming tone.

Reche, Der Kaiserin-Augusta-Fluss (1913), p. 350, fig. 385

Particulars

Object

H.S. 6649a from Mindimbit (the “293-km village”): carved wooden bullroarer, 37.5 × 4.7 cm, with a 46 cm twisted-bast cord and 9.5 cm handle; front and back figured by Reche, who reports a very deep humming tone when it was swung. It had been stored inside the belly of the large woven crocodile H.S. 6649b.

Function

In wider Iatmul initiation rites, novices learned to swing bullroarers; women heard the hidden instruments from the ceremonial house while seeing parts of the ceremony.