PNG45 - ethnographic attestation
Umboi Island
Papua New Guinea - Morobe - Oceania - Sahul
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags
Almost everywhere along this coast the whirled blade is the holy secret — the spirit-voice no woman may hear. On Umboi Island the rule inverts. K. A. Gourlay singled the island out as the one place where the bullroarer itself carries no sacred charge; the awe belongs instead to the masks it partners, towering secret-society spirits worn in padded barkcloth. Here the roaring blade is merely the prop, and the carved face is the power.
the bullroarer is not sacred though the masks associated with it are
Gourlay 1975, p. 15, discussion of Umboi Island
- Object
- bullroarer occurrence; slit-gong occurrence
- Function
- Gourlay Table 1 row 45 records bullroarer and slit-gong occurrence for Umboi; Gourlay's own prose treats Umboi as an exception where the bullroarer is not sacred though associated masks are.
- Map confidence
- high - geocoded
- Source location
- Table 1, row 45