No. PNG53
Cape Cretin
Papua New Guinea · Morobe · Oceania · Sahul
Sacred / spirit
A bullroarer and a slit-gong were logged side by side at Cape Cretin, the headland guarding the mouth of Langemak Bay on the Huon Gulf, then carried off to nineteenth-century collectors as bare carved specimens: no name written down, no account of who swung the one or struck the other. This is bullroarer coast, thick with men's ceremony, yet the Cape Cretin entry keeps its silence. The objects survived; the rite that gave them a voice did not.
give no uses within the present context
Gourlay 1975, p. 15, Huon Gulf source-cluster discussion
Particulars
- Function
- Not recorded.
Source
K. A. Gourlay, Sound-Producing Instruments in Traditional Society: A Study of Esoteric Instruments and Their Role in Male-Female Relations, New Guinea Research Bulletin 60 (Canberra and Port Moresby, 1975), Table 1, entry 53; source-cluster discussion p. 15