The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG57 - ethnographic attestation

Huon Gulf (General)

Papua New Guinea - Morobe - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

Named Bukaua balum bullroarers of the Huon Gulf — Walu, Taqua, Iwalo and Gue lanqua, each carrying an ancestor's name — figured by the...
Named Bukaua balum bullroarers of the Huon Gulf — Walu, Taqua, Iwalo and Gue lanqua, each carrying an ancestor's name — figured by the missionary Lehner in Neuhauss's Deutsch-Neu-Guinea (1911). R. Neuhauss, Deutsch-Neu-Guinea, Bd. III (1911), p. 412, figs. 5–11 (S. Lehner, 'Bukaua') — Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt, DSDK Public domain Image source

balum Yabim (Jabêm) and Bukaua (Austronesian, Huon Gulf, Morobe, PNG)

ghost / spirit of the dead; the same word names the bullroarer and the swallowing initiation-monster

Etymology. In Yabim and Bukaua a single word, balum, means at once the whirled bullroarer, the monster that swallows the novices at circumcision, and the ghost or spirit of the dead. The Kai cognate ngosa means 'grandfather.' (high confidence)

Around the Huon Gulf the bullroarer was the voice of a monster that ate boys. Among the Yabim and Bukaua a single word, balum, named three things at once: the swinging wooden slat, the spirit of the dead, and the mythical being said to swallow the novices at circumcision and then disgorge them as grown men. For the rites a hut about a hundred feet long was built in the shape of that monster, high at the end that stood for its head and tapering away at the other. Women and the uninitiated were told the creature had eaten the boys, and it could be made to give them up only by a tribute of pigs. The droning hum that carried out of the men's enclosure was the monster's roar. The Kai of the same coast called the being ngosa, the Tami kani; in three of the four languages the word for the bullroarer also meant a ghost. Gourlay's 1975 study of esoteric instruments and their role in keeping men and women apart records the same Huon Gulf instruments kept hidden from female eyes.

It is highly significant that all these tribes of New Guinea apply the same word to the bull-roarer and to the monster, who is supposed to swallow the novices at circumcision, and whose fearful roar is represented by the hum of the harmless wooden instruments. … The word in the speech of the Yabim and Bukaua is balum; in that of the Kai it is ngosa; and in that of the Tami it is kani.

Frazer, Balder the Beautiful (The Golden Bough, Part VII), Vol. II (1913), on the Yabim, Bukaua, Kai and Tami of New Guinea
Object
bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; sacred flute occurrence; sacred flute use; slit-gong occurrence
Function
Gourlay source-catalog row with bullroarer use in PNG/Melanesia.
Map confidence
medium - alias_area
Source location
Table 1, row 57

View source Open this point on the interactive map

  • Bia-WariaPapua New Guinea - Morobe - Restricted
  • Bukawa / YabimPapua New Guinea - Morobe - Restricted
  • BusamaPapua New Guinea - Morobe - Restricted
  • GawacPapua New Guinea - Morobe - Restricted
  • Guhu-SamanePapua New Guinea - Morobe - Restricted
  • KaiPapua New Guinea - Morobe - Restricted