The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG61 - ethnographic attestation

Gawac

Papua New Guinea - Morobe - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

Another of the Hospice Saint-Roch group photograph's carved bull-roarers, its blade filled with tan zigzag and spiral eye motifs against a...
Representative image. Another of the Hospice Saint-Roch group photograph's carved bull-roarers, its blade filled with tan zigzag and spiral eye motifs against a black ground; shown for the general New Guinea type, not the Gawac object or culture documented here. Museum of the Hospice Saint-Roch (acc. #CM:0899678) Image source

balum Bukaua (Bukawa / Bugawac / Gawac; Austronesian, Huon Gulf, Morobe) — same word also recorded for neighbouring Yabim (Jabêm)

ghost / spirit of the dead; also the monster that swallows novices at circumcision and the bullroarer that voices it — one word for all three

Etymology. Among the Bukaua and Yabim the single word balum means a ghost or soul of the dead, and names too the monster believed to swallow and disgorge the novices at circumcision and the bullroarer whose hum is its voice. The Kai cognate is ngosa, the Tami kani. (high confidence)

Balum is one word for three things at once: the ghost of the dead, the monster that swallows boys whole at initiation, and the bullroarer whose droning hum is that monster's roar. Among these Huon Gulf people, a novice was "devoured" by the great being and disgorged a circumcised man. The swinging blade lived in the men's house, and its voice was the only proof women ever had of the monster they were forbidden to see. The Bukaua say a woman found that voice first — she spun the little wood by chance, and the men killed her to keep the secret; the roarers have been hidden from women's eyes ever since.

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.

J. G. Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, Vol. II (= The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., Part VII), 1913, ch. 'The External Soul in Folk-Custom', New Guinea section (verified verbatim, Project Gutenberg ebook 43433, para. M186). The Bukaua-specific statement that 'The bull-roarer as well as the monster bears the name of balum' and that the Bukaua 'give the name of balum to the souls of the dead as well as to the mythical monster and to the bull-roarer' is in Frazer, The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Vol. I (1913), German New Guinea lecture (verified verbatim in local frazer_immortality_v1.txt). After S. Lehner, 'Die Bukaua' (1911).
Object
bullroarer occurrence
Function
Balum bullroarer of the Bukaua (Bugawa) circumcision cult: the monster's voice that swallows and disgorges the novices, forbidden to women on pain of death.
Map confidence
medium - alias_area
Source location
Table 1, row 61

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