The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG62 - ethnographic attestation

Guhu-Samane

Papua New Guinea - Morobe - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

One of the Hospice Saint-Roch bull-roarers, a dark forked-tip blade with a white skeletal figure incised down its length; shown for the general...
Representative image. One of the Hospice Saint-Roch bull-roarers, a dark forked-tip blade with a white skeletal figure incised down its length; shown for the general New Guinea type, not the Guhu-Samane object or culture documented here. Museum of the Hospice Saint-Roch (acc. #CM:0875440) Image source

Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags

Among the Guhu-Samane of the Waria valley, inland from the government post of Morobe, the bullroarer announced the rites of poro, the men's cult that governed initiation, marriage, gardening, war and peace. The instrument was a hardwood paddle ten or twelve inches long, normally kept in the mystical custody of the poro mothers; for a rite a designated priest lashed it to a fifteen-foot cord fixed to a slender pole of equal length and, wielding it like a supple whip, whirled it powerfully around his head to raise a siren-like wail calculated to drive fear and horror into the young women and children of the distant village. It also heralded the coming of an important man, so that of a notable person it was said his name had the quality of the bullroarer's call. Initiation was brutal: boys ran a gauntlet of glancing axe and club blows and had the nose septum and ear lobe pierced, and any who cried out were dealt a swift, lethal blow as unfit for male society, the body buried and the mother told only that the poro had eaten him. Survivors were then shown the sacred reed flutes, played in matched pairs by two priests; their origin was traced to a dead woman in the mountains whose hollow thighbone whistled in the wind, a bone the men took, hid from women, and would not let women sound. The whole system was described to the SIL translator Ernest Richert by Bage, one of the last surviving priests, the cult having been discontinued about twenty-five years before.

drive fear and horror into the young women and children

Richert, 'How the Guhu-Samane Cult of Poro Affects Translation,' The Bible Translator 16 (1965), p. 81
Object
bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; sacred flute occurrence
Function
Guhu-Samane poro bull-roarer used in initiation; normally held in mystical custody by poro mothers, then whirled by a priest to frighten young women and children and to announce an important person.
Map confidence
medium - alias_area
Source location
Gourlay Table 1, row 62; Richert 1965 pp. 81, 85

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