The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG8 - ethnographic attestation

Tarawai Island

Papua New Guinea - East Sepik - Oceania - Sahul

Restricted

A New Guinea bull-roarer with fine incised ornament, paired here with its lime spatula, from the University Museum of Bergen; a Sepik-style...
Representative image. A New Guinea bull-roarer with fine incised ornament, paired here with its lime spatula, from the University Museum of Bergen; a Sepik-style specimen, not the Tarawai Island object documented here. University Museum of Bergen (photo: Knut Rio) CC BY-SA 4.0 Image source

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

On Tarawai, one of three small islands in the Bismarck Sea that anchor the Boiken homeland off the East Sepik coast, the bullroarer was the voice of the wala. The wala were the Boiken supernaturals: great culture heroes of times past, some now incarnated as local mountains, others the male and female spirits of bush and stream. Their face was incised in abstract design on bullroarers, weapons, and even cooking and eating utensils. In former times, when the wife of an important man insulted her husband's sexuality, a band of men swinging the bullroarer came as "the wala" to destroy her household's belongings. The same islands kept hand drums, monotone flutes, and the slit-gong on which relatives were summoned at a death.

In bygone days, if the wife of an important man insulted the sexuality of her husband, she would be disciplined by "the wala," a group of men swinging a bullroarer who would destroy her and her husband's belongings.

Roscoe, "Boiken," Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 2: Oceania
Object
bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; slit-gong occurrence; slit-gong use
Function
Gourlay source-catalog row with bullroarer use in PNG/Melanesia.
Map confidence
high - representative on-land anchor at Tarawai Island (regional coordinate fell just offshore of the rendered coastline); not an exact findspot
Source location
Table 1, row 8

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