The Bullroarer Atlas

PNG87 - ethnographic attestation

Waima

Papua New Guinea - Central - Oceania - Sahul

Sacred / spirit

Palmwood bull-roarer, Daniels Expedition to British New Guinea 1903–04 — British Museum, Oc1906,1013.1448 (inscribed 'Bensbach'; BM register:...
Palmwood bull-roarer, Daniels Expedition to British New Guinea 1903–04 — British Museum, Oc1906,1013.1448 (inscribed 'Bensbach'; BM register: 'prob. Waima', per Seligman). © The Trustees of the British Museum, Oc1906,1013.1448 CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

beriwa English

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

beriwa = the Roro word for spirits and non-human agencies, not necessarily those of the dead; Seligman records that the same word is used for the bull-roarer, a sense he thought borrowed from the neighbouring Nara, or Pokao, whose Glossary entry actually carries the bull-roarer meaning and who swing it to make their crops grow (Roro / Nara-Pokao, Central Province). Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910), p.304 & n. and Glossary p.748.

Etymology. Among the Roro-speaking tribes beriwa is the word for spirits and non-human agencies, not necessarily those of the dead, some of them malicious beings who were never human. Seligman records that the same word is used for the bull-roarer, a sense he thought borrowed from the neighbouring Nara, or Pokao, to the east, who swing the bull-roarer to make their crops grow. (medium confidence)

By night the kaivakuku swung bull-roarers through Waima. These were the taboo-masters of this coastal village west of Port Moresby: masked men whose huge body-length costumes hid them completely, who by day walked on the sides of their feet to disguise their gait, and who alone could lay the most dreaded ban on garden food. Cross that taboo and they raided the offender's house, killing his pigs and dogs until a gift bought them off. C. G. Seligman recorded the custom, borrowed from the Elema of the Papuan Gulf, in the early 1900s.

The kaivakuku men would promenade the village in the afternoon, taking care to disguise their gait, and walk on the side of their feet, so that they might not be recognized. At night they would swing bull-roarers.

C. G. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910), p. 299
Object
bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; sacred flute occurrence
Function
Swung at night by the masked kaivakuku taboo-experts while enforcing the most dreaded taboo on vegetable food; chiefs and elders decreed the ban, the kaivakuku executed and punished.
Map confidence
high - geocoded
Source location
Table 1, row 87; Seligman 1910, pp. 299-300 (kaivakuku); cf. pp. 244-245 (separate ornamental-board note)

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