Samoa lango mumu leaf toy bullroarer

lango mumu

Source term: bull roarer

lango mumu — Samoan name for the leaflet toy bull-roarer; in Buck's orthography lango is the fly, and the toy borrows the name of the buzzing fly whose sound it imitates.

Etymology. The toy wears an insect’s name: in Samoan, lago (said lango) is the common house fly, and lago mumu, Buck’s “buzzing fly,” is the carpenter bee.

Among the coconut-leaflet toys Samoan children made for themselves, alongside a windmill (pe'ape'a) and a spinner (moamoa), was a bull-roarer they called lango mumu — the name of the buzzing fly, taken from the humming the toy made when whirled. Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter Buck) recorded it in his 1930 survey of Samoan material culture for the Bishop Museum, noting it was built the same way as the leaf toys he had documented at Aitutaki. In his summary of Samoan sound-making he placed it with the jew's harp and the whistle as one of the children's instruments, all easily made from the leaves of plants.

These included the windmill (pe'ape'a), spinner (moamoa), and bull roarer (lango mumu). The bull roarer from its humming noise takes the name of the buzzing fly.

Te Rangi Hiroa (P. H. Buck), Samoan Material Culture, Bishop Museum Bulletin 75 (1930), p. 552

Particulars

Object

A coconut-leaflet toy, made the same way as the Aitutaki leaflet bullroarer.

Function

A children's plaything, whirled to buzz like a fly.