The Bullroarer Atlas

SA-Z1953-001 - secondary catalog

Bororo

Eastern Brazil - South America

Restricted

Bororo aidye from the South Lourenço River, made by 1898: a large lanceolate blade with black decoration, terminal perforation, and surviving...
Bororo aidye from the South Lourenço River, made by 1898: a large lanceolate blade with black decoration, terminal perforation, and surviving cord. Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, acc. 1903.40.1; Balzola–Giglioli collection Image source
Bororo bullroarer recorded by von den Steinen in the São Lourenço funeral complex.
Bororo bullroarer recorded by von den Steinen in the São Lourenço funeral complex. Karl von den Steinen (1894) Public domain Image source

aige German / English extraction

Source term: Schwirrgerät / Schwirrholz / bullroarer

aidye (also aidge; later orthography aige) — von den Steinen's recorded Bororo name for the funeral bull-roarer, the same word the later Salesian ethnographers (Colbacchini, Albisetti) and Lévi-Strauss give as aige, the name shared by the instrument and the fabulous water-monster it voices.

Etymology. `aige` names both the bullroarer and the fabulous water monster whose voice it is; the being is linked to the dead. (high confidence)

Among the Bororo of eastern Brazil, the bullroarer is the voice of the aige, a fabulous water-monster that lives on the bottom of a lagoon and shares its name with the instrument. It sounds only at funerals: as the dead person's belongings are burned and the basket of cleaned bones is carried out of the village, men whirl lance-shaped wooden boards on long poles, and when the buzzing begins the women run away into the forest or hide in the huts, for to even glimpse the aige would mean death. In the myth a man of the Páiwoe clan finds a tiny curious creature, keeps it in a pot of water, and feeds it until it outgrows every vessel, becomes monstrous, and is given over to the Aróroe, who carry it to a swamp-ringed lake and devise the songs and ornaments in its honor. At the climax of the funeral-initiation, naked young men smeared head to foot in clay crawl on all fours as the beast, and the little board that "is" the aige is shown to the uninitiated boys for the very first time, amid shouts, shoving, and thrown mud.

Während sie aber am Kulisehu nur für die fröhlichen Maskentänze oder auch sonst als Spielzeug dienen, werden sie am S. Lourenço nur bei den Gebräuchen der Totenfeier in Thätigkeit gesetzt... Die Frauen laufen so lange in den Wald oder verbergen sich in den Häusern. Das Signal für sie gibt das Schwirrholz... Sie würden sterben, wenn sie es sähen.

But whereas on the Kulisehu they serve only for the merry mask-dances or otherwise as a toy, on the S. Lourenço they are set in action only at the observances of the funeral feast... For so long the women run off into the forest or hide themselves in the houses. The bull-roarer gives the signal for them... They would die if they saw it.

von den Steinen 1894:497
Object
Large lanceolate wooden aidye, truncated at both ends, pierced for a robust cord and decorated in black on both faces; PRM 1903.40.1 measures 883 × 116 mm.
Function
Funeral bullroarers; women flee or hide; bope and aroe dead-soul complex; aige monster; boys shown instrument during funeral-initiation
Map confidence
high - Gomes Carneiro / Córrego Grande locality anchor for the São Lourenço community complex; not the 1943 camera position.
Source location
von den Steinen 1894:496-500 (Abb. 145, Tafel 19), 505-508; aige material Colbacchini & Albisetti 1942:52, 162-163, 255

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