SA-Z1953-020 - ethnographic attestation
Panobo reo reo toy
Northeastern Peru - South America
Play / practical
rę̄òrę̄ò Panobo (Panoan)
Source term: rę̄òrę̄ò (Zerries: "reo reo")
Among the Panobo, a Panoan people of northeastern Peru, the bullroarer was a children's toy called rę̄òrę̄ò — a wooden blade tapering to a point, on a cord. Günter Tessmann recorded it on his Amazon fieldwork (Die Indianer Nordost-Perus, 1930, p. 115), and Otto Zerries later catalogued it alongside the toy bullroarers of neighboring groups. For some of those neighbors the instrument did double duty: the Kampa whirled their "mero mero" not only as a plaything but to frighten naughty children, telling them the jaguar would come and carry them off. For the Panobo, Tessmann asked separately and got a plain no: four pages further on, in his chapter on raising children, he writes that there is "no child-frightener, neither bullroarer nor disguise." Here the blade was a plaything and nothing else.
Schwirrholz = rę̄òrę̄ò, spitz auslaufende Holzplatte mit Schnur. Ein zweiter B. kannte dies Gerät nicht.
Bullroarer = rę̄òrę̄ò, a wooden blade running out to a point, with a cord. A second informant did not know this device.
Tessmann 1930:115 (Panobo, rubric 47)
- Object
- Pointed, tapering wooden blade on a cord ("spitz auslaufende Holzplatte mit Schnur").
- Function
- Bullroarer known as a children's toy; the same chapter explicitly denies its use as a child-frightening device.
- Map confidence
- medium - Regional anchor for the named people; not a findspot.
- Source location
Page references
Tessmann 1930:115 (primary); Zerries 1953:287, distribution list item 20 (survey)
- Toy / secular survival