SEA-009 - secondary catalog
Iban (Sea Dayak)
Malaysia - Sarawak rivers, Sea Dayak country - Asia - Borneo
Play / practical
When a patch of Borneo jungle was cleared for padi, a few trees were left standing on high ground so as not to offend the Toh, the spirits of the locality, who were vaguely supposed to use the trees as resting-places. Such a tree might be stripped of its branches, a pole lashed across the stem and hung with bunches of palm leaves, and onto this cross-piece a boys' bull-roarer was sometimes hung to dangle and flicker in the breeze. Hose and McDougall, who recorded the custom, place it among the Kayan and note in a footnote that they knew of no other use of the bull-roarer by any of the tribes; the Sea Dayak label here is the catalogue's inference, not the source's.
a "bull-roarer," which is used by boys as a toy, is sometimes hung upon such a cross-piece to dangle and flicker in the breeze.
Hose & McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (1912), vol. II, p. 23
- Object
- Wooden bull-roarer used as a boys' toy, sometimes suspended on a cross-piece of a tree left standing when clearing jungle for padi.
- Function
- Toy whirled by boys; ritually hung in trees left as resting-places for Toh (locality spirits) when preparing padi ground.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
- Source location
- p. 23
- Toy / secular survival