SEA-009 - secondary catalog
Kayan, Baram and Rejang rivers, Sarawak
Malaysia - Sarawak rivers, Sea Dayak country - Asia - Borneo
Play / practical
When the Kayan cleared a patch of jungle 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. The rest of the year it was only a toy: Hose and McDougall, setting the custom down, added that they knew of no other use of the bull-roarer anywhere in Borneo.
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
- A boys' toy; and when jungle was cleared for padi, a bull-roarer was sometimes hung on the cross-piece of a spirit-tree left for the Toh, to dangle and flicker in the breeze.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Middle Baram River Kayan country (Long Lama reach) — the heart of Hose's Residency and of the book's Kayan material; regional anchor.
- Source location
- p. 23
- Toy / secular survival