The Bullroarer Atlas

SPEISER1913-001 - ethnographic attestation

Ambrym / Ambrymese

Vanuatu - Ambrym - New Hebrides - Oceania

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Schwirrholz collected by Felix Speiser at Port Vato, Ambrym, in 1912 — dark laurel-leaf slat with single end hole and notched grip, 36 cm; the...
Schwirrholz collected by Felix Speiser at Port Vato, Ambrym, in 1912 — dark laurel-leaf slat with single end hole and notched grip, 36 cm; the specimen he published as Taf. 108, Abb. 22 of Ethnographische Materialien (1923). Museum der Kulturen Basel (Vb 4000); collection Felix Speiser, 1912 CC BY 4.0 Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

On Ambrym in the New Hebrides, the Basel ethnographer Felix Speiser asked his guide to procure a bull-roarer and threw the men into "intense surprise" — how could a white man have known of these secret and sacred utensils? They drew him aside and begged him never to speak of it to the women, for the objects served to frighten women and the uninitiated away from the assemblies of the secret societies; the noise they made was held to be the voice of a mighty and dangerous demon who attended those gatherings. When the men whispered that the instruments were kept in the men's house, Speiser walked in amid cries of dismay, having intruded into what he called their holy of holies. Inside he found half-finished masks for a coming festival, old idols, a triangular frame with a face held particularly sacred, and long-nosed masks wrapped in the spider-web cloth that is an Ambrym specialty. Behind the house stood five hollow trunks fitted with bamboo tubes through which the men howled to produce an infernal reverberation, alongside coconut shells half filled with water into which a man gurgled through a length of bamboo. A man sold him a bull-roarer for a large sum, trembling violently with fear, and wrapped the small object so carefully that it made an immense parcel.

The noise they make is supposed to be the voice of a mighty and dangerous demon, who attends these assemblies.

Speiser 1913, Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific, ch. XI (Ambrym), pp. 211-213
Object
A bull-roarer obtained from a men's-house setting; the same setting held hollow trunks and water-filled coconut shells used as auxiliary frightening sound-makers.
Function
Secret and sacred bullroarer used to keep women and uninitiated people away from secret-society assemblies; its sound was said to be the voice of a mighty dangerous demon.
Map confidence
medium_high - representative coordinate for Ambrym island; source says Speiser worked from Dip Point and visited neighboring villages but does not identify the specific men's house
Source location
pp. 211-213

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