The Bullroarer Atlas

SUBSAH-003 - ethnographic attestation

Igbo / Ibo

Southern Nigeria - Igbo country - West Africa

Restricted

Igbo wooden bullroarer with its attached cord, Pitt Rivers Museum 1922.67.2.
Igbo wooden bullroarer with its attached cord, Pitt Rivers Museum 1922.67.2. Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1922.67.2) Image source
A set of tapering, ridge-based horn points strung on a fiber strip through holes drilled near their tips, their wide bases fanning loose — a...
Representative image. A set of tapering, ridge-based horn points strung on a fiber strip through holes drilled near their tips, their wide bases fanning loose — a generic African specimen, quite unlike the thin notched wood strip the Igbo call odegilligilli (or agu mmuo), held by the Pitt Rivers Museum alongside a mask collected by P. Amaury Talbot. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Af1937-0312-70) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

odegilligilli / ode giligili / agu mmuo / agu mmonwu / agu mmanwu English

Source term: bull-roarer

odegilligilli (Igbo): Basden's name for the bull-roarer of the Ayakka night-spirit society, a notched wooden slat whirled on a cord; later Igbo records give the instrument names such as agu mmuo and agu mmanwu. Talbot 1926 (p. 769) independently records the instrument as Agu Manwu / Maw, glossed 'the Speaker of Maw.'

Etymology. Later Igbo names include agu mmuo, "tiger spirit" (agu "tiger" + mmuo "spirit"), framing the bull-roarer's reverberating voice as that of a tiger- or leopard-spirit. Basden recorded the older name odegilligilli. (high confidence)

Towards midnight in the burning season, a clear ringing "cooee" fell out of the darkness around an Igbo town, answered from all sides of the bush; then came the blood-curdling moanings of the odegilligilli, and the women and children hid themselves. The Ayakka, the "night maw" society, walked only from January to March, when bush-fires were thought to quicken the spirits of the dead; the bullroarer's call gathered its scattered members to march on the town, any non-member caught in the dark was beaten and thrown into the bush, and no fire might show in any house. Boys entered at about ten through Iba na maw, "entering into the domain of spirit," chewing a goat's tooth as the "teeth of the ju-ju" and told they must pass through the hole of a tiny insect and cross a wide river on a thread. Only in the later ikpu-ani was the truth shown: a man put an igwe in his own mouth and made the voice of the ju-ju himself. Talbot named the Igbo roarer in print Agu Manwu, "the Speaker of Maw" — the leopard-voice he set beside the Yoruba Oro.

Presently the blood-curdling moanings of the odegilligilli reverberate and these sounds fill the women and children with terror and they quickly hide themselves. The odegilligilli is a thin strip of wood, twelve inches long by two or three inches in width, notched at the edges and attached to a cord by which it is whirled round in the air.

Basden 1921, Among the Ibos of Nigeria, ch. XXII, pp. 238-239
Object
A thin strip of wood, twelve inches by two or three, notched at the edges and whirled on a cord. PRM 1922.67.2, an Igbo blade 350 x 27 mm with its attached cord, was collected by P. Amaury Talbot and is held alongside a "spirits of the dead" mask from the same collection.
Function
Basden 1921 describes the Ayakka night-spirit society using the odegilligilli bullroarer to gather members and terrify women and children; boys are initiated into the society. Okoye 2020 gives modern Igbo names and night-mask spirit-presence function, and PRM 1922 verifies an Ibo bull-roarer object.
Map confidence
medium - Igbo country regional anchor not Oxford
Source location
Basden 1921 ch. XXII; Jeffreys 1949 pp. 23-34 via AfricaBib/SIRIS; Talbot 1926 vol. 3 pp. 758, 769 | PRM 1922.67.2

View source Open this point on the interactive map