The Bullroarer Atlas

No. SUBSAH-008

Eyap/Eghap Bagam death-ceremony bull-roarer

Bagam · West-Central Cameroon · Central Africa

Restricted

Bagam N’kwi’i bullroarer rig: a short tapered wooden blade joined by looped cord to a long slender whirling stick.
Plate I. The complete N'kwi'i rig from Bagam — blade, string, and the long whirling stick it swung from, collected by L. W. G. Malcolm. Image source
A wooden N’kwi’i blade from Bagam, broad at one end and tapering to a point, with a terminal hole.
Plate II. The smaller terminal-hole N'kwi'i blade, cut from the outer edge of a raffia palm. Image source
Malcolm’s printed Figure 1: two Eghap sound devices, a humming instrument above and a bull-roarer below, shown with their cords or supports.
Plate III. Malcolm's published line drawing of the Eghap rig (JRAI 53, 1923, fig. 1). Public domain · Image source

ñgū muñ mo

Source term: bull-roarer

The Eghap (Mengaka) name Malcolm gives for the bull-roarer; the Cambridge museum records the same instrument as N'kwi'i.

Among the Eyap (Eghap) at Bagam, the headquarters of the tribe in the Cameroon grassfields, the bull-roarer belonged to the commemorative ceremonies for the dead. In the rite L. W. G. Malcolm recorded in 1917-18, a dance was held at the grave of a relative some time after burial: the dancers assembled at a compound and a procession wound through the main roads of the town behind a central figure clothed in a cowrie-covered garment of native cloth, attended by men in rough leaf coverings and netted body-cloths who sang, danced, and played a drum, a basket rattle, and a notched raphia-palm rasp scraped with a piece of wood or iron to produce a stridulant sound. When they reached the burial place they danced a while and returned to their compounds. Only that night did the bull-roarer come out.

The same night a party of men go through the streets swinging a bull-roarer (Fig. 1 b). This is called ñgū muñ mo, and I was informed that no woman is allowed to see it. They must go into the bush if they hear it near at hand. It is played by certain men from one compound and no one else is supposed to use it.

L. W. G. Malcolm, "Notes on Birth, Marriage and Death Ceremonies of the Eyap Tribe (Central Cameroon)," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 53 (1923): 400

Particulars

Object
A blade on a string, swung from a long whirling stick.
Function
Death-ceremony instrument, swung at night; forbidden to women and played only by men of one compound.

Sources

  1. L. W. G. Malcolm, "Notes on Birth, Marriage and Death Ceremonies of the Eyap Tribe of Central Cameroon," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 53 (1923): 388-401, p. 400 View
  2. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, objects 1921.381 and 1921.382

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.