SUBSAH-025 - secondary catalog

Nungu

Nassarawa Province, Northern Nigeria - West Africa

Play / practical

Among the Nungu of the Nassarawa hill country in Northern Nigeria, the bull-roarer was, the Assistant District Commissioner H. F. Mathews was told, only a toy, or a device to scare monkeys and birds from the crops. But Mathews had heard it sounding in the distance, combined with the other noises of a Juju dance, and concluded it very probably possessed magical attributes as well — the link to the secret rites being his own inference, not what his informants admitted. Those Juju dances women were forbidden to see. The man who represented the Juju wore a closely meshed net enclosing him from the crown of his head to the thighs, a short kilt of dried grasses, porcupine quills or pieces of grass thrust through nose and ears, and a headdress shaped like a guardsman's busby made of monkey skin; the rattles were bottle-shaped calabashes in loose string nets, strung with small pieces of bone and hard wood. Should a rattle break in the course of a dance, everything stopped until a chicken had been sacrificed to the Juju, after which the dancing resumed.

The bull-roarer is also known. I was informed that it is used only as a toy, or to scare monkeys and birds from the crops, but I have heard it in the distance, combined with all the other noises of a Juju dance, and therefore think it very probable that it possesses magical attributes.

H. F. Mathews, "Notes on the Nungu Tribe, Nassarawa Province, Northern Nigeria," Varia Africana I (Harvard African Studies 1, 1917), p. 90

Object

Whirled wooden slat-on-cord bull-roarer; informants described it as a toy or crop animal-scarer.

Function

Bull-roarer used as a toy and to scare monkeys/birds from crops; no ritual use is stated by the informants.

Map confidence

high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)

Source location

music/Juju section

• Toy / secular survival

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