Hidden in the bush with the wanes

wanes

Source term: bull-roarer (wanes)

wanes — the Muralug-group name for the whirled wooden bull-roarer shown to male novices during bush initiation.

Etymology. wanes is the western-island name for the small bull-roarer — in Ray's Mabuiag vocabulary 'a small bull-roarer with a shrill sound,' as against the deep-voiced bigu — and in the Muralug group it named the secret ellipsoidal slat shown to novices during bush initiation. No literal etymology is recorded.

On Keriri (Hammond Island), at the western edge of Torres Strait, a boy's making into a man turned on a whirled piece of wood. Information collected by C. G. Seligmann from a Hammond Islander told how the novice's maternal uncles took him into the bush for about two months, blackened him with charcoal, and kept him hidden so that no woman might see him. There, among lessons in the digging stick, the canoe and the fishing grounds, he was shown a bull-roarer. The instrument was the wanes that Haddon recorded for the neighbouring Muralug initiation. The secrecy was severe -- on Muralug Haddon could only coax the men to speak of the wanes in a low voice and after promising never to show its model to a woman, and Macgillivray was told that a woman who stumbled on the secluded novices "would be immediately put to death."

In the bush the boy is shown the use of the digging stick and instructed in the management of a canoe and in lore relating to fishing and other matters. He is shown a bull-roarer and told to go errands for older men, to feed them when they are hungry and not to steal.

Haddon (ed.), Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. V (1904), p. 218, "Keriri" (information from Dr Seligmann's Hammond Island informant).

Particulars

Object

A thin, flat, ellipsoidal wooden slat with bevelled edges and a swelling at one end for the cord; a string about a yard long was tied to it and fastened to a stick, and the slat was whirled round and round over the head.

Function

Shown to the secluded male novice (kernge) during bush initiation; no woman may see the novice or the instrument.