The Bullroarer Atlas

No. WILSON1973-001

Suena bui, flute and bullroarer

Papua New Guinea · Coast near the old Morobe Patrol Post, Morobe Province (Bosadi village) · Oceania · Sahul

Function not recorded

A long red-brown bullroarer blade with a white face-like design and geometric bands near its notched end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A long dark red-brown bull-roarer blade CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Image source

bui

Source term: bui n. 1) flute, bullroarer. 2) var. of fish: cow fish. 3) secret, mystery.

bui: 1) flute, bullroarer; 2) a fish, cow fish; 3) secret, mystery (Wilson and Wilson 1973, p. 13)

In Suena one word, bui, named both the bullroarer and the flute, and the same word meant a secret, a mystery. The flutes were played as a pair, the female bui bama in concert with the male bui ema; the spirit house was bui ibu, and to spill the beans, to tell a secret, was bui bezai. Some two thousand Suena live on the coast of Morobe Province in Papua New Guinea, around the old Morobe patrol post.

Particulars

Object
A bullroarer, called bui, the same word as the flute; its form is not recorded.
Function
Not recorded.

Source

Darryl and Lael Wilson, Suena-English Dictionary and English-Suena Dictionary (Ukarumpa: SIL, 1973; web ed. 2008), pp. 13, 57

View the source

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