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Updated: June 5, 2025
In Scotland it is, on the one hand, sometimes used to "ca' the cattle hame." A herd-boy has been seen to swing a bull-roarer of his own making, with the result that the beasts were soon running frantically towards the byre.
Will the anthropo-geographer, after studying the distribution of wood and stringy substances round the globe, venture to prophesy that, if man lived his half a million years or so over again, the bull-roarer would be found spread about very much where it is to-day?
It is not surprising, therefore, to find a carved human face appearing on the bull-roarer in New Guinea, and again away in North America, whilst in West Africa it is held to contain the voice of a very god.
The second essay, 'The Bull-Roarer, is intended to show that certain peculiarities in the Greek mysteries occur also in the mysteries of savages, and that on Greek soil they are survivals of savagery. 'The Myth of Cronus' tries to prove that the first part of the legend is a savage nature-myth, surviving in Greek religion, while the sequel is a set of ideas common to savages.
Suddenly the tension broke. Like dead leaves before a gale, the natives scattered and fled. Stobart, Sax, Arrkroo, and the corpse of Wuntoo were left alone. Arrkroo feared the bull-roarer, which spoke with the dreaded voice of Tumana, as much as anyone. Yet he stood his ground with uplifted club. The helpless white man was within easy reach. Arrkroo would not miss his vengeance this third time.
The bull-roarer is a very simple invention. Anyone might find out that a bit of sharpened wood, tied to a string, makes, when whirred, a roaring noise. Supposing that discovery made, it is soon turned to practical use. All tribes have their mysteries. All want a signal to summon the right persons together and warn the wrong persons to keep out of the way.
A minute description of the instrument, and of its magical power to raise a wind, is given in Theal's 'Kaffir Folklore, p. 209. The bull-roarer has not been made a subject of particular research; very probably later investigations will find it in other parts of the modern world besides America, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia.
I have to thank the editors and publishers of the Contemporary Review, the Cornhill Magazine, and Fraser's Magazine, for leave to republish 'The Early History of the Family, 'The Divining Rod, and 'Star Myths, and 'The Kalevala. A few sentences in 'The Bull-Roarer, and 'Hottentot Mythology, appeared in essays in the Saturday Review, and some lines of 'The Method of Folklore' in the Guardian.
I watched them long until they disappeared, and a few hours afterward there arose from the top of 'Thunder Mountain' a dense column of smoke, simultaneously with another from the more distant western mesa of 'U-ha-na-mi, or 'Mount of the Beloved. Here then, in Zuni, we have the bull-roarer again, and once more we find it employed as a summons to the mysteries.
Howitt, who knew his Australian natives intimately, cites the following as "a good example of how the native mind works." To the black-fellow his club or his spear are part and parcel of his ordinary life. There is no, "medicine," no "devil," in them. If they are to be made supernaturally potent, they must be specially charmed. But it is quite otherwise with his spear-thrower or his bull-roarer.
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