Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 5, 2025
You take a piece of the commonest wooden board, say the lid of a packing-case, about a sixth of an inch in thickness, and about eight inches long and three broad, and you sharpen the ends. Tylor. Now twist the end of the string tightly about your finger, and whirl the bull-roarer rapidly round and round. For a few moments nothing will happen.
Bull-voices and thunder-drums and the clashing of cymbals were used in this connection by the Greeks, and are mentioned by Aeschylus ; but the bull-roarer, in the form of a rhombus of wood whirled at the end of a string, seems to be known, or to have been known, all over the world. It is described with some care by Mr. See Catlin's North American Indians, Letter 19. Themis, p. 61.
Both sides were marked with straight lines cut across the breadth of the wood and with circles inside one another, all filled in with a mixture of grease and red ochre. At one end was a hole through which passed a string made of native women's hair. The thing was a luringa a bull-roarer a sacred charm, the most precious object which Eagle could possibly give to his white friend.
While the teeth are being knocked out an instrument known as a bull-roarer, which consists of a flat piece of wood with serrated edges tied to the end of a string, is swung round so as to produce a loud humming noise. The uninitiated are not allowed to see this instrument. Women are forbidden to witness the ceremonies under pain of death.
Among them was a bull-roarer, which a man sold me for a large sum, trembling violently with fear, and beseeching me not to show it to anybody. He wrapped it up so carefully, that the small object made an immense parcel. Some of the masks are now used for fun; the men put them on and run through the forest, and have the right to whip anybody they meet.
And as the bull-roarer on Boupari rang out with wild echoes from the coral caverns in the central grove that evening, Tu-Kila-Kila, their god, rose slowly from his place, and stood out from his hut, a deity revealed, before his reverential worshippers.
The bull-roarer has, of all toys, the widest diffusion, and the most extraordinary history. To study the bull-roarer is to take a lesson in folklore. The instrument is found among the most widely severed peoples, savage and civilised, and is used in the celebration of savage and civilised mysteries.
The bull-roarer is an instrument easily invented by savages, and easily adopted into the ritual of savage mysteries.
The instrument which produces the sounds that warn women to remain afar is a toy familiar to English country lads. They call it the bull-roarer. The common bull-roarer is an inexpensive toy which anyone can make. I do not, however, recommend it to families, for two reasons.
Plenty plize-money now." "Didn't have nought to do with it," growled Tom Jecks. "Then who did, sir?" "Dunno, sir; some o' the boys. I was caulking till they wakened me wi' laughing." "But you saw it done?" "No, sir; it was all done aforehand. They'd turned his tail into a bull-roarer, and if you was to swing it round now like a windmill, it would make no end of a row." "Silence, sir," I cried.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking