The Bullroarer

This insignificant toy is perhaps the most ancient, widely spread, and sacred religious symbol in the world—Alfred C. Haddon, The Study of Man, 1898.

Among the Northern Paiute foragers of the American Great Basin, there was a toy children would sometimes construct that caused their parents significant consternation. Made of juniper and decorated with black spots or lines, it was tied loosely with deer-hide to a wand-like handle, and then whirled around to make a loud roaring noise.

Children at least occasionally frustrating their parents with their loud amusements is probably a cross-cultural universal—however, here it is not simply the noise of the ‘bullroarer’ that is a source of concern, but the powerful effects it may have on nature itself. Anthropologist Francis Riddell writes that,

The bullroarer, tupununoin, “to whirl”, was used to call the wind. To make the wind blow was kukwápitud. Gladys made bullroarers as a child but her mother and her grandfather, Joaquin, told her not to use them because to do so would call the wind. In fact, children were not allowed to lash the air with switches as this, too, called the wind.

Figure 1. “The bull-roarer and buzzer were both well known to the Gros Ventre, but seem to be only children's toys. They were both called nakaantan ("making cold," a name given also to the thermometer), probably from the widespread Indian idea that the bull-roarer breeds wind.” From Kroeber, 1908.

Similarly, of the Eastern Apache foragers of the North American southwest, anthropologist Morris Edward Opler writes that,

Not all the toys that the children make meet with parental approval: “We used to take a flat stick, make a hole through it, put a string through this hole, and run with it. It makes a noise. Our parents did not want us to do this. They would always scold us when we did it. They said it brought the wind.” Besides this rhombus or bull-roarer, the children make another object somewhat similar in effect: “There is another noisemaker. We use a piece of hide, cut two holes in it, and put a string through. Then we wind up the string and pull it. It makes a noise. A good many of the old people don't like it. They say it will bring wind too.””

Among the Ute foragers, also of the American Great Basin, anthropologist Anne Smith writes that, “The bullroarer was used to call the wind. The neck bone of a buffalo was strung on a sinew string, and the ends of the string were twisted and pulled, while you said “B0000 B0000,” to make the wind come,” while of the Ainu foragers of East Asia, anthropologist Neil Gordon Munro says,

At Shiraoi in 1916 I saw a magical device which produced a booming sound and so may be called a bull-roarer. It looked like a spatula (attush-para) and was used to obtain a favourable wind for hunting deer. Some years ago in Northern Yezo I found a similar object called rera-suyep (wind-raiser). When I mentioned this to the aged Tekatte Fuchi she immediately imitated the swing of the arm and produced the sound of a bull-roarer. She remembered that in her childhood children were not allowed to swing a spatula lest by so doing they raised a storm. It was also said to arrest an epidemic.

To see roughly how common these beliefs are and what their distribution is, I looked through the eHRAF World Cultures database searching for information on the use of bullroarers across the hunter-gatherer societies (defined as deriving >86% of their subsistence from wild resources) represented within it. I found detailed information on the use and function of bullroarers for 23 of the 54 societies coded as hunter-gatherer in the database (Table 1).

Table 1. Functions of bullroarers in hunter-gatherer societies in the eHRAF World Cultures database.

At first glance, you may notice that ‘children’s toy’ seems to be the most common use of bullroarers across these societies, however this appears to be concentrated across North American foragers, who are highly overrepresented in the eHRAF World Cultures files, making up 33 of the 54 total hunter-gatherer societies in the database.

While less common than the bullroarer’s use as a children’s toy, we can see that ‘weather manipulation’ may potentially have an even broader geographic distribution, due to the presence of this practice among the Ainu of East Asia (see Table 1). In this case, we cannot necessarily rule out the possibility that this reflects a shared historical origin or diffusion across Beringia, however. See Hallowell’s (1926) investigation of bear ceremonialism across the Northern Hemisphere for a related example.

Where we have clearer evidence of independent invention of bullroarers is through their association with powerful spirits, or other entities, in forager societies that have been highly isolated from each other historically, such as the Arunta of Central Australia, the Mbuti of Central Africa, the Bororo of Mato Grosso, and the Pomo of California.

Among the Arunta anthropologist Thomas Penniman writes that, “Stone and wooden bullroarers, which are the receptables of the spirits of all the Arunta who have been, are, and will be...The bogey Twanyirrika is a pure fiction used by the men to explain the noise of the bullroarer to women and uninitiated boys,” while among the Bororo anthropologist Stephen Michael Fabian says that, "Uninitiated boys and all females risk death if they see the aije [spirit entity], whose distinctive sound is replicated by the bullroarer. With their iorubodare [initiation sponsor] leading them onward and chased from behind by the menace of the aije whose eery and awesome whirring can be heard for several kilometers, the youths literally “run” or “flee” for much of their training."

Among the Mbuti anthropologist Colin Turnbull says, “The sound of the bull-roarer, a piece of wood that makes a strange whirring noise when spun around on the end of a cord, was meant to be the voice of a forest demon, and the boys had to show due respect and terror when they heard it,” though this practice was influenced by nearby Ituri villagers, and in their own molimo ceremonies Mbuti men use a trumpet (off-limits to women and children) rather than a bullroarer, to embody an animal spirit.

Finally, of the bullroarer among the Pomo, anthropologist S.A. Barrett tells us that,

It resembled the sound of thunder, and was made purposely to imitate thunder. One informant stated that in ancient times the bull-roarer was used primarily in the Thunder dance (kalī'matōtō ke), a dance participated in by men only. The bull-roarer was used only by the head man of this dance, and then only at night. The conception was that it was actually the voice of Thunder himself. The informant expressed it as follows: canē' mīnaū tcadō'dūn nan cītin tcanō'ngan. dance house on top picked up and swung around made talk. The bull-roarer was considered to be a sacred object. It could be manufactured only after proper ceremonial procedure, and the maker had to go out into the woods at some distance from the village and there make a sacrifice. In olden times, women or children were never permitted to see a bull-roarer. As above mentioned, it was used only at night and was kept carefully hidden away at all other times.

What to make of these practices? Modern scholarship in evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences offers some hints. In their 2018 Cell paper ‘Form and Function in Human Song’, Mehr et al., write that,

Research from across the biological sciences demonstrates that the features of auditory signals and other communicative behaviors are shaped by their intended outcomes. For instance, as a general principle, low-frequency, harsh vocal forms with nonlinearities are expected to function in signaling hostility because those features are correlated with increases in body size and larger animals tend to defeat smaller animals in conflicts.

This point about low-frequency, harsh sounds with nonlinearities being expected to function in signaling hostility provides us with a useful framework for understanding the intimidating mimicking of powerful spirit-beings accomplished via the bullroarer across various societies. This idea is also consistent with previous research on this topic. In his cross-cultural survey of bullroarers in his work The Study of Man (1898), anthropologist Alfred C. Haddon writes that, "The weird sound of the whirling bull-roarer is suggestive of unseen forces, and so it naturally becomes associated in men's minds with spirits or ghosts,” while J.D. Harding, in his survey of ‘The Bull-Roarer in History and Antiquity’ (1973), notes that “Such sounds would appear to be ideal for the purpose of the operating bull-roarer in former times, when, inter alia, it was required to inspire awe, to suggest the supernatural, to scare and to terrify.”

Haddon’s (1898) data on the distribution and function of bullroarers across geographic regions exhibits some important similarities and differences with my own findings. Each of our data indicate some societies using bullroarers for weather manipulation in North America, as a children’s toy among the “Eskimo” [Inuit], sacred mysteries involving spirit beings in Australia and parts of Africa, and being taboo to women in Australia and parts of Africa and South America.

Table 2. From Haddon (1898): “I have drawn up the following table in order that we may see at a glance the various purposes for which the bull-roarer is employed, and the different places where it is so used. I have marked with a X those places where that particular use is an universal practice (or very nearly so); the / means that some tribes only use it for that purpose, and a ? indicates that I believe this to be, or to have been, its use.”

The two major discrepancies between our findings are that Haddon (1898) reports the use of bullroarers in sacred mysteries is a near universal across North America, and he does not report their use as a children’s toy there at all. I instead find that bullroarers are commonly children’s toys across North American forager societies, and their use in ceremonies is extant but less widespread.

From The Study of Man (1898) by Alfred C. Haddon.

As Haddon’s survey was published in 1898, and much of the most detailed information about these societies comes from later scholarship, after they had gone through significant changes as a result of colonial contact, this discrepancy may in part reflect a pattern Haddon identified in his own investigation, writing that, “It is the fate of religious symbols to lose their pristine significance, and this has in places overtaken the bull-roarer, so that it has in various localities degenerated into a child's plaything.”

Full data for Table 1 available here.