The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

128 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)[106]Use of the bullroarerto quickenthe fruits of theearth.Much use seems to be made of such narrative spells amongthe natives of this part of German New Guinea. For example,among the Bukaua, who attribute practically boundless powersto sorcerers in every department of life and nature, the spells bywhich these wizards attempt to work their will assume one oftwo forms: either they are requests made to the ancestors, or theyare short narratives, addressed to nobody in particular, which thesorcerer mutters while he is performing his magical rites. 335 Itis true, that here the distinction is drawn between narratives andrequests rather than between narratives and commands; but thedifference of a request from a command, though great in theory,may be very slight in practice; so that prayer and spell, in theordinary sense of the words, may melt into each other almostimperceptibly. Even the priest or the enchanter who utters theone may be hardly conscious of the hairbreadth that divides itfrom the other. In regard to narrative spells, it seems probablethat they have been used much more extensively among mankindthan the evidence at our disposal permits us positively to affirm;in particular we may conjecture that many ancient narratives,which we have been accustomed to treat as mere myths, used tobe regularly recited in magical rites as spells for the purpose ofactually producing events like those which they describe.The use of the bull-roarer to quicken the fruits of the earthis not peculiar to the Yabim. On the other side of New Guineathe instrument is employed for the same purpose by the nativesof Kiwai, an island at the mouth of the Fly River. They thinkthat by whirling bull-roarers they produce good crops of yams,sweet potatoes, and bananas; and in accordance with this beliefthey call the implement “the mother of yams.” 336 Similarly in335 Stefan Lehner, “Bukaua,” in R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin,1911) p. 448.336 A. C. Haddon, in Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition toTorres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 218, 219. Compare id., Head-hunters,Black, White, and Brown (London, 1901) p. 104.