Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

The simple whirligig make is a very widely spread toy. It is also found in the Solomon Islands in Melanesia, and in Funafuti (Ellice Group) and Rotumah in Polynesia.

A toy wind instrument is made of strips of palm leaf wound spirally so as to form a hollow cone or funnel, which varies from three inches to about a foot in length. Inserted in the cavity are two long narrow strips of leaf, or one long piece doubled upon itself; in either case two similar ends project through the narrow orifice to form a “reed.”

It may not be amiss to explain that there are two main groups of simple wind instruments that are blown by the mouth. In one the lips are applied to the simple orifice, and it is their vibration intensified by the sounding chamber of the instrument that produces the noise. The conch shell and the trumpet are familiar examples of this group.

In the second group there is a vibrating arrangement which is technically termed a “reed.” This group is divided into two classes: (a) the “oboe” or “shawm” series in which the fixed or removable mouthpiece is a tube, the ends of which are pinched together; (b) the “clarinet” series which has a single vibrating tongue. The Bulaa toy may be regarded as a kind of oboe.

I was delighted to find this musical toy, as I remembered that my friend Henry Balfour, the curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford, had recently written a paper on a very similar instrument, the “whithorn,” which was made of spirally wound strips of willow bark. I have since learned from Mr. Balfour that in Somersetshire these are called “Mayhorns,” and very similar spirally twisted rude oboes (also of bark) have been recorded from France, Germany, and Finland in Europe. A spirally twisted palm-leaf trumpet(?) is found in West Africa, and similar instruments from Flores, Sumatra, and Celebes, but I am not quite certain of the exact nature of these latter. The Bulaa name for this instrument is vili vili. A Mawatta man at Bulaa told me his people made it, where it was called upa, but I was not able to check this statement.

Fig. 26. Palm-leaf Toys, Bulaa

The occurrence of a reed instrument in this part of the world was so surprising that further inquiries were necessary, and Mr. English found out, after much questioning, that the toy was introduced by Johnson, a West Indian negro.

Hereby hang two useful warnings, whether this fact be true or not. First, not to assume an object is native to the district because it is found there, but always to make inquiries. Secondly, the need for investigations, for in a few years all knowledge of the origin of this particular toy would be forgotten. These reflections hold good for other objects in all parts of the world. A few months later I found that at Mabuiag, in Torres Straits, a bent leaf of the karbe tree is used as a whistle by blowing with it between the lips.

Once I thought I was on the track of a bull-roarer, and was much excited thereby, as that remarkable implement has not been recorded south-east of the Papuan Gulf; but kwari kwari proved to be a new kind of toy that makes a noise like a fly buzzing, or the flying of a large grasshopper. It is made of a strip of palm leaf bent upon itself, one end of which is tied by a short bit of fine fibre to a long thin mid-rib. The two flaps of the strip are kept apart by a thin bent mid-rib of a palm leaflet. The whole is then whirled round.