Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of MankindWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Ethnopsychology
Another instrument also, the _bull-roarer_, dates back to the
beginnings of music, though its development, of course, differed from
that of the zither. The bull-roarer, indeed, is an instrument of
tone and noise that is to be found only among relatively primitive
peoples. True, it does not reach its highest development among those
peoples who, from a sociological point of view, occupy the lowest
plane of culture; it becomes an instrument of magic, as we shall see,
only within the totemic culture of Australia. Nevertheless, there has
been discovered, again among the Bushmen, a form of bull-roarer of an
especially primitive character. Doubtless that which led primitive
man to the invention of the zither was the tone which he heard in his
everyday experience in war or in the hunt when he applied an arrow
to his bow. No doubt, also, it was the whirring noise of the arrow,
or that, perhaps, of the flying bird which the arrow imitates, that
led him to reproduce this noise in a similar manner. Indeed, in South
Africa, the bull-roarer, though, of course, used only as a plaything,
occurs in a form that at once reminds one of a flying bird or arrow.
The feather of a bird is fastened at right angles to a stick of wood.
When the stick is vigorously swung about in a circle, a whistling
noise is produced, accompanied, particularly when swung with great
rapidity, by a high tone. This tone, however, is not capable of further
perfection, so that no other musical instrument developed from the
bull-roarer. The contrary, rather, is true. In other forms of the
bull-roarer in which the feathers were displaced by a flat wooden
board--whose only resemblance to a bird was a slight similarity in
form--the noise was more intense but the tone less clear. For this
reason the bull-roarer soon lost its place in the ranks of musical
instruments and became purely an instrument of magic, in which function
also it was used only temporarily. In many parts of the world,
moreover, there is a similar primitive implement, the _rattle_, whose
status is the same as that of the bull-roarer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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