Zealand, in ancient Greece, and in Africa; while, as we have seen, it is
a peasant-boy's plaything in England. A number of questions are
naturally suggested by the bull-roarer. Is it a thing invented once for
all, and carried abroad over the world by wandering races, or handed on
from one people and tribe to another? Or is the bull-roarer a toy that
might be accidentally hit on in any country where men can sharpen wood
and twist the sinews of animals into string? Was the thing originally a
toy, and is its religious and mystical nature later; or was it originally
one of the properties of the priest, or medicine-man, which in England
has dwindled to a plaything? Lastly, was this mystical instrument at
first employed in the rites of a civilised people like the Greeks, and
was it in some way borrowed or inherited by South Africans, Australians,
and New Mexicans? Or is it a mere savage invention, surviving (like
certain other features of the Greek mysteries) from a distant stage of
savagery? Our answer to all these questions is that in all probability
the presence of the [Greek], or bull-roarer, in Greek mysteries was a
survival from the time when Greeks were in the social condition of
Australians.

In the first place, the bull-roarer is associated with mysteries and
initiations. Now mysteries and initiations are things that tend to
dwindle and to lose their characteristic features as civilisation
advances. The rites of baptism and confirmation are not secret and
hidden; they are common to both sexes, they are publicly performed, and
religion and morality of the purest sort blend in these ceremonies. There
are no other initiations or mysteries that civilised modern man is
expected necessarily to pass through. On the other hand, looking widely
at human history, we find mystic rites and initiations numerous,
stringent, severe, and magical in character, in proportion to the lack of
civilisation in those who practise them. The less the civilisation, the