Mitirinji Quoin Island panmadda

panmadda

panmadda: the bull-roarer of the I'wai story on the eastern Cape York coast, restricted to initiated men. I'wai (also spelled Iwai) is the crocodile culture-hero of the Koko-Jao hero cult of east-coast Cape York.

Etymology. Panmadda is the bull-roarer of the I'wai (crocodile-hero) cult on the eastern Cape York coast: at Mitirinji (Quoin Island) two girls carried to the island by I'wai were turned to stone for using the panmadda, which may be seen and touched only by men. The word itself carries no recorded translation.

On Mitirinji, the island Europeans named Quoin Island off the northeast coast of Cape York, a cave on the side restricted to initiated men holds two girls turned to stone. In the account Donald Thomson set down in 1933, the crocodile hero I'wai carried the girls to the island, and they were punished for using the panmadda, the bull-roarer, which from then on could be seen and touched only by men. As the Pascoe bora leader Billy Daniels told it in the 1960s, the girls had made the board themselves, and I'wai turned on them — 'You mustn't do that! You gotta give up now, give up!' — before breaking a taboo of his own with his sister and paddling on to camp two nights at Forbes Island. The island is one of several places I'wai is said to have visited in his travels through this stretch of the Coral Sea; on its other side is a beach where he slept after swimming ashore. To the south, around the mouth of the Stewart River, the Yintjingga of this coast hunted dugong and turtle, and crossed the waters of the reef by canoe to gather turtle and bird eggs.

Then they (two girls) start makin' ... that flat board what they swing him (bullroarer), panmadha we call him. Well they start make him that one.

Billy Daniels, in Wolfgang Laade, The Bora of the Pascoe River, Cape York Peninsula (Folkways FE 4211, 1975), notes p. 3

Particulars

Object

Restricted-site story involving girls using panmadda bullroarer

Function

Used in secret at the bora, the boys' initiation; men alone may see or touch it.