AUSIN-009 - ethnographic attestation
Mycoololl / Flinders River
Australia - North Queensland - Gulf country
Restricted
Mobolah English
Mobolah: the Mycoololl name (as printed by Palmer and Mathews) for the bullroarer or "humming stick," a flat wooden blade swung at Bora to keep women and the uninitiated away.
Among the Mycoololl of the Flinders River in Queensland, the bullroarer was a "humming stick" called mobolctht, brought out at Bora times only: a flat piece of wood about nine inches long and two inches broad, thin, and tied to another stick. Its purpose, as the pastoralist Edward Palmer recorded in 1884, was to warn the gins not to approach; no woman was ever to see it, nor any uninitiated youth. R. H. Mathews quoted Palmer's account in his 1898 survey of Australian bullroarers, where it stands among forms gathered from widely separated parts of the continent—Port Lincoln, the Wiradjuri country, Lake Eyre, the Kimberley—each tied to initiation.
The humming stick, called Mobolah, used at Bora times only, is a flat piece of wood, 9 inches long, 2 inches broad, and thin, tied to another stick, to warn the gins not to approach. No woman is ever to see it, or any uninitiated youth.
E. Palmer, "Notes on Some Australian Tribes," Journal of the Anthropological Institute 13 (1884): 295, as quoted in R. H. Mathews, "Bullroarers Used by the Australian Aborigines," Journal of the Anthropological Institute 27 (1898): 54
- Object
- Humming stick used at Bora to warn women not to approach
- Function
- Bora-associated bullroarer with explicit taboo on women and uninitiated youths seeing it
- Map confidence
- high - Broad Flinders River regional anchor
- Source location
- Mathews 1898, JAI 27:52-60 (citing E. Palmer, Mycoololl / Flinders River)
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women