AUSIN-011 - ethnographic attestation
Larrakia Bidu-bidu Darwin
Australia - Darwin - Larrakia country - Top End
Restricted
Bidu-bidu English
On Larrakia country around Darwin, Baldwin Spencer photographed the bullroarer at the center of the male initiation rite: one plate shows a man swinging it overhead, a second shows it held up before the initiates, and a third shows it laid across their open hands. Spencer recorded the belief that ran through the mainland tribes and was held by the women and children kept away from the rite — that the instrument's drone was the voice of a spirit come to carry the youth away. As he put it, "through all tribes on the mainland, the belief is universal amongst the women and children that the sound made by the bull-roarer is the voice of a great spirit which comes to take the youth away during the initiation ceremony." The glass-plate negative of the Larakia and Mungarai initiation churinga, made in 1911, survives in Museum Victoria.
through all tribes on the mainland, the belief is universal amongst the women and children that the sound made by the bull-roarer is the voice of a great spirit which comes to take the youth away during the initiation ceremony
Spencer 1914, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia
- Object
- Sacred bullroarers shown to initiates
- Function
- Initiation-associated sacred bullroarers among Larrakia
- Map confidence
- high - representative on-land anchor at Larrakia (regional coordinate fell just offshore of the rendered coastline); not an exact findspot
- Source location
- pp. 26, 153, 155
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women