Worgait Bidu-Bidu or Bidju-Bidju

Bidu-Bidu / Bidju-Bidju

Source term: Bidu-Bidu

Worgait/Larrakia name for the sacred bull-roarer stick, also given as Bidju-Bidju.

Among the Worgait of the Top End, the sacred sticks swung at initiation are called Bidu-Bidu or Bidju-Bidju — the same name, and by Baldwin Spencer's account the same customs and beliefs, as those of the neighbouring Larrakia of the Darwin coast. The Larrakia Bidu-Bidu is a thin slab of wood, a foot to eighteen inches long and three or four inches across, rounded at one end. Through all the mainland tribes the women and children held that the sound of the bull-roarer was the voice of a great spirit which comes to take the youth away during the initiation ceremony. In Spencer's plates the instrument is swung, shown to the initiates, and laid on their hands.

he either is, or pretends to be, very frightened, believing that the noise is the voice of a great old man who has come to take him away.

Spencer 1914, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia, p. 161

Particulars

Object

Sacred sticks, the same as the Larrakia Bidu-Bidu.

Function

Whirled at miba jerrajeva, 'showing the bull-roarer', the rite that raises a young father to Baquett status; he carries it in the bush for months, then breaks and burns it.