The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSIN-012 - ethnographic attestation

Worgait / Wagait

Australia - Wagait - Worgait country - Top End

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Spencer's plate of six Northern Territory sacred bull-roarers — plain polished blades, hatched boards, and dotted ones bound to their cords....
Representative image. Spencer's plate of six Northern Territory sacred bull-roarers — plain polished blades, hatched boards, and dotted ones bound to their cords. The Worgait made the same bidu-bidu type shown here, though no photograph of their own instrument was ever published. Spencer, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory (Macmillan, 1914), Plate II Public domain Image source

Bidu-Bidu / Bidju-Bidju English

Source term: Bidu-Bidu

Worgait/Larakia 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 Larakia of the Darwin coast. Spencer described the Larakia Bidu-Bidu as a thin slab of wood, a foot to eighteen inches long and three or four inches across, rounded at one end. He recorded that 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; his plates show the instrument being swung, shown to the initiates, and laid on their hands. Spencer does not detail the Worgait rite separately, resting their entry on its likeness to the Larakia.

In the Worgait tribe the sticks are called Bidu-Bidu or Bidju-Bidju and the customs or beliefs associated with them are practically the same as those in the Larakia.

Spencer 1914, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia, p. 212
Object
Sacred sticks described as equivalent to Larrakia Bidu-bidu
Function
Worgait customs and beliefs described as practically same as Larrakia for sacred sticks
Map confidence
medium_high - Wagait Beach / Worgait regional anchor
Source location
Spencer 1914, Native Tribes of the Northern Territory (Worgait comparative section)

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