The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSIN-017 - museum specimen

Yolngu, Arnhem Land

Australia - Arnhem Land

Restricted

A stippled Arunta churinga, illustrating the general form rather than the specific Yolngu piece — a tapered paddle painted with a python design...
Representative image. A stippled Arunta churinga, illustrating the general form rather than the specific Yolngu piece — a tapered paddle painted with a python design and fitted with a braided hair cord, held by the Peabody Museum. Spencer & Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), fig. 20 Public domain Image source

Source term: bull roarer

This python-painted paddle is not a picture of the great snake Yurlunggur — swung hard on its cord, it is his voice. The men of Arnhem Land told the women that the whirring roar was the serpent crying out in hunger, and that any woman who came near would be swallowed whole. At initiation the men themselves become Yurlunggur: they sweep the boys up, "swallow" them into ground no woman may enter, and weeks later hand them back, regurgitated as grown men. W. Lloyd Warner recorded the rite among the Yolngu in 1937.

Object
Peabody Museum object 77580 / 30-54-70/D3412.1, Bull roarer, python design; catalog record describes a tapered paddle with painted snake design and braided hair.
Function
The voice of the python Yurlunggur: at Yolngu initiation men "swallow" the boys into forbidden ground and return them weeks later as men, while women are told the roar is the hungry serpent itself (Warner 1937; Berndt 1951).
Map confidence
medium - Representative Yolngu / Arnhem Land anchor; exact object locality not exposed in accessible metadata.
Source location
Peabody object 77580 / 30-54-70/D3412.1

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