The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSIN-025 - secondary catalog

Gascoyne Mooryumkarr spirit-chaser

Gascoyne - Western Australia

Sacred / spirit

Hambly's own plate of the Field Museum's Gascoyne bull-roarer.
Hambly's own plate of the Field Museum's Gascoyne bull-roarer. · Public domain Image source
Giglioli’s 1886 plate of Western Australian objects; Mooryumkarr is no. 3.
Giglioli’s 1886 plate of Western Australian objects; Mooryumkarr is no. 3. · Public domain Image source

Mooryumkarr English

Source term: Mooryumkarr / bull-roarer

Mooryumkarr: historical Gascoyne name; Giglioli glossed it in Italian as scaccia-spiriti, ‘spirit-chaser.’

At the mouth of the Gascoyne, an incised oval board on a human-hair cord was called Mooryumkarr — "spirit-chaser." It travelled to London for the 1886 Colonial Exhibition with its cord still attached and its name written beneath it. A second Gascoyne blade, dense with cross-hatching, later reached Chicago's Field Museum.

Mooryumkarr (scaccia-spiriti)

Mooryumkarr (spirit-chaser)

Giglioli, handwritten caption to the Western Australian objects photographed at the 1886 Colonial Exhibition, object 3
Object
Incised oval wooden Mooryumkarr on a human-hair cord, probably photographed at the 1886 Colonial Exhibition; a second cross-hatched Gascoyne bullroarer is Field Museum catalog 173152.
Function
Giglioli glossed Mooryumkarr as a spirit-chaser; no specific rite is recorded for either Gascoyne object.
Map confidence
medium - Broad Gascoyne regional anchor near Carnarvon
Source location
Page references

Giglioli 1886 handwritten caption, object 3; Pettazzoni 1911:257 n. 1; Hambly 1936 Fig. 10

View source Open this point on the interactive map