Southern Cross stone yeenma

yeenma

Source term: stone yeenma

yeenma / yinma: in Daisy Bates's Southern Cross (Karratjibbin / Mirning) vocabulary the word glossed both as "Bullroarer" (Yinma) and as "Sacred Totem board" (long: Goondain, Yeenma; small/short: Jilberee, yeenma) — i.e. the local name for a sacred board, the class Bates elsewhere equated with Spencer's churinga.

Etymology. In Daisy Bates's Southern Cross district vocabulary the near-identical words yinma and yeenma are glossed 'bullroarer' and 'sacred totem board' respectively (long boards goondain or yeenma; small ones jilberee or yeenma), and the State Library of Western Australia caption applies yeenma to this stone bullroarer. The one name thus spans the whole churinga-like class of sacred boards, whirled and unwhirled alike, though Bates herself lists the two senses as separate entries rather than equating them.

A stone yeenma from the Southern Cross district, listed in Daisy Bates's papers as a bullroarer from the collection of Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford, Governor of Western Australia. Bates's own vocabulary for the same country — taken down at Karratjibbin, between Southern Cross and Mt Jackson, from the Mirning men Beedee, Bailberin and Gweea — settles what the word carries: there she glosses "Bullroarer" as yinma, and gives yeenma again as the name of the "sacred totem board," long and short. The term thus binds the roaring instrument to the class of sacred boards rather than to anything made for play. What rite the stone served, and what was sung or kept hidden with it, the vocabulary does not say; only its name marks it as sacred.

Stone yeenma, bullroarer from Southern Cross district (Sir F.Bedford's collection)

Daisy Bates papers, State Library of Western Australia, Acc. 6193A, finding aid section XIII (photograph caption, item 1)

Particulars

Object

A bullroarer of stone, called yeenma, from Sir Frederick Bedford's collection.

Function

Not recorded.